This article confuses several different types of anti personnel ammunition originally called shrapnel after its inventor grape and cannister Shrapnel and cannister seem to have been mainly land service ammunition while grape seems to have been mainly naval Shrapnel was invented circa 1800 but later that century it was used with more modern shaped shells A shrapnel shell is like a flying shotgun the bullets are ejected while the shell is in flight by a small charge and they fly forwards in a cone The charge is initiated by a time fuze igniferious at this period in the shell s nose which is blown clear as the bullets leave Bullet sizes varied but by WW1 they were usually lead antimony alloy with a few hundred bullets per pound weight Cannister in contrast is bullets in a can and the can bursts as it is fired This means cannister is short range While shrapnel was little used in WW2 cannister was developed for various weapons including tanks Australian Centurion tanks in Vietnam had 20 pdr cannister Cannister was always carried by British artillery in its 19th century campaigns and quite widely used Sometimes it had to be locally assembled from old bully beef cans Shrapnel remained their primary anti personnel weapon into WW1 and always the ammunition of choice against troops in the open In 1945 they successfully trialled 95 mm shrapnel fuzed VT Beehive correctly called Splintex was developed by the US in the Vietnam period It is a shrapnel type shell it is fitted with a mechanical time fuze and the flechettes are fired forward from the shell in flight It was available for 105 mm arty 106 mm RCL 90 mm RCL and probably others US policy was for splintex to be only fired at direct fire ie for arty it was local defence only presumably for fear of blinds being re cycled by the enemy into IEDs However the USSR appears to have subsequently developed 122 mm and 152 mm shells of this type and used them for indirect fire