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Grapeshot
In artillery, a grapeshot is a type of ammunition that consists of a collection of smaller-caliber round shots packed tightly in a canvas bag and separated from the gunpowder charge by a metal wadding, rather than being a single solid projectile. When assembled, the shot resembled a cluster of grapes, hence the name. Grapeshot was used both on land and at sea. On firing, the canvas wrapping disintegrates and the contained balls scatter out from the muzzle, giving a ballistic effect similar to a giant shotgun. Grapeshot was devastatingly effective against massed infantry at short range and was also used at medium range. Solid shot was used at longer range and canister at shorter. When used in naval warfare, grapeshot served a dual purpose. First, it continued its role as an anti-personnel projectile. However, the effect was diminished due to a large portion of the crew being below decks and the addition of hammock netting in iron brackets intended to slow or stop smaller shot. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
13 Vendémiaire
13 Vendémiaire, Year 4 in the French Republican Calendar (5 October 1795 in the Gregorian calendar), was a battle between the French Revolutionary troops and Royalist forces in the streets of Paris. This battle was part of the establishing of a new form of government, the Directory, and it was a major factor in the rapid advancement of Republican General Napoleon Bonaparte's career. Background The social reforms of the French Revolution had been well received by the majority of the populace of France, but the Revolution's strongly anti-Catholic stance had created anti-Republican sympathies in many Roman Catholics. In March 1793, this sentiment boiled over into an armed insurrection in the fiercely Catholic Vendée region of western France. A rebel army titled ''Armée catholique et royale'' now proved to be a thorn in the side of the Revolutionary government in Paris, under leaders such as François de Charette de la Contrie and Maurice d'Elbée. The rebels were known a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carronade Mg 5105
A carronade is a short, smoothbore, cast-iron cannon which was used by the Royal Navy. It was first produced by the Carron Company, an ironworks in Falkirk, Scotland, and was used from the last quarter of the 18th century to the mid-19th century. Its main function was to serve as a powerful, short-range, anti-ship and anti-crew weapon. The technology behind the carronade was greater dimensional precision, with the shot fitting more closely in the barrel, thus transmitting more of the propellant charge's energy to the projectile, allowing a lighter gun using less gunpowder to be effective. Carronades were initially found to be very successful, but they eventually disappeared as naval artillery advanced, with the introduction of rifling and consequent change in the shape of the projectile, exploding shells replacing solid shot, and naval engagements being fought at longer ranges. History The carronade was designed as a short-range naval weapon with a low muzzle velocity for m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Swivel Gun
A swivel gun (or simply swivel) is a small cannon mounted on a swiveling stand or fork which allows a very wide arc of movement. Another type of firearm referred to as a swivel gun was an early flintlock combination gun with two barrels that rotated along their axes to allow the shooter to switch between either the rifling, rifled or the smoothbore barrels. Swivel guns should not be confused with pivot guns, which were far larger weapons mounted on a horizontal pivot, or RML 2.5 inch Mountain Gun, screw guns, which are a mountain gun with a segmented barrel. An older term for the type is peterero (alternative spellings include "paterero" and "pederero"). The name was taken from the Spanish name for the gun, pedrero, a combination of the word piedra (stone) and the suffix -ero (-er), because stone was the first type of ammunition fired. It had a high rate of fire, as several chambers could be prepared in advance and quickly fired in succession and was especially effective in ant ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Artillery
Artillery consists of ranged weapons that launch Ammunition, munitions far beyond the range and power of infantry firearms. Early artillery development focused on the ability to breach defensive walls and fortifications during sieges, and led to heavy, fairly immobile siege engines. As technology improved, lighter, more mobile field artillery cannons were developed for battlefield use. This development continues today; modern self-propelled artillery vehicles are highly mobile weapons of great versatility generally providing the largest share of an army's total firepower. Originally, the word "artillery" referred to any group of soldiers primarily armed with some form of manufactured weapon or armour. Since the introduction of gunpowder and cannon, "artillery" has largely meant cannon, and in contemporary usage, usually refers to Shell (projectile), shell-firing Field gun, guns, howitzers, and Mortar (weapon), mortars (collectively called ''barrel artillery'', ''cannon artil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shotgun Shell
A shotgun cartridge, shotshell, or shell is a type of rimmed, cylindrical (straight-walled) ammunition used specifically in shotguns. It is typically loaded with numerous small, spherical sub-projectiles called shot. Shotguns typically use a smoothbore barrel with a tapered constriction at the muzzle to regulate the extent of scattering. Some cartridges contain a single solid projectile known as a slug (sometimes fired through a rifled slug barrel). The casing usually consists of a paper or plastic tube with a metallic base containing the primer. The shot charge is typically contained by wadding inside the case. The caliber of the cartridge is known as its gauge. The projectiles are traditionally made of lead, but other metals like steel, tungsten and bismuth are also used due to restrictions on lead, or for performance reasons such as achieving higher shot velocities by reducing the mass of the shot charge. Other unusual projectiles such as saboted flechettes, ru ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
