BALLISTICS AND STATISTICS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 34, 16 February 1940, Page 3

BALLISTICS AND STATISTICS

VERY time a 15in. gun fires a full charge, £1,000 disappears in flame and smoke. For every inch of bore in a modern gun the cost is approximately £1,500. These two items indicate the cost of guns in modern warfare and also the cost of bombardment during action in the field. Hundreds of thousands of pounds can disappear in a few hours, as they did on the Western Front during the last war. Since the last war great advances in the power and accuracy of modern artillery have been made, but the capacity of the big guns is kept as secret as possible. The following figures are taken from official sources of six years ago, since when no.others have been issued: —

Howitzers, those huge, squat guns which fire high into the air so that their shells will fall as straight as possible on their objectives, were advanced greatly by the Germans during the last war. It will be remembered that they used howitzers of 15.5in. calibre against the Belgian fortress of Antwerp and completely destroyed it because the forts were not designed to stand up to such a battering. These German howitzers threw their 2,000 Ib. shells a distance of six miles. Each of those guns weighed 29

tons and required the strength of 13 traction engines to haul ‘it into~position. To-day the French have a Howitzer which is drawn along double girder tracks by petrol. engines and throws a _ 1,000 Ib. shell a distance of seven miles. Modern guns are most expensive to build. The 18-pounder, one of the smallest and most efficient of the British field guns, costs over £4,000. Some of the new 4in. American howitzers cost £5,000 each, complete with mounting. Ammunition is also a costly business, some of the shells costing’ over £1,000 each. The accuracy of the modern big gun is amazing. In ideal conditions a 9.2in. gun, firing at a target ten miles away, should put a series of shells fired with the same sighting into a circle 12 yards in diameter. Modern gunnery has become an expert business, requiring great skill on the part of the artillery-men and the officers in command. Modern guns have been found to be temperamental, and they must be understood in all their moods before the best can be made of them. The men usually give each gun a special name, indicating pride and affection and obtaining from an ancient privilege called "chalking the guns." To-day even the small anti-aircraft guns are named by their crews. Nearly 200 miles of steel ribbon, six-one-hundredths of an inch thick and a quarter of an inch wide, are required to wire a 15in. gun. The wire weighs over 20 tons and the work is done by experts. Field and medium ‘guns are usually built by shrinking tubes of steel,

white hot, one over the other, and big guns by wiring the steel ribbon mentioned above over an inner tube. In wiring, the number of turns wound during the operation varies from 20 at the muzzle to 80 at the breech. How to increase the range of a shell is one of the problems of modern gunnery. This is done by "stream-lining " the rear end, thus reducing the air resistance, but as far as is known it has been done only to field and medium type guns. "Big Bertha," the gun with which the Germans shelled Paris during the last war, was the longest ranging gun yet built, but it was not a success, and. did comparatively . little dammge. It was, however, a remarkable achievement in gunnery, for it threw a shell weighing 265 lbs. a distance of 76 miles, but because of the distance this shell had only a small bursting charge. f "Big Bertha’s" shell was given an initial velocity of 5,000ft. a second and rose 24 miles in the air, but the gun wore out after firing about 30 rounds of. ammunition. At its best this gun was not very accurate and required a target two miles long and a mile wide. Since 1918 armament makers have experimented with many new types of gun, and their achievements have been kept more or less secret. Neither side knows the full details of the ability of the field guns and. howitzers which will be used in this war. Note: By way of comparison we quote’ the following sentence from the recently published Centennial history of Wellington City of the Strait: A. E. Mulgan): "There were eight guns, six 12-pounders and two 9-pounders [in the Tory] . .. There can be no more striking proof of the enormous increase in the cost of armaments in oo last century than the fact that these light guns cost the renee. only £79/9/0."

Calibre Shell Range 6 in. 100 Ibs. 10 miles 9.2in 380 Ibs. 14 miles 124 = * 1,000 Ibs. 19 miles 1l4ins, 1,560 Ibs. 22 miles Howitzers 8 in. ~ 200 Ibs. . 7 miles 92in «- 290 Ibs. 8 miles IZ in, « ~ 300 Ibs. 10 miles 12.45 in. « 350 Ibs. 14 miles

Guns