How the heck did they...............

[Dusty Miller]

How the heck did they get the cannon ball to explode when the ball hit the ground?  Did they have a fuse that got lit when the cannon was set off?  Inquiring minds want to know!!

[Cat Whisperer]

It's a game.

The fuse of the cannonball (or mortar round) can be ignited at the point of firing - it will burn for a set amount of TIME.  So the game is to know and plan for a known time-of-flight.

Exploding 20 meters above the deck gives a shot-gun like effect.  Exploding after impact is useful for busting bunkers.

Back then?  Hmmm. 

Now a days we have charts and gizmos to calculate trajectory and times of flight.  We have point contact fuses and delayed action and VT (variable time) fuses that are radio controlled.  It took more than a few years and wars to get to today's sophistication.

[Will Bison]

Been there, done that. The oldest type fuze was simply a time fuse in a wood plug. By the time of the US Civil War more sophisticated fuzes appeared.

[GGaskill]

By the time of the US Civil War more sophisticated fuzes appeared.

but they still depended on the burning of a compressed gunpowder train for a predetermined length of time.  One of the difficulties of that style of fuse was the powder was affected by humidity and became unreliable regarding burning time the longer they were in the field.

[Will Bison]

http://www.civilwarartillery.com/  I put this link in another thread, it may be of interest to some of you.

Bill

[A.Roads]

"Hollywood" certainly gives the impression that whatever is fired from an early cannon explodes instantly upon contact with the ground or target. Spherical projectiles relied simply upon a time fuze and so in reality it was not instantaneous, except when perfectly timed to do so. Solid targets, when struck by shell, generally did cause an instant explosion by the friction caused on impact. It was not always desirable to have a shell burst upon impact, sometimes it was intended to spray shrapnel onto a target, sometimes to bury the shell into earth or structure to reduce a defensive work or building etc. 

Elongated projectiles employed fuzes of 3 general functions, time, percussion & concussion - usually combining two functions so that the shell burst either at a predesignated time or on impact, whichever occurred first.  However this caused problems when firing at a target screened by trees and when firing over water. Impact on foliage or glancing along water set them off. Hence there was a bewildering and almost ever changing variety of different types of fuzes for RBL & RML guns.   Adrian.

[Cat Whisperer]

Shooting at naval targets either of two effects are desireable.  The shrapnel for human targets or a delay to ensure the projo is inside.  For the former a nose fuse works well and for the latter, a base fuse is used.  Again, development was one step at at time - to solve one challange at a time.  Not sure of the dates of the developments.

[Rickk]

don't foget that, while the timing was crude, the velocities were slow as well, so the available precision wan't all that far out of whack for the velocities.

[Artilleryman]

I read an article somewhere that the failure rate of fuses for the Federals was around 40%, and it was so bad for the Confederates they investigated for sabotage.  I don't remember if the article defined failure.  I would think that besides not exploding that it would include exploding too soon, or too late.  The latter two could be due to errors on the cannoneers' part, such as not cutting or setting the fuses properly or not estimating distances accurately.

Time fuses for rifled projectiles were not reliable because in order for the shell to take the rifling the projectile sealed up the bore and did not allow the flames to get by it and light the fuse. 

[A.Roads]

"Time fuses for rifled projectiles were not reliable because in order for the shell to take the rifling the projectile sealed up the bore and did not allow the flames to get by it and light the fuse. "

The flash of the discharge enveloped the projectile & ignited wooden time fuzes, the problem mentioned above arose mainly with the introduction of breech loading rifled systems, such as Armstrongs, which employed a lead coating on the projectile for it to grip the rifling, virtually eliminating its windage. Muzzle loading rifled guns, which employed a mechanical fit to the rifling grooves, such as the Woolwich system, didn't have the problem to such a degree. Though by the time the RML had superseded the RBL, time fuzes were very advanced & were ignited internally via percussion set off by the shock of discharge.
Adrian

[Artilleryman]

There were a number of muzzle loading rounds that sealed the bore such as the Parrott, Hotchkiss, James, and Schenkl rounds.  Since the most numerous rifled field pieces (Parrott, Ordnance Rifle, & James Rifle) used these rounds they had a problem with time fuses.  The Hotchkiss round was modified with flame grooves to try and solve this problem. 

[A.Roads]

Thanks for adding that, I should have clarified that I was referring to British ordnance, I'm not very familiar with the fascinating variety that were employed in the ACW. Were any time fuzes developed during that conflict, by either side, that ignited internally from the shock of discharge along similar lines to the Brits? Adrian. 

[Artilleryman]

The Sawyer Combination Fuse, McEvoy Fuse Igniter, Boxer Time Fuse, and Absterdam Time Fuse Adapter all used the concussion from firing to ignite time fuses.  The Sawyer was the best apparently with an 85% success rate. 

There were other fuses that used concussion to arm the impact (percussion) fuse, and there were some combination fuses that would explode on impact if the time fuse didn't work.  There were adapters that would help channel the flame from ignition to the time fuse.