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Updated: May 26, 2025
“While the Infanta Maria Teresa was on fire, and running for the beach, her crew was still working their guns, and the big Vizcaya was handily by to double the storm of projectiles she was hurling at the Iowa and Texas.
In fact, we are at all times subjected to a molecular bombardment of which we never dream; minute projectiles, indivisible points of matter, are shot out at us in the form of electrons from glowing metals, from lighted candles, and from other noiseless and unsuspected batteries at a speed of tens of thousands of miles a second, and we are none the wiser for it.
Nevertheless they were factors of that same inexplicable action for from thousands of gushing lights leaped thousands of gigantic square pillars; unimaginable projectiles hurled from the flaming mouths of earth-hidden, titanic mortars. They soared high, swerved and swooped upon the lance-throwers.
Models of cannon, bronze castings, sights covered with dents, plates battered by the shots of the Gun Club, assortments of rammers and sponges, chaplets of shells, wreaths of projectiles, garlands of howitzers in short, all the apparatus of the artillerist, enchanted the eye by this wonderful arrangement and induced a kind of belief that their real purpose was ornamental rather than deadly.
On this occasion he took Lieutenant Colcomb as observer: "At Coucy, terribly accurate cannonade: toc, toc, two projectiles in the right wing, one within a meter of me; we went on with our observations in the same place. Suddenly a formidable crash: a shell burst 8 to 10 meters under the machine. Result: three holes, one strut and one spar spoiled.
In all the ships that I have sailed, I never yet met with his equal at a cool, embellished, intrepid lie, or at the accuracy of his ball practice. Baron Munchausen would have found no mean rival in him at the former; and, were duels fought with eighteen pounders, Lord Camelford would have been remarkably polite in the company of our master of projectiles.
The Saxons had scarcely entered the enemy ranks when they celebrated their treachery by firing at us a hail of projectiles, many of which were directed to my regiment, for I lost some thirty men, among whom was Captain Bertain, an excellent officer who had his head taken off by a cannon-ball.
The impact is so terrific that what had been two feet of compressed carbon is instantly condensed into an irregular disk, one inch or an inch and a half thick. And that disk, gentlemen, is a diamond! "The violence of the operation, coupled with the intense heat, fuses everything furnace, projectiles, electric wires, fire-brick, even asbestos, into a single mass.
Through such an armor the projectiles of our time would penetrate as easily as a bullet through a pine board. It was the development of gun power and projectiles that called forth the thick armor, but it was soon found that it was impossible for the armor to keep pace with the deadliness of the guns as it was utterly impossible to carry the weight necessary to resist the force of impact.
In 1880 the English made guns weighing from 100 to 120 tons, from 18 to 20 inches bore and which fired projectiles weighing over 2,000 pounds at a velocity of almost 1,700 feet per second. At the same time the United States fashioned a monster rifle of 127 tons which had a bore of sixteen inches and fired a projectile of 2,400 pounds with a velocity of 2,300 feet per second.
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