Ammunition
Ammunition is a general term used to describe rockets, bombs, grenades, torpedoes, mines, guided missiles, smoke bombs, flares, gun cartridges, shells, and other projectile materials used in warfare, hunting, and target shooting.
Primitive peoples first used stones and sticks as ammunition. They later discovered that, if a stone was wrapped in a thong made of animal hide or vine, it could be sent great distances with deadly accuracy, depending upon its velocity. The sling soon followed, often used with sharpened sticks and stones, which were later also employed as arrowheads. The Greeks and Romans used various types of catapults to throw stones. Wooden engines were also used in the ancient world to throw showers of darts or to launch flaming matter.
Gunpowder was probably discovered in China during the tenth century and was used primarily in fireworks. Its military use was not realized until the early 1300s, when the Arabs are believed to have invented the first gun and cannon. The first guns appear to have been simple tubes rested on the ground or on wooden trestles, and they probably fired arrows or conveniently sized stones. The earliest cannon consisted of a deep wooden bowl which held the gunpowder and a cannon ball balanced on the rim. The cannon ball popped off when the powder exploded. There were also experiments with arrows fired by gunpowder (the so-called "pot de fer") and with larger cannon, called bombards, which shot stone balls wrapped with iron hoops to keep them from shattering in the explosion.
During the fifteenth century, the Germans started casting iron balls that fit the bore of cannon more tightly than stones did, so that less of the explosive force was lost. The Germans also invented the bomb, which was initially no more than an iron ball filled with gunpowder. Bombs were first tossed by hand, as the modern grenade still is, but later they were fired from guns.
In the early sixteenth century, soldiers discovered that gunpowder could be ground to a grainy consistency, which allowed small air pockets to remain when the powder was rammed into the weapon. When the powder was ignited, the air pockets allowed fire to travel more quickly and uniformly for a more powerful explosion.
In the late sixteenth century, the Dutch began using bombs as ammunition for mortars, short cannons with thick walls. A hollow metal ball filled with powder had a small hole in it for a fuse. They tried putting this bomb into a mortar with the fuse down toward the powder, but the explosion often drove the fuse into the bomb, causing it to blow up in the mortar. Then they tried turning the bomb over with the fuse sticking up toward the muzzle. The gunner was to light the fuse and the powder at the same time, which proved too difficult. It was not until 1850 that someone realized that the heat of firing would set off the fuse no matter which way it faced in the mortar.
Until the early sixteenth century, all guns and cannons had to be ignited by hand, an often dangerous and cumbersome procedure. With the invention of the wheellock--an ignition mechanism that produced an internal spark--firearms of all shapes and sizes started proliferating, and there was widespread experimentation with different forms of ammunition. Handheld guns and rifles became more popular, using both single bullets and shot. Cartridges, packages that held both the explosive charge and the bullet or shot in a cloth or paper casing, came into use. Loading became less cumbersome as a consequence, also because the shooter did not have to measure the amount of gunpowder himself anymore. Gustavus Adolphus (1594-1632), the great Swedish leader, was apparently the first to use cartridges with shot for light cannon to speed up the loading of the gun. He also popularized the use of case shot, often called canister, against enemy infantry. A canister is a tin can filled with musket balls or scrap metal designed to scatter among the enemy when fired.
The Prussian ruler Frederick the Great (1740-1786) advanced artillery in the eighteenth century. He depended heavily on grapeshot, which was much like canister. A charge of grape consisted of 50 to 60 iron balls, each about one inch in diameter. They were bunched around a wooden rod attached at one end to a wooden disk. The entire charge was wrapped in a cotton bag and loaded into the gun, where the heat of firing burned the bag away and sent the balls spraying out of the muzzle.
The British started using rockets as part of their military arsenal in the late eighteenth century. They had picked up the idea for these weapons in India and produced iron-headed rockets that carried an explosive charge in the nose for up to two miles. A crude time fuse exploded the rocket after it landed. It was not until World War II, though, that rockets, notably the German V1 and V2 rockets, became truly effective weapons that could be sent over great distances with a reasonable degree of accuracy.
By the late eighteenth century, virtually all ammunition for large guns was prepared in advance. We can distinguish between fixed ammunition, in which all elements are put into one waterproof unit or cartridge; semi-fixed ammunition, which is made in two pieces and allows for on-site adjustments in the amount of propellant charge according to the required range; and separate loading ammunition for rounds so large they would be difficult to handle in one piece.
