The British army used heavy artillery to kill thousands of Londoners in the early 1940s

[T. A. Gardner]

I'd agree with Rich--Horse pucky.

If the shells went off (90%+), they produced fragments weighing anywhere from several ounces to tiny fractions of an ounce. These would return to earth at low velocities dictated by gravity versus their air resistance. The vast majority were non-lethal as a result. Sure, one of the few from a shell weighing somewhere close to a pound could seriously injure or kill you, but those made up a tiny fraction of the total fragments falling.

If the shell failed to detonate, and it returned to earth intact, it was unlikely to go off on impact, since it didn't go off earlier, or so one would think. So, unless you were so unlucky as to be standing right where it landed, you didn't get hit.

More on Mythbusters shooting bullets in the air
https://www.wired.com/2009/10/more-on-m ... aight%20up.

[Hop]

The UK National Archives has a document titled Air Raids On London, September-November 1940, produced by the Research and Experiments Department of the Ministry of Home Security, presented to the war cabinet 5 May 1941. Table 4 analyses casualties by where and how they occured.

Dwelling houses and other buildings
2,671 "cards", 777 killed
Of which AA Barrage 13 cards, 3 killed

Street or open
899 cards, 90 killed
Of which AA Barrage 77 cards, 2 killed

Anderson shelters
443 cards, 220 killed
Of which AA barrage 1 card, 3 killed

Other shelters
459 cards, 233 killed
Of which AA barrage 2 cards, 0 killed

Total 1,320 killed, 8 by AA barrage, 0.6% of total sample

[wm]

Well, the coup de grâce to the story has been delivered.

[Stiltzkin]

Controversy sells better, and the best propaganda is always based on half-truths.

[Carl Schwamberger]

So it took a physicist designing a new accelerometer to alert engineers testing fuzes on proving ground ranges that their fuzes were not going BANG? Good to know.

In reality, fuzes were tested regularly for functionality and reliability. For example, APG Firing Record No. 6693 tested powder-train time fuzes fired from the 3" AA Gun M1917. In 33 rounds fired there were two failures (94%) and time variability averaged about 0.79 seconds from the setting. The major reason for the development of the VT fuze was the lack of timing precision in mechanical and powder-train time fuzes rather than because they did not explode.

Aside from the ordnance people organizing tests the performance of ammunition used in trading is tracked. We observed all training ammunition fired, kept records, and reported any failures. Periodically the Range Control, the administrative group that ran the firing ranges swept the impact areas for undetonated ammunition and sent reports on what was found to the ordnance people.

[Richard Anderson]

Aside from the ordnance people organizing tests the performance of ammunition used in trading is tracked. We observed all training ammunition fired, kept records, and reported any failures. Periodically the Range Control, the administrative group that ran the firing ranges swept the impact areas for undetonated ammunition and sent reports on what was found to the ordnance people.

Yeah, it always amuses me when people denigrate the basic intelligence of the military, especially field grade and general officers. Most of them spend much of their career in education, from specialty schools related to their branch to graduate, post-graduate, and doctoral degree-granting institutions. Ditto for the senior enlisted ranks. Thus the idea that it required a physicist to teach Ordnance officers how to test fuzes is simply breathtakingly stupid. While there were few actual physicists in the Ordnance Department, there was a wealth of practical engineers. One of the more interesting U.S. Army Ordnance officers I ran into while writing For Purpose of Service test - Stackpole has finally committed to publishing it BTW - was Lieutenant Colonel Hermann Heinrich Zornig, who established the Research Division, Aberdeen Proving Ground in 1935, which eventually became the Ballistics Research Lab.

Hermann Zornig was born in Newall, Iowa on 19 January 1888. He graduated the Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts in 1909 with a degree in electrical engineering and was commissioned as a 2d Lieutenant in the Coast Artillery on 4 October 1910. On 20 June 1916, Zornig was assigned to the Ordnance Department and graduated from the Ordnance School of Technology in 1917. He transferred officially to the Ordnance Department on 4 September 1920 with the rank of major and was assigned to the Watertown Arsenal. He completed a master of science degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1923 while at Watertown and then was assigned to the Picatinny Arsenal. Major Zornig served as assistant attaché in Berlin from 1927 until fall 1930 and while there undertook studies at his own expense the Technische Hochschule, Charlottenberg under the famous ballistician Carl J. Cranz (1858-1945). Zornig was promoted to colonel on 1 November 1939 and then in May 1940 was sent back to Berlin on temporary duty, studying the German armaments industry, but returned after just three months, frustrated with his inability to get past German security restrictions. Colonel Zornig served as the head of the BRL until June 1941 when appointed Assistant Commander, Watertown Arsenal, in charge of the Research Laboratory conducting metallurgical studies. He held that post until fall 1944, when he was sent on temporary duty to the ETO as the head of the Ordnance Section of the Combined Intelligence Objectives Sub-committee. In December 1944 he was transferred to the ETOUSA G-2 and organized what came to be known as the “Zornig Mission”, exploiting German ordnance research, until the end of the war. He retired for disability in 1946. Colonel Zornig died in 1973.

