Twittering Fuses

[Tim Birch]

I am reading Ernst Junger's "Storm of Steel" and was fascinated to read his description of the cacophony of sounds on the Western Front during a barrage. He describes the "savage pounding dance " of the explosions....."And all the time the curious, canary like twittering of dozens of fuses. With their cut-out shapes, in which the trapped air produced a flute-like trill, they drifted over the long surf of the explosions like ticking copper toy clocks or mechanical insects".

This is one aspect of the battlefield sounds I had been unaware of until I read this, and it had never occured to me that the fuses made such an audible noise.

Tim

[bcerha]

Tim,

I obviously cannot speak for world war one but up until the early 1990's we used to practice a drill called "danger close" when on exercise at our training area in Alberta, Canada. In effect we would establish our OP position in a specially strengthened and rivetted trench and with the guns firing from a position at right angles to us (to minimise probable error for line) we would effectivley "walk the rounds" back towards our own position from a distance of 2000m out until the last safe permitted correction which in my case as an FOO brought the closest round to within 17m of the front of my trench.

We took cover in the bottom of our trench after the report of "shot" from the guns and knowing the time of flight between 10 and 5 secs before it was due to land. From this experince I can tell you that the shells not only create a rushing wind sound as they come in to land but also a high pitched whistle which I can only assume was caused in the same way as above by air trapped in the recesses of the fuse where the fuse setter is placed to adjust its function. As I said this was in fuses circa 1989 when they were still manually set. Today the latest multi role fuse is a totally smooth object - set electronically by means of elctrodes and so I don't know if it whistles not least because I have not been on the receieving end of one recently!

Hope this helps

David.

[Tim Birch]

Thanks David

I had the impression of a clockwork fuse actually making a whiring sound, which might continue after a shell had landed, and before it was detonated?

Tim

[bcerha]

Tim,

The clockwork element of fuses (and the best were were not suprisingly made in Switzerland) were actually well inside the fuse body and there is no way that you would (in my experience) hear the clockwork mechanism, not least because it was usually pretty finely engineered in order to fit within the limited space.

The air turbulence around a shell as it travels would have been enough to drown it out several fold (remember even at the shortest ranges these things are travelling at about 350 - 400m a second and up to 900m a second at full range and charge).

Also the majority of fuses are set to detonate on impact. Their trajectory is calculated to ensure that they arrive at a relatively steep angle of descent thereby avoiding ricochet and hopefully (less for "blinds" or "duds" as they were known then) ensuring detonation. There is rarely a pause betwee impact and detonation - only if, in modern parlance - the fuse is set to "delay" which means it explodes 4/10th of a second after imact therefore utilising the shock wave produced by the exploding HE to travel through the earth and collapse trenches etc rather than relying on the shrapnel effect of the bursting casing or shrapnel balls to kill and main by travelling through the air throughout the danger area at very high speed.

Please bear in mind that what I state above is based on my experience of how modern shells behave - but given that our latest training ammunition the L20 155mm HE shell is based almost entirely on its French counterpart of 1915 - then I doubt that much has changed .

Hope this helps

Regards

David

[Tim Birch]

Thanks David

I think it was Junger's reference to "ticking copper toy clocks or mechanical insects" which gave me that impression!

Cheers

Tim

[johnreed]

David

First or Third?

John