Fused Canister?

[Kelly408]

I thought I once, and only once, read that some canister was fused. I can't find anything on the internet that discusses it. Did I misunderstand what I read?

 

[Kurt G]

Were you possibly confusing it with spherical case ?

 

[Carronade]

"Case shot" was a term for something similar to canister, usually using larger balls, and used in the same direct fire, shotgun-like manner. "Spherical case" was a hollow shell filled with a mixture of balls and powder. This was fused so that it would hopefully explode over or among enemy troops. It would have a similar effect to case shot, but could be effective at longer ranges. It was invented by a British officer named Henry Shrapnel, hence the term "shrapnel" for shell fragments.

p.s. In Napoleonic times and earlier, "canister" was usually comprised of musket balls; I've read of a 12pdr canister round containing no fewer than 280. Civil War canister was larger, commonly 27 for a 12pdr, more like what would have been called case shot in an earlier age.

 

[Kelly408]

Thanks for the input. I think I misread or misunderstood what I read. Fusing canister never made sense to me but I wasn't sure.

 

[Western Reserve Volunteer]

I wrote a thread dealing with case shot you might like.

TL; DR: Case is the unsung hero of the ammunition box. It's the most likely to be at hand for several of the most common smooth bore cannon of the war!

 

[67th Tigers]

FWIW: case-shot with the fuse cut to the minimum 0.25 seconds (or removed entirely?) was used as improvised canister, especially with rifled guns

 

[Rhea Cole]

Smoothbore cannon used three types of three types of antipersonnel ammunition.

Inside 300 yards: Canister was aimed at a spot ten yards on front of the target. The wide spread of 28 balls would then impact the target at about knee height. When the target was cavalry or artillery, a solid shot was loaded & a canister was rammed on top of it. Only 4 canister rounds were packed into ammunition boxes.

400-800 yards: Solid shot was fired to graze the ground & bounce toward advancing infantry like a demonic jackrabbit. During the 1980's, the Stones River living history gun crew fired plaster balls from an original 12 pdr Napoleon. The balls made quite a show as they bounded through a cotton field & into the cedar trees 600 yards away. It must have been absolutely terrifying the be on the receiving end of converging fire from several batteries. It was not uncommon for six men to be struck down by one of those 12 pound killers.

600-1200 yards: Spherical Case / Shrapnel rounds consisted of a thin walled sphere filled with pistol caliber balls & a small bursting charge. A fuse of various design detonated the round. For example, a fuse was "cut" to fire the bursting charge after 3 seconds of flight 800 yards down range. The target was a spot ten meters above & in front of the target. The busting charge was small because of Newton's action-reaction laws. The shattered shell & spray of bullets rained down at roughly 800 miles per hour. The effect of converging spherical case shot was murderous.

Canister was literally a metal can of 28 iron balls. The metal was crimped together so that it would come apart as it left the muzzle. It did not require a bursting charge or fuse to set it off.

If a Spherical case shot was loaded without a fuse, firing the cannon would have set it off. That would turn the cannon into a giant pipe bomb with catastrophic consequences. Occasionally, case shot did explode prematurely. I sincerely doubt that anybody who had witnessed that would cut a fuse for 1/4 second.

 

[67th Tigers]

"Since ammunition chests contained relatively few rounds of canister and sometimes it was fired in multiple rounds, the inventory on-hand could rapidly vanish. When close-range ammunition was depleted, the resourcefulness of the artillerymen switched to alternative methods of destroying the enemy. For example, when the Confederates approached the heights of Cemetery Hill on July 2, Ricketts's battery fired single, then double canister. When canister was depleted, the battery shifted to firing "rotten shot." This term refers to spherical case loaded without using fuses. Upon being fired, the shell abruptly exploded at the muzzle and reacted similarly to canister.

Cole, Philip. Civil War Artillery at Gettysburg (Kindle Locations 2245-2249). Colecraft Industries. Kindle Edition.

Caseshot fired without a fuse doesn't burst in the barrel. It bursts ca. 20 yds downrange as the flame doesn't reach the bursting charge until after it has left the muzzle. The fuses were ignited be the flame of the main charge coming around the round after it left the barrel.

In British practice, no canister was issued for the Armstrong gun. Instead the segment-shell was simply loaded without a fuse and burst ca. 20 yds downrange.

 

[Saphroneth]

Caseshot fired without a fuse doesn't burst in the barrel. It bursts ca. 20 yds downrange as the flame doesn't reach the bursting charge until after it has left the muzzle. The fuses were ignited be the flame of the main charge coming around the round after it left the barrel.

