Quick-firing gun
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A quick-firing or rapid-firing gun is an artillery piece, typically a gun or howitzer, that has several characteristics which taken together mean the weapon can fire at a fast rate. Quick-firing was introduced worldwide in the 1880s and 1890s and had a marked impact on war both on land and at sea.
Characteristics
The characteristics of a quick-firing artillery piece are:
- A breech-loading weapon with a breech mechanism that allows rapid reloading
- Single-part cased ammunition, i.e. a cartridgecontaining both shell and propellant
- Recoil buffers to limit recoil, so the barrel can quickly return to the same position after firing
- The use of , meaning that gun crews could still see their target
These innovations, taken together, meant that the quick-firer could fire aimed shells much more rapidly than an older weapon. For instance, an Elswick Ordnance Company 4.7-inch gun fired 10 rounds in 47.5 seconds in 1887, almost eight times faster than the equivalent 5-inch breech-loading gun.
History
In 1881, the Royal Navy advertised for a quick-firing gun that could fire a minimum of 12 shots per minute. This rate of fire became increasingly important with the development of the first practical torpedoes and torpedo boats, which posed an extreme threat to the Royal Navy's maritime predominance.[1]
The first quick-firing light gun was the 1-inch Nordenfelt gun, built in Britain from 1880. The gun was expressly designed to defend larger warships against the new small fast-moving torpedo boats in the late 1870s to the early 1880s and was an enlarged version of the successful rifle-calibre Nordenfelt hand-cranked "machine gun" designed by Helge Palmcrantz. The gun fired a solid steel bullet with hardened tip and brass jacket.
The gun was used in one-, two-, and four-barrel versions. The ammunition was fed by gravity from a hopper above the breech, subdivided into separate columns for each barrel. The gunner loaded and fired the multiple barrels by moving a lever on the right side of the gun forward and backwards. Pulling the lever backwards extracted the fired cartridges, pushing it forward then loaded fresh cartridges into all the barrels, and the final part of the forward motion fired all the barrels, one at a time in quick succession. Hence the gun functioned as a type of
It was superseded for anti-torpedo boat defence in the mid-1880s by the new generation of
The French firm Hotchkiss produced the
The Royal Navy introduced the
Quick-firing guns were a key characteristic of the
Land use
An early quick-firing field gun was created by Vladimir Baranovsky in 1872–75.[4] which was officially adopted by the Russian military in 1882.[5] On land, quick-firing field guns were first adopted by the French Army, starting in 1897 with the Canon de 75 modèle 1897 which proved to be extremely successful. Other nations were quick to copy the quick-firing technology.
The
Scott then improvised a travelling carriage for 4.7-inch guns removed from their usual static coastal or ship mountings to provide the army with a heavy field gun. These improvised carriages lacked
The first war in which quick-firing artillery was widespread was the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05.[7]
The quick-firing howitzer offered the potential for practical indirect fire. Traditional howitzers had been employed to engage targets outside their line of fire, but were very slow to aim and reload. Quick-firing weapons were capable of a heavy indirect bombardment, and this was the main mode of their employment during the 20th century.
See also
References
- ISBN 9781598845303.
- ^ British forces traditionally denoted smaller ordnance by the weight of its standard projectile, in this case approximately 3 pounds (1.4 kg).
- ISBN 978-0785814139, p. 161
- ^ Shirokorad, Aleksandr. "2,5 дм. (63,5 мм.) конная и горная пушки обр. 1877 г." [2.5 in. (63.5mm) Cavalry and Mountain Guns Model 1877] (in Russian). Archived from the original on 2012-04-22. Retrieved 2012-09-07.
- ^ "История артиллерии с середины XIX в. до 1917 г." [The history of artillery from the middle of the 19th century up to 1917] (in Russian). Military Historical Museum of Artillery, Engineers and Signal Corps. Archived from the original on 2012-01-27. Retrieved 2012-09-07.
- ^ a b c Hall 1971.
- OCLC 9687161, pp. 11–13