What made Prussian shells of the Franco-Prussian War effective?

[Antediluvian Monster]

During American Civil War artillery ammunition, despite improvement in fuses, was still very Napoleonic. The guns mostly fired either solid shot or time-fused explosive shell (with or without lead balls within). There were contact fused explosive shells, at least for the rifled artillery, but they were not very effective beyond use for ranging shots. By Franco-Prussian War the Prussians were using breech-loaded rifled artillery (Krupp C/64 and C/67) and were now supposedly using contact fused shells to great effect.

What made these shells effective over the slightly earlier rounds used in ACW? Presumably they still had the same problem of tending to get buried in the ground and the filler was still the same low-explosive black powder?

 

[Avernite]

During American Civil War artillery ammunition, despite improvement in fuses, was still very Napoleonic. The guns mostly fired either solid shot or time-fused explosive shell (with or without lead balls within). There were contact fused explosive shells, at least for the rifled artillery, but they were not very effective beyond use for ranging shots. By Franco-Prussian War the Prussians were using breach-loaded rifled artillery (Krupp C/64 and C/67) and were now supposedly using contact fused shells to great effect.

What made these shells effective over the slightly earlier rounds used in ACW? Presumably they still had the same problem of tending to get buried in the ground and the filler was still the same low-explosive black powder?

Should remember that plenty of WW1/WW2 shells also got buried without exploding.
And according to wikipedia the 1860's were precisely when the British army, at least, was rapidly progressing from 'kinda working' to 'effective' percussion fuzes.

So I suspect there won't be a clear answer - in the ACW, shells were possible, but tricky to use. In the Franco-Prussian war shells were a bit more effective, even if they probably still had a horrible misfire rate, but enough so that they were workable. The French and Prussian armies probably were also more at the vanguard of military technology, so the calendar 6 years between them may represent a whole decade of development.

 

[Antediluvian Monster]

Should remember that plenty of WW1/WW2 shells also got buried without exploding.
And according to wikipedia the 1860's were precisely when the British army, at least, was rapidly progressing from 'kinda working' to 'effective' percussion fuzes.

So I suspect there won't be a clear answer - in the ACW, shells were possible, but tricky to use. In the Franco-Prussian war shells were a bit more effective, even if they probably still had a horrible misfire rate, but enough so that they were workable. The French and Prussian armies probably were also more at the vanguard of military technology, so the calendar 6 years between them may represent a whole decade of development.

What I mean by buried in the ground is that to my understanding the ACW contact shells tended to get buried partway in the ground and then explode. This reduced the explosive effect and the fragmentation effect of the black powder explosive shell was never too great to begin with (which is why people tended to use shrapnel/case anyway). This explosion (or deflagration really) was still visible, so it could be used to take range for use with the much more effective time-fused shells for a properly measured airburst.

The French La Hitte system pre-dated ACW and from what I gather the fuses, which had only two settings, were inferior to the time fuses used in ACW (e.g. Bormann fuse for spherical shells).

In practice what I'm mainly wondering:

1) If the Prussian use of contact-fused shells, and their importance, has been somewhat overstated and whether they were actually still heavily reliant on the time-fused shrapnel shells (which remained important in military thought as late as the French 1897 75mm, and by then there were high-explosive shells already). After all you often hear adage on how Krupp breech-loading guns had much greater rate of fire, but that's more than bit questionable with black powder artillery of the time which needed to be brought back to firing position, re-aimed and cleaned of residue regardless of the loading method. Perhaps this is another adage.
2) Whether ACW style artillery system of mixed smoothbores and rifles using roundshot and time-fused shells in the main was still current at time of Franco-Prussian War.

 

[Antediluvian Monster]

There was an interesting tidbit on the slightly earlier C/61 (the first Prussian breech-loader) on the German language Wikipedia. Apparently they couldn't get time fuses to work with the breech-loaders, so they simply fitted the shrapnel shells with percussion (contact) fuses. The shrapnel shell derives much of it's hitting power from the velocity of the shell, the bursting charge is mainly intended to scatter the contents. Prussians then quickly figured that percussion fused shrapnel shell is just as silly as it sounds and dropped the munition entirely for time. The German Wiki for the "4 pounder*" C/67 says that shrapnel was not yet available.

Couple observations on the Krupp C/67 compared to US 3-inch Ordnance Rifle:

Ordnance Rifle fires at higher muzzle velocity, which is not terribly surprising given the Prussian gun is an early breech-loader with bagged propellant so it's gonna leak gas.

The C/67 gun + carriage weights about as much as Ordnance Rifle gun + carriage. Granted the Prussian "4 pounder*" has slightly larger bore and fires slightly heavier shell than the US 10 pounder. And the Ordnance Rifle's carriage was bit light for it.

Overall the picture that emerges from that is that cast steel breech-loader, while undoubtedly the way forward, still remained a sidegrade over wrought iron muzzle loader at time of Franco-Prussian War.

