Mexico weekly ledger., 1896-01-02
CARNAGE IN WAR.
Deadly Instruments OF Destruction
That May Be Used-It Will
Be Awful.

Be AWful.
Now that there Is talk of war ii ID
worth while to describe a few OF the
deadliest implements of destruction
that may be used.
The carnage of the next war must
be awful. Regiments will be wiped
out where in other times individuals
would have been killed.
The Krag-Jorgenson rifle now IN
use in the United States Army VIII
discharge forty shots a minute WITHIN
a radius of 5000 yards. Its penetrat-
ing power is six times greater than
that of the old Winchester or Spring
field. Speaking roughly, a bullet
from this rifle would penetrate the
bodies of six men at 4 distance OF
1000 to 1000 yards. 1t will also pen
citrate thirty inches of hard oak. IL
will kill two miles.
With the enormous range
of arms and smokeless powder it Will
sometimes be impossible to tell where
firing comes from. Regiments may
be moved down before they are
aware of the neighborhood of an
enemy.
While Thomas Coffey, a military
prisoner at Fort Sheridan, was at
tempting to escape, a sentinel hred at
him with the Krag- Jorgensen rifle at
a range of twenty yards. The bullet
blew off the top of his head. Had he
been at a greater distance it would
have passed through.
An ingenious man of science, Oh.
Demosthenes, of Roumania, has had
the happy idea to practice on living
horses and dead men with modern
army rifles.
Firing at a corpse with a Mannlicher
rifle at a distance of 1850 feet he pro-
duced complete perforation of the
Uranium with simultaneous rupture of
the stomach and intentines.
With a living horse the bullet pass
ed through the head and lengthwise
thu ough the backbone, grinding it to
powder.
At shorter distances a bullet strik-
ing the head, smashed it into pieces.
According to the doctor, the bullets
cause an amount of hemorrhage
which is sure to be fatal wherever the
wound is received. A soldier acct
dentally shot in the leg died, and four
quarts of blood were found in his
pleural cavity.
A Maxim rapid fire gun, weighing
only 127 pounds, has a capacity for
placing 800 bullets i'll a minute wher-
ever they will do the most harm.
The Browning rapid fire gun used
in the United States Army is capable
of firing 400 rounds in one minute and
forty seconds.
The pneumatic dynamite guns at
Sandy Hook are capable of throwing
a shell containing 500 pounds of dyna-
mite q distance of three miles.
Each gun weighs $4,000 pounds.
They are so feet long, and the bore is
| Is inches in diameter.
A shell from n of these guns
would, according to United States
military officers, destroy the largest
warship afioat. 1t would destroy
every artificial construction within a
radius of 400 feet of the explosion. A
city block would be wiped out by it.
1t is claimed for this gun that one
shell we'll placed would destroy three
men-of-war.
In testing the dynamite gun ten
dummy shots we're fred in fifteen
minutes. From the subsequent test
with the full charge of dynamite there
is every reason to believe that this
rate could be maintained with the ex-
| plosive charge.
A 1,00O-pound shell from one of the
Pinch guns at sandy Hook will PEN
citrate 49, inches of steel. Stone
| Notifications will be useless against
such weapons, for the splintering
stone will only make so many addi-
tional missiles.
A Hotchkiss quick firing gun is
made which weighs only twenty
pounds. 1t is capable of firing 600 80
calibre cartridges a minute, or at the
rate of 10000 an hour. Each one will
kill six men.
This gun is easily portable by one
man, and several can be carried by a
horse.
In France the gun has been fired
rapidly without rest for three hours.
During this test 10O, 900 cartridges
were used.
A LOO : pound projectile fired
from a thirteen-inch gun, the largest
in use in the United States Navy, has
passed through fourteen inches oil
Harveyized nickel steel plate, five
inches of oak, two plates of half-inch
steel and then gone a mile or two be-
yond. The steel used in this case is
the most successful armor yet made,
The shell weighed 1,1O0 pounds and
was propelled by 1874 pounds OF
powder. 1t moved at a velocity oil
1900 feet per second and exerted q
force of $4,000 foot tons. 1t made g
clean, round hole.
One of the newest engines of de-
struction is known as the Maxim
Schuppaus gun. The invention lies in
the powder which is to be used.