The herald., 1893-06-18
NOTHING REsIsrs IT.
A She'll That Pierces the Most Power
fu1 Armor.

A She'll That Pierces the Most Power
ful Armor.
From the New York World, June 1O.l
At the government proving grounds
at Sandy Hook the army engineers yes
terday tried the latest nut-cracker. 1t
will be known to fame as the Wheeler
Sterling deck-piercing shell, and its
purpose is to bore hole through the
sheet-armored deck of war ship and
still preserve its shape, in order that
when the 30 pounds OF gun cotton or
emmensite, or other high explosive,
with which it ia loaded goes off, it may
be behind the protecting shell, where it
can work havoc to the enemy. To make
projectile strong enough to penetrate
the armor yet with capacity sufficient to
carry destructive charge of explosive
has been difficult problem. Numerous
inventions, both of foreign and domestic
make, have been tried, but not until
yesterday was satisfactory test made.
After a preliminary test with an or
dinary shell for velocity, the big gun
was loaded for bear. Sixty pounda of
slow-burning brown powder was put be-
hind the 700-pound mass of conical
metal, and the latter sent crashing
against the left.hand target on the big
steel plate. 1t crushed off the end OF
the plate as il it we're made of sugar
candy, and ripped the heavy joists be-
hind it into splintered masses, which it
sent flying in every direction. One 200
pound fragment of steel was sent flying
over the heads of the gunners for 800
yards.
Another smaller fragment was picked
up near q workshop 200 yards away. A
shovel brigade was set to work on the
piled up mountain of sand, but though
they uncovered some fragments from
the rear end OF the projectile they could
not find the business end, representing
two-thirds of the entire shell, and
which was the portion on which the
test depended. They will dig deeper
today.
The second shot was more successful.
The great cone struck the armor head
on, cracking off another section perpen-
dicularly and boring a ragged hole
through steel and wood and esnd as
easily as if it was an egg shell. One of
the joistS detected it downward, and it
was not until after nearly an hour OF
hard digging in the sand that il was un-
covered, point downward, at the bottom
of the 20-foot grave which it had dug for
itself.
"The shell is intact" said Captain
Heath, the commandent at the Hook.
sit has done its work WE'LL" And the
happy inventor to whoee company sue
cess means fortune threw up his hat
and shouted for joy.
-Four patches OF shells, Ga to the batch,
have been ordered by the ordnance de-
partment, which has the right to test
two shells from each batch. 1t is
possible that another shell may be
fired in consequence of the breaking
of the back portion of the one
first fired, but the ordinance officers say
that If two thirds of the penetrating end
be found to be intact it will probably be
accepted, as that ia the point of interest,
an0 the other end can easily be made
STRONGER by allowing more metal and less
pace for loading
The new projectile, Mr.. Wheeler said,
after the test, will penetrate the most
modern decks in use in any foreign
navy. The only decks which would
prove invulnerable to them would be the
Harveyized decka of nickel steel used on
the New York and few other American
men-of-wsr. In other words, America
leads the world, both in armored and
deck piercing projectilee. The cost of
thess'little playthings is about S239 each,
60 that the order for 256 OF them means
a contract for more than $6l, 900. Rus
sia is aluo in the. field with an order of
large Dimensions.