Right, because a rifle has very low windage (thus why it engages with the rifling) and even a smoothbore doesn't have very high windage. Cutting the fuze to 1/4 second would mean that the projectile would make it, what, well over a hundred feet away before exploding?

I actually wonder if the cases of premature bursting inside the barrel of the weapon were largely the projectile being loaded improperly. A round projectile that ended up with the fuze or fuze hole facing backwards would be ignited in the barrel.

 

[alan polk]

A round projectile that ended up with the fuze or fuze hole facing backwards would be ignited in the barrel.

That is why most, if not all, round projectiles had wooden sabots and powder bags fixed to the projectile.

 

[Rhea Cole]

Right, because a rifle has very low windage (thus why it engages with the rifling) and even a smoothbore doesn't have very high windage. Cutting the fuze to 1/4 second would mean that the projectile would make it, what, well over a hundred feet away before exploding?

I actually wonder if the cases of premature bursting inside the barrel of the weapon were largely the projectile being loaded improperly. A round projectile that ended up with the fuze or fuze hole facing backwards would be ignited in the barrel.

Premature ignition was often due to friction between the rough inside of a projectile & the powder as it spun through a rifled bore. Coating it with 'asphaltium' I.e., naturally occurring asphalt solved the problem.

 

[Saphroneth]

Premature ignition was often due to friction between the rough inside of a projectile & the powder as it spun through a rifled bore. Coating it with 'asphaltium' I.e., naturally occurring asphalt.

I know such an effect was actually used in the first armour piercing shells, the "Palliser" shells.

 

[67th Tigers]

I know such an effect was actually used in the first armour piercing shells, the "Palliser" shells.

These were, however, base-fused. The issue was the fuse being damaged. It isn't a time, but a percussion fuse, and is armed by the acceleration crushing a lead cup (if not completely after the introduction of pebble).

 

[Saphroneth]

Huh, there you go then. Fair enough.

 

[67th Tigers]

Huh, there you go then. Fair enough.

The copper sheet was to protect the fuse.

 

[Saphroneth]

I'm assuming that the fuze is labelled as "gun metal" on the diagram.

 

[Rhea Cole]

Right, because a rifle has very low windage (thus why it engages with the rifling) and even a smoothbore doesn't have very high windage. Cutting the fuze to 1/4 second would mean that the projectile would make it, what, well over a hundred feet away before exploding?

I actually wonder if the cases of premature bursting inside the barrel of the weapon were largely the projectile being loaded improperly. A round projectile that ended up with the fuze or fuze hole facing backwards would be ignited in the barrel.

If the round had been loaded backwards, the cannon could not have been fired. A smoothbore round & the sabot would have been beneath the vent & the gun would not have fired. Number three would have immediately known that the powder bag had not been pierced & the round would have been pulled. If by some bizarrely incompetent #3 happenstance the round had been ignited, nothing good could have come of it.
Just out of curiosity, I referred the firing case shot without fuze idea to folks I know who have extensive live fire experience. To a man & woman it sounds absolutely crazy to them. I see no reason to disagree with them.

 

[Saphroneth]

Just out of curiosity, I referred the firing case shot without fuze idea to folks I know who have extensive live fire experience. To a man & woman it sounds absolutely crazy to them. I see no reason to disagree with them.

Perhaps it does, but then again if contemporary Civil War gunners used it in an emergency...

The Siege of Richmond: a Narrative of the Military Operations of Major-General George B. McClellan, During the Months of May and June, 1862

books.google.co.uk

Mentioned here in a memoir of the operations against Richmond.

It also appears in the ORs:

The War of the Rebellion

books.google.co.uk

It's like when someone "cooks" a grenade. It's absolutely crazy to do so in anything short of an actual war, but it could save your life (or end someone elses').

 

[67th Tigers]

Just out of curiosity, I referred the firing case shot without fuze idea to folks I know who have extensive live fire experience. To a man & woman it sounds absolutely crazy to them. I see no reason to disagree with them.

Probably does, but they're not engaged in combat are they?

 

[Rhea Cole]

Probably does, but they're not engaged in combat are they?

Live firing black powder cannons then & now carries the same risks. Nobody who has ever loaded a fused round into a cannon & pulled the lanyard will tell you otherwise. Gotta admit, counting the seconds until the sharp POCK! In the sky is pretty cool.