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Guns fired projectiles on horizontal trajectory and could batter heavy construction with solid shot or shell at long or short range, destroy fort parapets, and dismount cannon. Mortars fired shells in a high arcing trajectory to reach targets behind obstructions, destroying construction and personnel.
Pneumatic guns for shipboard use, or at fixed coastal fortifications, could rely on a steam-driven gas compressor as an air source. For use by troops in the field, this was impractical. The Dudley-Sims dynamite gun used a smokeless powder charge to compress the air. Beneath the gun barrel was a cylinder into which the powder charge was loaded.
A sandbag or dirtbag is a bag or sack made of hessian (burlap), polypropylene or other sturdy materials that is filled with sand or soil and used for such purposes as flood control, military fortification in trenches and bunkers, shielding glass windows in war zones, ballast, counterweight, and in other applications requiring mobile ...
The Armstrong RBL 7-inch gun, also known as the 110-pounder, [4] was a heavy caliber Armstrong gun, an early type of rifled breechloader. William Armstrong 's innovative combination of a rifled built-up gun with breechloading had proven suitable for small cannon.
Dynamite is an explosive made of nitroglycerin, sorbents (such as powdered shells or clay), and stabilizers. [1] It was invented by the Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Nobel in Geesthacht, Northern Germany, and was patented in 1867.
The 8"/55 caliber gun (spoken "eight-inch-fifty-five-caliber") formed the main battery of United States Navy heavy cruisers and two early aircraft carriers. United States naval gun terminology indicates the gun barrel had an internal diameter of 8 inches (203 mm), and the barrel was 55 calibers long (barrel length is 8 inch × 55 = 440 inches ...
The design proved a success and became the standard heavy field gun of the French from 1917 to the end of World War I. [3] The weapon was pressed into service quickly, to remedy the shortage of such weapons in the French inventory. This weapon became the "Canon de 155 Grande Puissance Filloux mle 1917", named by French Army as the Canon de ...
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 caliber cannon. A sabot of wood, metal, or similar material was sometimes used to help the round during firing from the cannon.