The age-herald., 1898-07-02
THE FORGE OF
 A PROJECTILE

The correspondent of the London Tele- graph at Guantanamo describes the ef- feet of the projectile that struck the Texas while she was silencing shore batteries dur ing the army landing al Baiquirl. The Lon- don correspondent said:
 "The projectie was a steel six-inch shell, fired, it is believed from one of the nigh power ships guns that have been mounted on the Qualifications since Admiral Ger vera's fleet was -blocl1aded in Santiago har- bor. It struck the Texas on the port bow, between the gun deck and the spar deck, bursting in the forward compartment, either side. The crews of all these guns were at quarters. and there were besides number of other men in the com- partment at the time.
 "It is miraculous that only one man was killed and eight wounded. The part of the ship hit is outside the central citadel and above the protected deck The sides of the ship at the point of impact consisted of a steel plate one and quarter inches thick The shell pierced this Ike so much paper, where there arc six e-pounder guns, three hit a metal stanchion amidships and ex- ploded about seven feet from the plating the sgarboard side. A noteworthy fea- tGre of the steel plating is that it afforded no splinters debris to carry inboard. It was torn into ribbons and folded back in a way that gave the impression that the tough metal had been melted by the im- pact and passage of the projectile. The shock however, wasn't sufficient to explode the shell, and had it missed the stanchiou 1t would have passed through the starboard side and possibly exploded outside the ship Unfortunately the stanchion was directly in the path of the shell, and the heavy metal column offered enough resistance to ex- plode it. The effect was terrific Although the shell only a small one. six inches in diameter, and therefore, not weighing more than about seventy pounds, it prac- tically wrecked the big compartment in which it burst. while the smoke from it forced itself down the ammunition hoists and into the forward compartments of the ship so that for a few minutes the crew were almost suffocated. The stanchion was shivered into atoms for two feet of it's length, and the fragments of the burst shell. flying forward against the starboard side. bulged the stout steel plates outward to a depth of three inches. Just at this point one of the big double -headed angle irons of the ships frame was situated. This great rib of steel, nearly twice as thick and heavy as a railroad rail, was cut through in two pieces of it had been made of cheese. and nearly two feet of it was carried away bodily in minute pieces.
 ''The base of the shell ploughed a fur row down the steel deck just as a plough would cut through the soft soil of a fallow field. It hit and broke another rib of the ship, and, breaking itself in two. both pieces lodged in a cable reel standing close to the starboard side. The core of this reel was prism of oak over two feet in cir, conference, and there was wound on it al the time a coil of hemp hawser that made a cylinder about four feet in diameter The hemp rope was cut through to the wood and the stout oaken prism was shivered to splinters This one fact alone would be sufficient to give an idea of the appalling energy of modern projeeties. Showers of steel splinters, resulting from the exploded shell itself and the torn stanchion and angie irons, swept along the starboard side for about thirty feet, cutting off heads Of bolts, breaking gun fittings and stripping off the paint as if score of men had worked for hours with steel chisels.
 .'Every man in its path was wounded. One gunner was hit with no fewer than fifteen pieces of steel, each about the size of a hazel nut At the moment the shell exploded one man was standing rlgnt III fits path He was literally blown to frag- ments. He was talking to comrade, ana, strange as it may seem, the latter although less than arms length away, was unhurt, save being knocked down by the shock or the explosion. Others, of the men, thirty feet from the fatal shot, had dozen pieces of the shell plunged into their bodies. A remarkable feature of the explosion was she smallness of the pieces into which the shell burst It shivered into fragments weighing about an ounce. The only piece or any size picked up was rather less than half the base just enough to enable it to be ascertained that it had been six-inch shell, fired from a high-power breech-ioad- ing. and exploded by percussion fuse fixed in the nose.''