Armstrong gun at Fort Rinella, Malta.

Shot from the base of the Armstrong gun at Fort Rinella.

Breech-loading 110lb Armstrong gun on HMS Warrior

Armstrong cannon at the Chulachomklao fort, Samut Prakan, Thailand

The Armstrong Gun is a type of large rifled gun first manufactured in England in 1855. It was designed by Sir William Armstrong and manufactured by the Elswick Ordnance Company and the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich. Image File history File links Picture of the Armstrong Gun in Fort Rinella. ... Image File history File links Picture of the Armstrong Gun in Fort Rinella. ... Fort Rinella is a Victorian fortification on the island of Malta. ... Fort Rinella is a Victorian fortification on the island of Malta. ... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 450 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (960 × 1280 pixel, file size: 2. ... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 450 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (960 × 1280 pixel, file size: 2. ... HMS Warrior was the first iron-hulled, armour-plated warship, built for the Royal Navy in response to the first ironclad warship, the French La Gloire, launched only a year earlier. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1700x1100, 183 KB) Armstrong cannon in Chulachomklao fort, Samut Prakan, Thailand. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1700x1100, 183 KB) Armstrong cannon in Chulachomklao fort, Samut Prakan, Thailand. ... Samut Prakan (Thai  ) is one of the central provinces (changwat) of Thailand. ... This article is about the video game. ... For other uses, see England (disambiguation). ... Block quote Sir William George Armstrong William George Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong (November 26, 1810 – December 27, 1900) was an English industrialist, the effective founder of the Armstrong Whitworth manufacturing empire. ... Sir W G Armstrong Whitworth & Co Ltd was a major British manufacturing company of the early years of the 20th century. ... The Royal Arsenal, originally known as the Woolwich Arsenal, carried out armaments manufacture, ammunition proofing and explosives research. ... , Woolwich town hall dates from when this was a borough in its own right. ...

History

In 1854 Armstrong approached the Secretary of State for War, proposing that he construct a rifled breech-loading 3-pounder gun for trial. Later increased in bore to 5-pounder, the design performed successfully with respect to both range and accuracy. Over the next three years he developed his system of construction and adapted it to guns of heavier calibre. The secretary of war in cabinet position was Henry Knox. ...

Armstrong's system was adopted in 1858, initially for "special service in the field" and initially he only produced smaller artillery pieces, 6-pounder (2.5 inches (64 mm)) mountain or light field guns, 9-pounder (3 inches (76 mm)) guns for horse artillery, and 12-pounder (3 inches (76 mm)) field guns.

Armstrong did not consider his system suited to heavier guns but higher authorities had him develop a 20-pounder (3.75 inches (95 mm)) field gun, a 40-pounder (3.75 inches (95 mm)) siege gun, and a 110-pounder ((7 inches (180 mm))) heavy gun. The Royal Navy used all these guns and all except the 20-pounder saw service in New Zealand. This article is about the navy of the United Kingdom. ...

Armstrong system

Armstrong's guns were constructed of wrought iron and used a "built-up" construction, comprising a tube holding the bore on to which were shrunk smaller tubes, a breech, and a trunnion ring. The guns' rifling was on the "polygroove" system; the bore of the gun had 38 grooves along its length with a twist of one turn per 38 calibres. The cast iron shells were similar in shape to a Minié ball and were coated in lead. This permitted the grooves to bite into the projectiles and impart the required spin. A wrought iron railing in Troy, New York. ... The trunnions are the protrusions from the side of the barrel that rest on the carriage A trunnion is a cylindrical protrusion used as a mounting point. ... Cast iron usually refers to grey cast iron, but can mean any of a group of iron-based alloys containing more than 2% carbon (alloys with less carbon are carbon steel by definition). ... 1855 minie ball design from Harpers Ferry, West Virginia The Minié ball (or minie ball) is a type of muzzle-loading rifle bullet named after co-developer, Claude-Étienne Minié. It came to prominence in the Crimean War and American Civil War. ...