*Presumably the Prussians mean here that "If this gun were a smoothbore of this caliber it would fire a 4 pound cannonball". Though being actually a rifle it would never fire cannonballs.

 

[L'Afrique]

Prussian effectiveness was in small arms. The french had the better arty.

 

[Antediluvian Monster]

Prussian effectiveness was in small arms. The french had the better arty.

Exactly the other way around. The relatively low powered Prussian needle gun (first introduced in 1840s) was showing it's age in comparison to the shiny new French one. The French artillery consisted largely of rifled bronze muzzle loaders (something that was briefly tried during US Civil War nearly a decade earlier and quickly abandoned as bronze rifling wore out quickly) firing time-fused shells that supposedly had only two fixed range settings while Prussians had the before mentioned cast steel breechloaders firing contact fused shells.

Though both equipment considerations were probably secondary to tactical ones, which were in Prussia's favor.

 

[L'Afrique]

Exactly the other way around. The relatively low powered Prussian needle gun (first introduced in 1840s) was showing it's age in comparison to the shiny new French one. The French artillery consisted largely of rifled bronze muzzle loaders (something that was briefly tried during US Civil War nearly a decade earlier and quickly abandoned as bronze rifling wore out quickly) firing time-fused shells that supposedly had only two fixed range settings while Prussians had the before mentioned cast steel breechloaders firing contact fused shells.

Though both equipment considerations were probably secondary to tactical ones, which were in Prussia's favor.

Yes you're correct, my brain got mixed up

 

[bz249]

Exactly the other way around. The relatively low powered Prussian needle gun (first introduced in 1840s) was showing it's age in comparison to the shiny new French one. The French artillery consisted largely of rifled bronze muzzle loaders (something that was briefly tried during US Civil War nearly a decade earlier and quickly abandoned as bronze rifling wore out quickly) firing time-fused shells that supposedly had only two fixed range settings while Prussians had the before mentioned cast steel breechloaders firing contact fused shells.

Though both equipment considerations were probably secondary to tactical ones, which were in Prussia's favor.

Or strategic... they mobilized their army faster, thus they typicaly had more men at the decisive battles.

 

[demanvanwezel]

Or strategic... they mobilized their army faster, thus they typicaly had more men at the decisive battles.

hell, at the time of sedan the french hadn't even completed mobilisation hence the trouble germany had getting the new french republic to surrender

Exactly the other way around. The relatively low powered Prussian needle gun (first introduced in 1840s) was showing it's age in comparison to the shiny new French one. The French artillery consisted largely of rifled bronze muzzle loaders (something that was briefly tried during US Civil War nearly a decade earlier and quickly abandoned as bronze rifling wore out quickly) firing time-fused shells that supposedly had only two fixed range settings while Prussians had the before mentioned cast steel breechloaders firing contact fused shells.

Though both equipment considerations were probably secondary to tactical ones, which were in Prussia's favor.

the funny thing was that during the prussian-austrian war the prussians were the one with the superior small arms as the austrians were still armed with single-shot riffles that couldn't be reloaded prone
the even funnier part is that this was a deliberate action by the austrians as they thought soldiers armed with multiple-shot guns would just shoot all their ammunition in the general direction of the enemy and then retreat

 

[Antediluvian Monster]

So apparently the French la Hitte system did have more range settings to it originally. 6 to be precise. But then they quickly dropped the projectiles to mere 2 for reason that is not explained and which also seems rather inexplicable. For comparison the before mentioned US Bormann time fuse, which had similar design in that they had metal plate covered powder train into which you'd punch a hole at a mark, was graduated by quarter seconds from 0.75 to 5.25 seconds. The time fuses used with US rifled artillery could be cut to any length, as with traditional powder train fuses.

The French were also hoping to use the ricocheting effect, but since the elongated projectiles seem to have been far less suitable to it than the old cannonballs that doesn't inspire much confidence (US Civil War rifled guns stocked exactly 0 solid shot with them since their ricocheting effect was poor). The two settings on the French fuse gave the "4 pounder" guns (which actually fired a 4 kg shell) effective range bands of 1400m-1600m and 2750m-2950m. The heavier "12 pounder" gun (which actually fired 11.45kg shell) had similar range bands. Apparently French artillery could be quite effective if the Prussians or their allies decided to park themselves into one of those bands. The French also had a shrapnel which had 4 range settings, but it was rare and vast majority of the French artillery ammunition was common shell (82%-88%).

 

[Antediluvian Monster]

It seems like at least some period observers also felt the superiority of Prussian artillery was largely down to French ammo sucking:

The German breech-loading guns were almost as superior to the French muzzle-loaders as the chassep6t was to the needle- gun. This was principally due to the very defective time fuses used by the French ; the Germans using percussion only.

The Battle of Wörth, August 6th, 1870 : George Francis Robert Henderson : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Book digitized by Google from the library of the University of Michigan and uploaded to the Internet Archive by user tpb.

archive.org

It's interesting to note that in US Civil War the qualitative superiority of Union artillery was also largely down to fuses, the Confederate industry struggling to produce reliable ones.