...Railway artillery - Personal Page of GENE SLOVER

745
of range. The gun designed by one of our allies uses a ·projectile
weighing 240 pounds and a powder charge of 350 pounds. One of
the pieces of powder examined. was about 2.5 feet in length and
roughly elliptical in cross section, the axes being about 1 inch and
one-half inch, respectively. It is interesting to note in this case
that the powder charge has a weight about 50 per cent greater than
that of the projectile. If the weight of the charge were increased,
calculations indicate that most of the energy of the gas would be
absorbed in the work of accelerating the charge rather than in
accelerating the projectile and no greater muzzle velocity would be
obtained.
739. One o(the vital requirements made of the powder'is that it
burns at a rate sufficiently slow to avoid excessive pressures and to
give a uniform. pressure through a large portion of the period of the
travel of the projectile in the bore of the gun. The powder made
by one of our allies for their long-range gun is in flat strips resembling
cardboard. These strips are 3-ply, the various sections burning at
different rates. The large sticks of powder mentioned above for the
gun of the other of our allies is special and is expected to live up to
the characteristics just noted.
Digitized by Coogle