An innovative feature which is more usually associated with 20th-century guns was what Armstrong called its "grip", which was essentially a squeeze bore; the last 6 inches of the bore at the muzzle end was of slightly smaller diameter, which centered the shell before it left the barrel and at the same time slightly swagged down its lead coating, reducing its diameter and slightly improving its ballistic qualities.

The breech loaders used a vertical sliding block, which had a conical copper-ringed plug which sealed the firing chamber, to close the breech. To hold both block and plug tightly in place the guns used a breech screw.

Armstrong guns in action

The British used Armstrong guns extensively to great effect in the Second Opium War. As reported by the translator Robert Swinhoe, after the British attack on the Chinese fort at Pehtang: Combatants Qing China United Kingdom French Empire Commanders Unknown Michael Seymour James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin Jean-Baptiste Louis Gros The Second Opium War or Arrow War was a war of the United Kingdom and France against the Qing Dynasty of China from 1856 to 1860. ...

Numbers of dead Chinese lay about the guns, some most fearfully lacerated. The wall afforded very little protection to the Tartar gunners, and it was astonishing how they managed to stand so long against the destructive fire that our Armstrongs poured on them; but I observed, in more instances than one, that the unfortunate creatures had been tied to the guns by the legs."^[1]

Return to muzzle-loading guns

In 1863 an Ordnance Select Committee met to consider the merits of muzzle-loading and breech-loading guns. In 1864, even before they had concluded their investigations, the Government stopped the manufacture of Armstrong breech-loaders. When the Committee finally reported, in August 1865, they announced that: Ammunition, often referred to as ammo, is a generic term meaning (the assembly of) a projectile and its propellant. ... A Select Committee is a committee made up of a small number of parliamentary members appointed to deal with particular areas or issues originating in the Westminster System of parliamentary democracy. ...

The many-grooved system of rifling with its lead-coated projectiles and complicated breech-loading arrangements is far inferior for the general purpose of war to the muzzle-loading system and has the disadvantage of being more expensive in both original cost and ammunition. Muzzle-loading guns are far superior to breech-loaders in simplicity of construction and efficiency in this respect for active service; they can be loaded and worked with perfect ease and abundant rapidity.

However, their report did admit that Armstrongs' guns, while more expensive, were undoubtedly safer in that while it was not uncommon for cast iron muzzle-loaders to burst (see below), not one Armstong gun had ever done so. (Furthermore, gunners could clear a hangfire from the breech; when the 100-tun gun (see below) at Napier of Magdala Battery hung fire, a gunner had to be lowered head-first down the bore to attach an extractor to the shell.)

Despite a further report which remarked on the advantages of breech-loaders, cost dominated the proceedings and the Committee finally announced that "The balance of advantages is in favour of muzzle-loading field guns" and in 1870 Britain reverted from breech-loading ordnance to muzzle-loading.^[2]

To allow rifling to be used with muzzle-loaders, Armstrong proposed in 1866 a new system whereby the shells had studs on the outside, which aligned with grooves in the barrel of the cannon.

100-ton guns

In 1876 Armstrongs offered the British Admiralty a 100.2-ton gun with a bore of 450mm or 17.76in. The Admiralty rejected the design so instead Armstrongs offered manufacturing rights to Italy. The Italians constructed several of the guns and fitted four of them in each of the new battleships Duilio and Dandalo. The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. ... The RN Enrico Dandolo was an ironclad battleship built in Italy for the Regia Marina in the 1870s. ...

The British government, realizing that these Italian warships with their 22 inches (560 mm) of armor would be impervious to Malta's defensive weapons, hastily commissioned guns of even greater caliber of 160-tons and then 220-tons. When it became apparent that these specifications were beyond the capabilities of contemporary manufacturing technology, the British instead ordered four of the 100-ton guns for service at Gibraltar and Malta.

In Gibraltar, they installed one at Victoria Battery and one at Napier of Magdala Battery. At Valetta in Malta, they installed one at Sliema (Fort Cambridge) to the north of the harbor and one at Kalkara (Fort Rinella) to the east of the harbor. To house the Maltese guns the British used purpose-built forts that each cost £18,890 to construct. St Johns Co-Cathedral Valletta, population 7048 (official estimate for 2000), is the capital of Malta. ... Water front of Sliema, with the Portomaso tower in the background Sliema (or Tas-Sliema) is a town located on the northeast coast of Malta. ... Kalkara is a small town in Malta, with a current population of 3000. ... Fort Rinella is a Victorian fortification on the island of Malta. ...