CSS Georgia (ironclad)
CSS ''Georgia'', also known as ''State of Georgia'' and ''Ladies' Ram'', was an ironclad warship built in Savannah, Georgia in 1862 during the American Civil War. The Ladies' Gunboat Association raised $115,000 for her construction to defend the port city of Savannah. Service history Commanded by Lieutenant Washington Gwathmey, CSN, the new warship was employed to defend the river channels below Savannah, using her cannons to prevent a Union advance on the city from the sea. When her steam engines turned out to lack sufficient power for offensive use, ''Georgia'' was anchored in the Savannah River as a floating battery, protecting both the city and Fort Jackson. ''Georgia'' had been in service about 20 months, when Sherman's March to the Sea captured Savannah by land on December 21, 1864. Her Confederate crew scuttled the ship to prevent her capture and use against the South. Wreck In 1866, the ship's railroad track iron rail armor was partially salvaged and the wooden hu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Canister Shot
Canister shot is a kind of anti-personnel artillery ammunition. It has been used since the advent of gunpowder-firing artillery in Western armies, and saw particularly frequent use on land and at sea in the various wars of the 18th and 19th century. Canister is still used today in modern artillery. Description Canister shot consists of a closed metal cylinder typically loosely filled with round lead or iron balls packed with sawdust to add more solidity and cohesion to the mass and to prevent the balls from crowding each other when the round was fired. The canister itself was usually made of tin, often dipped in a lacquer of beeswax diluted with turpentine to prevent corrosion of the metal. Iron was substituted for tin for larger-caliber guns. The ends of the canister were closed with wooden or metal disks. A cloth cartridge bag containing the round's gunpowder used to fire the canister from the gun barrel could be attached to the back of the metal canister for smaller cal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shrapnel Shell
Shrapnel shells were anti-personnel artillery munitions that carried many individual bullets close to a target area and then ejected them to allow them to continue along the shell's trajectory and strike targets individually. They relied almost entirely on the shell's velocity for their lethality. The munition has been obsolete since the end of World War I for anti-personnel use; high-explosive shells superseded it for that role. The functioning and principles behind shrapnel shells are fundamentally different from high-explosive shell fragmentation. Shrapnel is named after Lieutenant-General Henry Shrapnel, a Royal Artillery officer, whose experiments, initially conducted on his own time and at his own expense, culminated in the design and development of a new type of artillery shell. Usage of the term "shrapnel" has changed over time to also refer to fragmentation of the casing of shells and bombs, which is its most common modern usage and strays from the original meaning. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Salvo
A salvo is the simultaneous discharge of artillery or firearms including the firing of guns either to hit a target or to perform a salute. As a tactic in warfare, the intent is to cripple an enemy in many blows at once and prevent them from fighting back. Overview Troops armed with muzzleloaders required time to refill their arms with gunpowder and shot. Gun drills were designed to enable an almost continuous rain of fire on the enemy by lining troops into ranks, allowing one rank to fire a salvo, or volley, while the other ranks prepared their guns for firing. The term is commonly used to describe the firing of broadsides by warships, especially battleships. During fleet engagements in the days of sail, from 17th century until the 19th century, ships of the line were maneuvered with the objective of bringing the greatest possible number of cannons to bear on the enemy and to discharge them in a salvo, causing enough damage and confusion as to allow time for the cannon t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chain-shot
In artillery, chain shot is a type of cannon projectile formed of two sub-calibre balls, or half-balls, chained together. Bar shot is similar, but joined by a solid bar. They were used in the age of sailing ships and black powder cannon to shoot masts, or to cut the shrouds and any other rigging of a target ship. When fired, after leaving the muzzle, the shot's components tumble in the air, and the connecting chain fully extends. In past use, as much as 1.8 m (6 ft) of chain would sweep through the target. However, the tumbling made both bar and chain shot less accurate, so they were used at shorter ranges. Chain shot was sometimes used on land as an anti-personnel load. It was used by the defenders of Magdeburg in May 1631 as an anti-personnel load, which, according to counselor Otto von Guericke, was one reason for the extreme violence of the victorious attackers. It was also used against Parliamentarians in the first English Civil War, and against Cromwell in Ireland a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beehive Anti-personnel Round
Beehive was a Vietnam War era anti-personnel round packed with metal flechettes fired from an artillery gun most popularly deployed during that conflict. It is also known as flechette rounds or their official designation, antipersonnel-tracer (APERS-T). Typically, artillery gunners fire using indirect fire, firing at targets they cannot see by line of sight, with information provided by a forward observer. However, during the Vietnam War, there was a demand for a munition that could be fired directly at enemy troops, in cases where an artillery unit was attacked. History The flechette rounds were developed under a contract administered by Picatinny Arsenal and let to the Whirlpool Corporation in April 1957. The contract was named the "Beehive Program" referring to the way the flechettes were compartmentalized and stacked, looking like the traditional image of a conical beehive. It was commonly assumed by users in the service that the term referred to a supposed 'buzzing' sound it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
