The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-03-24

nel, but also the brass containers be- hind in which the powder is stored. Women aid in making the primers and they measure out the powder of the shrapnel l saw some who were weighing smokeless powder ana put ting 1t into the brass jackets. Thls work Is dangerous. Each girl has her own little room on the ground tioof with safety doors so hung that they will burst open at touch from lhe inside and allow her to fly into the open air. This is so of all the rooms where the powder and deadly explo- sives are handled, and no ono is ai- lowed to go in that part of the worhs who carries matches or anything tnal misht create an explosion. The sep1- rate rooms are used so that if an ex- plcsion occurs in one room tho ire 1 may not get to the others beIore ths l inmates have had a chance to eScaps 1 was interested in the snaEe4esF 1 powder which these girls were hai.- | ding. It is nothing like the old fash 1 toned black powder, sold all over ths 1 country. It's color is light proWn. ] and it looks much like tiny bits o1 1 brown spaghetti. rather than the oiacS sand you put in shotgun. There i5 nothing very dangerous about It IT II 1 is properly handled. You can light T | l burn up slowly, not going off In flash l like black powder. It is different, howl l over, when 1t is inside the Shell and I set off by the fuse. It then creates a force equal to 10000 pounds per
 square inch, and 1t is this mighty force that sends the shells on their roads l of death toward the enemy.
 But let me tell you what shrapnei IS.
 It might be called the bullet of the most common field gun now used in our great
 war in Europe. It is employed by all
 of the armies, and since the war began IL
 has been dropping balls of lead by the
 millions in an almost continuous ram
 over the war zone of Belgium anu
 | France. The German field artillery reg
 ulations say that it is by far the best
 projectile against all human targets,
 which are not under cover, and the
 French have used it with terrible ef-
 feet It is the French type Of shrapnel, the .75-millimeter, which is most largely
 used by the allies, and the average
 shrapnel used today by all of the armies is of about the same diameter, namely about three inches.
 The completed shrapnel ready for put
 ting into the gun. is little less than three feet in length and about as big around as mans arm at the biceps It consists of steel shell, which is per haps 15 inches long, filled with lead but let's half an inch thick. There is a hole running through the center of the shell from front to back which Is fiiec with powder, and this connects with a little chamber of black powder in the end of the she'll This lower end of the 1 shell is fitted into long brass contain er which is filled with smokeless pow der, the explosive which sends the shel forth from the gup. The front end oi nose of the shell is rounded into z T. ctrtc <>f 1atoc n1r containing the fuse This is an intri cate piece of mechanism which may be set by the gunner so that it will ignit' the powder within the shell at just th | right time after firing and that i'll sucl a way that the cap vii blow off ant
 the~ hundreds of bullets within pou | forth in a shower on the enemy
 II The steel shell is the projectile. l \ does not burst during the firing. Tn shell might be compared to a gun sho | from a gun, it's charge in the shaps 0 \ the bullets within going off only whe1 it reaches the enemy. The range of II three-inch chrapnel shell Is more thai | three miles. It goes out of the fiel l gun at speed of 1900 feet per second II and flies from 21 to 9 seconds before 1 | drops to the earth. When still flyin Il the fuse bursts forth, and the bullet Y pour out in a great cone covering II space about as large as city block an Il as wide as the street running throug H it. The effect is to make of singl II projectie a flying mine, which shower
 something like 300 bullets, any one c II which can put man out of the fign II and which covers a radius which is Il or more feet in width and 750 feet loIa Il This is supposing that the fuse be SC |! to go off within one or two mNes c Il the end of the gun from which 1t i II fired.
 During its retreat from Begium