While they had ordered their guns first, the Italians did not receive their guns until after the British Navy had installed theirs. One of the guns on the "Duilio' burst at Spezia in 1880, as did the gun at Victoria Battery. Two of the British guns survive to the present, the one at Napier of Magdala Battery and the one at Fort Rinella. Map of Italy showing La Spezia in the northwest La Spezia is a city in the Liguria region of northern Italy, at the head of La Spezia Gulf, and capital city of the province of La Spezia. ... Fort Rinella is a Victorian fortification on the island of Malta. ...

The 100-ton guns were the largest muzzle loading guns ever built. Not long after their manufacture and installation engineers designed new breech loading systems that made the muzzle loaders obsolete.

Description

Each gun weighed 100.2 long tons (101.8 MT), had a barrel 30 feet 3 inches (9.2 m) long and a bore of 17.72 inches (450 mm). The bulk of the bore, 30 feet 3 inches (9.2 m), was rifled, greatly increasing the accuracy of the gun relative to smoothbores. A powder charge of 450 pounds (204.117 kg) of prism black powder could propel a 450 pounds (204.117 kg) shell up to 8 miles (13 km). The muzzle velocity was 1,540 feet (469.392 m) per second (approx. 1,200 miles per hour (1,900 km/h)), and the shell could penetrate 24.9 inches (630 mm) of iron. Even so, the Italian government conducted tests in 1876 using its own 100-ton guns that proved that the 22 inch armor of its battleships would be able to withstand the guns. Black powder was the original gunpowder and practically the only known propellant and explosive until the middle of the 19th century. ...

At Fort Rinella the battery had a crew consisting of a battery commander and a master gunner, with nine gunners. Twelve men dealt with the ammunition, three manned the rangefinder, while there were also a trumpeter, a storeman, a lampman and a fatigue^{[disambiguation needed]} man. A telephonist maintained communications with the other battery at Fort Cambridge and a control station at Fort St. Elmo. If the telephone line was damaged, there was a backup semaphore and heliograph. It was intended that one gun should fire while the other was reloading, with a rate of fire of one round every four minutes; an attempt was made at Gibraltar to increase the rate of fire, which caused one of the guns to split its barrel.^[3] A rangefinder is an optical device that allows distance to be estimated or measured using triangulation, laser, radar, or other method. ... US Army soldiers wearing the new Army Combat Uniform, Desert Camouflage Uniform, and a World War II-era uniform (L to R) Battledress is a general term for the military uniform worn into combat, as opposed to display dress and formal uniforms worn at parades and functions. ... Re-enactment of 16th century military drills conducted by the Knights. ... Signaling with heliograph, 1910 A heliograph uses a mirror to reflect sunlight to a distant observer. ...

To enable the crew to load and traverse the massive gun, each gun had a steam engine that fed high-pressure steam to a hydraulic accumulator. It took 3 hours to generate the required head of steam from a cold start. // The term steam engine may also refer to an entire railroad steam locomotive. ...

See also

• 100-pound breech-loaded naval cannon
• Artillery
• Cannon
• Rifled breech loader

For other uses, see Artillery (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Cannon (disambiguation). ... Armstrong cannon at the Chulachomklao fort, Samut Prakan, Thailand A Rifled Breech Loader (RBL) is a large artillery piece which unlike the cannon and Rifled Muzzle Loader (RML) which preceded it, has rifling in the barrel and is loaded from the breech at the rear of the gun. ...

Notes

2008 (MMVIII) is the current year, a leap year that started on Tuesday of the Anno Domini (or common era), in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 37th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ...

Further reading

• Jack Beeching, The Chinese Opium Wars (1975), ISBN 0-15-617094-9
• Erik Ringmar, Fury of the Europeans: Liberal Barbarism and the Destruction of the Emperor's Summer Palace

External links