stove-pipe-like

Updated: May 14, 2025

At the same time another innovation was introduced in the shape of the Stokes light trench mortar a stove-pipe-like gun firing a cylindrical shell some 400 yards at the rate of 8 in the air at once. It was simply necessary to drop the shell into the gun, at the bottom of which was a striker, and the rest was automatic and almost noiseless, the shock of discharge being rather like a polite cough.

John David Hills - The Fifth Leicestershire: A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment,: T.F., During The War, 1914-1919.