EMPLOYMENT OF GUN-COTTON IN WARFARE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5428, 20 August 1878, Page 3

EMPLOYMENT OF GUN-COTTON IN WARFARE.

(From the London News.) According to our Woolwich correspondent, another use has been found for gun-cotton in warfare. The novel explosive is to be employed for disabling guns of the enemy. It is to take the place, in fact, of the spike and the armorer’s hammer. A slab of gun-cotton, simply laid upon the muzzle of a gun and detonated, so injures anddistorts the weapon as to render it practically useless for firing, while in the case of a muzzle-loader it at once precludes any attempt to load the gun. The old plan, it may be remembered, of rendering au enemy’s guns useless affffer storming a battery, was to spike them by driving an armorer's nail into the vent or touch-hole, and then, in the event of the attacking party being driven out of the battery again, or retiring, the weapons could not br used against them—at any rate for a time. The rapid injuring of a gun by means of gun-cotton in the way now suggested will prevent the cannon ever being employed again ; but this is, after all, a questionable advantage, for in the case of a spiked gun, if the enemy can use it once more on the subsequent boring out of the spike, so also may the storming party, should they prove strong enough to hold the position. This is not the first application that has been mads of gun-cotton for the purposes of destruction before the enemy, A new body of men termed Cavalry Pioneers, first created by the Austrians and now adopted in the British army, arc to employ charges of guncotton in a similar way for breaking railway lines and destroying bridges quickly. The trooper, mounted on a strong and rapid horse, is provided with a belt containing a few pounds of compressed gun-cotton, and on arriving at a railway he dismounts and places a charge upon one of the rails. The guncotton is detonated with a fuse, and the result is that half a yard of metal is seen flying over the next hedge. Probably not more than sixty seconds are necessary to work the mischief, but the man is up aud away before the explosion can take place. In the case of bridges the work is naturally of longer duration, but two or three intelligent men would not be long in discovering a weak point in the structure and adjusting their charges so as to do the greatest amount of harm.