The shrapnel , of the name of its inventor Henry Shrapnel, is the name indicating the “shell with balls”.

The term “shrapnel” is often used, in an abusive way, to indicate small fragments projected by an explosion, whatever their origin.

History

In 1784, the lieutenant Henry Shrapnel (1761-1842) of the royal British artillery Body (Royal Artillery) undertook the development of an anti-personnel weapon.

At that time, the artillery employed boxes with grapeshot to defend oneself against the attacks of the infantry or the cavalry. Instead of a ball, one charged the gun with a metal case filled up with lead or iron balls. During the shooting, the case tore inside the gun, producing an effect similar to an enormous rifle charged with buckshot. The grapeshot box still had a mortal effect with 300 meters, although at this distance the density of the projectiles dropped at the point to return an impact on a not very probable human target. For more important ranges, one used the full ball or the ordinary shell. This last, a hollow cast iron sphere filled with black Poudre, had more one effect of breath that of fragmentation because the pieces of metal were very few and large-sized.

The innovation of Shrapnel consisted in combining the multiprojectile effect of the grapeshot with the delay effect of fusing to remotely carry the effect of the box to grapeshot. Its shell consisted of a hollow cast iron ball filled of a mixture of balls and powder supplemented by a rudimentary detonating fuse. If the rocket were correctly regulated, the shell opened, either in front of or above the target, and released its contents of bullets which continued their race with the residual speed of the shell. The explosive load of the shell was just sufficient to fracture it but not to disperse the projectiles in all the directions. In this form, its invention increased the effective range of the grapeshot box from 300 to 1100 meters. It named its machine “spherical grapeshot box” (spherical box shot), but one ends up calling it according to his patronym, which was ratified in 1852 by the British government.

The first models presented a catastrophic defect: during the very strong acceleration, at the beginning of the blow, friction between the grapeshot and the blasting powder sometimes the premature explosion of the powder caused. The problem was solved while placing the powder in a central metal tube or in a housing separated inside the shell. To prevent that the lead shot does not become deformed, one includes it in resin, of which combustion caused positive to indicate the place of bursting of the shell.

The British artillery waited until 1803 to adopt the invention, but then did it with enthusiasm. Shrapnel was promoted with the rank of commander (Major) the year even. The duke of Wellington employed the shrapnel against Napoleon of 1808 to Waterloo and left admiring writings on his effectiveness.

The design was improved by the captain E Mr. Boxer, of the royal artillery Body, and developed during the appearance of the guns with striped heart.

Later modifications

By taking a cylindrical form, the shell was slightly modified: it accepted with the point a detonating fuse in time, a drain of central firing around which the balls drowned in the resin were laid out and, with the back, a housing containing of the blasting powder closed by a cover crimped on the tube. During the travel of the shell, at the end of a predetermined amount of time, the rocket put fire at the powder load which was just sufficient to break the fasteners or the pins which fixed it and to expel the grapeshot. The major part the speed of the balls came the residual speed of the shell. Once released, the balls of the shrapnel formed a hail of round balls according to the trajectory of the shooting and struck the ground according to an oval zone. Although very effective against troops with overdraft, this grapeshot was without effect against personnel with the shelter, in trenches for example.

During the First World War

At the beginning of the First World War, the shell with ball was employed with large scales by all the belligerents to strike the troops advancing in mass and with overdraft. Then it was abandoned with the profit of the shell with high explosive capacity because of the passage to the trench warfare: the shrapnel was unable to destroy the networks of barbed wire in front of the lines, to smash the ground or to come to end from troops buried, all things necessary before launching a attaque.

With the development of explosives with strong capacity breaking sufficiently stable to be charged in the shells, one noted that an envelope of shell suitably conceived split up so effectively that the addition of grapeshot was not necessary. For example, the detonation of a shell of 105  ordinary mm produces several hundreds of glares to great swiftness (1000 with 1500  m/s), a wave of overpressure mortal in a short ray and, in the event of ground explosion or under the ground, upsets the ground and destroys the material effectively - all that with a ammunition much easier to manufacture than the last versions of the shrapnel.

A remarkable model was the “universal shell” (Universal Shell) developped at the point by German Krupp at the beginning of the twentieth century. This shell functioned either as a shell with balls or like a high-explosive shell. Its rocket was modified and the resin replaced by TNT to coat the balls. If the detonating fuse were activated, it functioned normally, projecting the balls and putting fire at the TNT which burned without exploding by emitting a quite visible plume of black smoke. In impact mode, the TNT exploded, transforming the shell while breaking producing a great quantity of glares to low swiftness and a moderate breath. Once again, because of its complexity, it was abandoned for the simple high-explosive shell.

During the Second world war

During the Second world war, the shells with balls in a strict sense were forsaken, the last shrapnels to be employed by the British army being shells of 60 drawn books in Burma in 1943.

The Japanese imperial navy developed a ammunition DCA combining the shrapnel and the incendiary bomb under the name of “Sanshiki”.

During the war of Vietnam

A states-unien project of the years 1960 with led to the shell “hive” (Beehive Shell) which is not strictly speaking a shell with balls because it contains darts. The result was the shell of 105 mm M546 APERS-T, employed for the first time in Vietnam in 1966.
The shell comprises approximately 8000 darts of one half-gram grouped in five packages, a rocket in time, detonators intended to tear the envelope, a central tube, a load of propulsion without smoke, a coloured marker contained with the back. The operation of the shell is the following: the rocket starts, transmitting the explosion by the tube and firing the detonators which separate before envelope in four pieces. The envelope and the first four packages of darts squirt under the action of the rotation of the projectile, the last package and the visual marker under the action of the propelling load. The darts disperse starting from the point of explosion in a cone which always goes growing in the prolongation of the trajectory of the projectile before its explosion.
This shell has a great anti-personnel effectiveness, in particular under cover forester, but is delicate to manufacture. It is said that the name of hive comes from the noise which the darts produce, resembling the buzz of a swarm in furie.

At present

Although of a rather rare employment, there exist always ammunition of various gauges, based on the principle of the shrapnel, employing like grapeshot of the darts or many tungtene body: balls, cylinders or sticks. Certain missiles anti-missile can be equipped with heads which release at a distance predetermined a cloud of sub-projectile on the trajectory of the returning missile. This process does not ask for such a high degree of accuracy of the continuation and a trajectory of approach that with an ordinary explosive head, and the use of sticks gets a better penetration in the walls of the adversary and increases the chances to damage it.

Use of shrapnel in British slang

Shrapnel indicates the small change and is the equivalent of grapeshot in this direction.

Orthography

One meets sometimes the word schrapnell which is the adaptation to the German pronunciation and place does not have to be employed in French. shrapnell straightforwardly faulty and is indicated as such by the dictionaries which quote it.

Note

Sources

Information most probably comes from an article of WL Ruffell , 2001 on the site of the Royal New Zealand Artillery Old Comrades Association

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