Advances in the first half of the nineteenth century focused on the discovery of percussion. Alexander Forsyth (1769-1843), a Scottish clergyman, found that certain chemicals exploded when struck a sharp blow. As a consequence, it was no longer necessary to rely exclusively on gunpowder to set off the primary explosion. Both guns and cartridges soon incorporated the principles of percussion, using detonating mixtures rather than powder for the primer. Another area of experimentation concerned the design of bullets. A variety of shapes and sizes were tried out, until a cylindri-conical shape was settled on as the most effective. There were also attempts to design bullets with raised belts or lugs to run through spiral rifling grooves in the gun barrel. The object was to make the bullet fit the gun barrel more tightly to enhance velocity and to put spin on the bullet to improve accuracy. At the same time, the entire cartridge had to be easy to load.
A Frenchman, Claude-Etienne Minié (1804-1879), designed a cartridge much like a modern one, known as the Mineé ball, with a pointed nose and a deep hollow in the base where an iron cup was fitted. When the powder exploded, it shoved the cup into the base, flaring the outer edges of the base into the rifling grooves. The Minié ball fit tightly into the gun barrel when it expanded on explosion, creating an air-tight seal behind it, and so it fired much more forcefully than earlier cartridges. An unknown American mechanic discovered later that the cup was not necessary, since the explosion expanded the hollowed-out base anyway.
In the 1880s Alfred Nobel invented smokeless powder, which represented a great improvement over the traditional black powder, made from charcoal, sulphur and saltpeter. This powder created a great deal of smoke, which, particularly with repeater rifles, could seriously limit visibility in large-scale battles. It also caused a great deal of fouling in the gun barrel, necessitating frequent scrubbing with warm water to retain accuracy of aim. Nobel's smokeless powder was made out of guncotton (cotton dipped in nitric and sulfuric acid) and nitroglycerine. The new mixture gave much higher pressure and greater velocity and had the added advantage that it fired even when damp.
Ammunition for handguns and rifles has remained virtually unchanged in the twentieth century. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, bullets were developed that expanded or exploded upon impact, such as the dum-dum bullet. These bullets had such atrocious effects on human targets that international conventions outlawed them for use against personnel. Expanding bullets are commonly used in hunting, however, to ensure a quick kill. Another early twentieth-century development was shrapnel, named after its original inventor, Henry Shrapnel (1761-1842). Essentially an improvement of the canister, shrapnel consists of a blunt-nosed steel can with up to 1200 lead balls. As it approaches the target a pre-set fuse fires another charge of powder that discharges the pellets much like shot fired from a shotgun.
The most significant developments, however, have come with the increasing variety and increasingly lethal nature of shells, missiles, and bombs. Modern artillery shells are either thin-walled to hold a maximum bursting charge or thick-walled to scatter lethal fragments upon exploding. Shell fuses have been created either to cause an explosion after a set time or upon impact. Armor-piercing shells are made with the usual lead casing and a blunt, solid steel center hidden under a streamlined exterior. Chemical or incendiary shells have only enough bursting charge to break open the shell and spread the contents of poison gases, incendiary chemicals, defoliants, and other harmful materials. A similar variety of charges is possible with rockets, which are self-powered using the principles of jet propulsion. A new class of ammunition is represented by guided missiles, whose course can be altered in flight by such mechanisms as a target-seeking radar device or a heat-seeking device. The accuracy of modern ammunition has also been greatly enhanced with the use of computers. Computer programmed "smart"missiles may contain tiny cameras allowing remote steering, infra-red sensing devices or laser homing systems.
The most destructive innovation of the twentieth century, of course, has come with the ability of scientists to set off nuclear reactions. The development of the nuclear bomb during World War II, which made possible such intense explosions with such devastating after-effects as to enable the destruction of entire countries with a single charge, has permanently altered global politics. Although some countries are trying to reduce or dismantle their nuclear arsenals, more and more others are acquiring the capacity to produce one. It is not unimaginable that, with nuclear weaponry, humankind has reached the limits of its power to destroy itself.
Many countries have developed and tested nuclear weapons since World War II, but they have not been deployed in battle since the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ammunition made with recycled nuclear waste, called depleted uranium or DU, was developed by the U.S. military and used during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Bullets made of depleted uranium are twice as dense as lead and are able to pierce steel-armored tanks with ease. Depleted uranium is only slightly radioactive, however its dust or shrapnel is believed to be highly toxic and have unknown health effects. The use of depleted uranium in ammunition and tank armor during the Persian Gulf War was not made known until several years after the warÕs end. While still under investigation, depleted uranium may prove to be a type of ammunition almost as deadly for its users as for its targets.
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