United States or Sint Maarten ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Being ready for sea we left the Downs, and in a few hours were off our old cruising ground to watch the terrible flotilla and the privateers, which were principally lugger-rigged and carried long guns of different calibres, with from fifty to seventy-five men. Some few had ten or fourteen guns, besides swivels.
We passed Campbell, the Medical Officer, standing outside his dug-out on the road. He was waiting for the last of the other Batteries' parties to get away. He told me afterwards that we were out only just in time. Within half an hour of our going, the Austrians fairly plastered the position with shells of all calibres. They shelled the road a little as we went along, but not too much.
With talks with experts the following was developed as to what the war showed: First That the gun is still the dominating factor in war. Second That rapid-fire guns are especially valuable, but that it is advisable to retain guns of large calibres. Third That smokeless powder is absolutely essential for modern warfare.
At daybreak the battle commenced, and, after sixteen hours of incessant fighting, a Japanese infantry force turned the left flank of the Russian line and the day was won. Over seven hundred Russian dead were buried by the Japanese, and into the latter's hands fell sixty-eight cannon of all calibres with ten machine-guns. The Japanese casualties totalled 4912.
The night sky was full of starry shell-bursts, and a dozen of our searchlights fussily got busy. Then suddenly all our artillery, as it seemed, began to go off, and for about five minutes there was a deafening burst of fire from guns of all calibres. And then all grew suddenly quiet again. Perhaps it was a raid, perhaps only the fear of one.
The traditional differences between. the methods of the different services of each ally still existed to a large extent, and they found expression in type of armament, equipment, and military standards, such as, for example, gun calibres and shell design, to which chemical warfare had to conform. No inter-allied gas mask materialised, although this would have been of inestimable advantage.
When we think of the millions of shell and of the huge quantities of explosives turned out by our own factories to fill them, and when we realise that for a large number of gun calibres the Germans used as many shell filled with gas as with explosive, some idea of the importance of gas in the recent war and of its future possibilities can be obtained.
We followed a path which took us to the rear of the report, where we stepped through undergrowth among the busy group around the breeches of some guns of one of the larger calibres. An order for some "heavy stuff" at a certain point on the map was being filled.
On the occasion of the Jameson incursion, the Transvaal had in readiness extensive parks of the most modern quick-firing Maxims and Nordenfeldts of various calibres, and breech-loading field artillery of the Krupp make. The Orange Free State hurried to their assistance with similar artillery, each burgher armed with a Martini-Henry rifle.
"Fourteen; which I consider the very best bore possible for general shooting. I think the gunsmiths are running headlong now into the opposite of their old error when they found that fifteens and fourteens outshot vastly the old small calibres fifty years since no guns were larger than eighteen, and few than twenty; they are now quite out-doing it.
Word Of The Day