[Clive Mortimore]

I have had several runnings with this so called historian Simon Webb. He use to make a living by writing Cowboy fiction, he now pontificates on YouTube. https://www.simon-webb.com/

I did try to point out to him about mechanical time fuses would not go bang on impact. He said I was wrong, even after I as a REME gun fitter I did learn how different types of high explosive shells were armed in case I was called to sort out a misfire. He then tried to prove his lies by sending me some paragraphs reportedly from newspapers of the time. Including one shell that went down the chimney of a village hall where a wedding reception was taking place killing most the people.

He is a very strange person with strange ideas. What makes me laugh about him is he is quite anti transgender but calls himself Harriet Cade when pretending to be a female author. https://www.waterstones.com/book/teache ... 0719815454

I have challenged Pen and Sword over this title but they will not withdraw it. In fact their first e-mail reply was a reduced price if I was to buy the book.

[Carl Schwamberger]

...

That doesn't make much sense either. Proximity or "VT" fuses would only function if the shell passed (very) close to an aircraft, which in the large majority of cases would not happen, so a time fuse (or self-destruct fuse) would still be needed to prevent the unexploded shell falling back to earth.

Depends on the specific model of the VT fuze. Some had a time setting which prevented premature detonation from rain, passing to close to trees or buildings. That time setting also had a dual function detonating the projectile X seconds later. The general idea was; if the proximity function did not occur, the projectile still detonated in the general vicinity of the target as a air burst. There was also a point detonating function for where neither of the air burst functions occurred. That later was for our howitzer ammunition/fuzes. I can say I never participated in a range sweep where any HE projectiles were found unexploded from non functional VT fuzes. Or about any fuze. 99% were WP projectile that failed to completely burst. The remainder were projectiles that struck at a extreme low angle and skipped or slid across the landscape without fuze function. The fuzes failed to make contact with anything that would trigger them.

Anyway, knowing the specific model fuzes accused of failing and their exact design would be useful here.

[Sid Guttridge]

The Youtube video is well undermined in its Comments section. Here is just one response:

"Says Simon, "Attempts by heavy artillery to shoot down aircraft proved futile" NOT SO. They may have been expensive, but they were not "futile".

Simon mentions General Pile but does not appear to have read his book "Ack-Ack" (London, 1949). According to Pile (p.397), the UK's anti-aircraft defences claimed the destruction of 822 German aircraft over 1939-45, to have probably destroyed 237 others and to have brought down 1,972 V1 flying bombs. Even allowing for a substantial overclaiming, this is far from "futile".

Pile's book contains numerous examples of successes by the anti-aircraft defences that go well beyond just shooting down aircraft, though this was doubtless the main deterrent to German operations. The alternative to active anti-aircraft defences was to have the Luftwaffe flying with impunity at 300ft to conduct pinpoint bombing raids on anything it chose. Instead, they had to bomb with much less accuracy from altitude and were not infrequently driven off course or deterred from pressing home attacks on heavily defended areas."

Sid.

[Clive Mortimore]

...

That doesn't make much sense either. Proximity or "VT" fuses would only function if the shell passed (very) close to an aircraft, which in the large majority of cases would not happen, so a time fuse (or self-destruct fuse) would still be needed to prevent the unexploded shell falling back to earth.

Depends on the specific model of the VT fuze. Some had a time setting which prevented premature detonation from rain, passing to close to trees or buildings. That time setting also had a dual function detonating the projectile X seconds later. The general idea was; if the proximity function did not occur, the projectile still detonated in the general vicinity of the target as a air burst. There was also a point detonating function for where neither of the air burst functions occurred. That later was for our howitzer ammunition/fuzes. I can say I never participated in a range sweep where any HE projectiles were found unexploded from non functional VT fuzes. Or about any fuze. 99% were WP projectile that failed to completely burst. The remainder were projectiles that struck at a extreme low angle and skipped or slid across the landscape without fuze function. The fuzes failed to make contact with anything that would trigger them.

Anyway, knowing the specific model fuzes accused of failing and their exact design would be useful here.

Hi Carl

In my correspondence with the author of the novel...whoops I mean historical account, he was on about mechanical timed fuses. He tried to blind me with patent law saying the design was a German one and the UK could only make a certain number.....utter tosh in war who gives a monkeys about if the patent is one from a enemy country.

The main AA gun as you know was the 3.7 inch both static and mobile mounts firing Shell, HE, Mark 1 it used Fuze, Time 119 or 223 early on, then Mechanical Time Fuze 207, 208 or 214.

[Carl Schwamberger]

...

The main AA gun as you know was the 3.7 inch both static and mobile mounts firing Shell, HE, Mark 1 it used Fuze, Time 119 or 223 early on, then Mechanical Time Fuze 207, 208 or 214.

I cant really trust my memory, but if i could then the models 207 - 223 had a terminal detonation function. That is they would detonate x seconds after the arming time that activated the VT function. The 119 I cant say. have to locate and study the tech manuals for the ordnance engineers to be certain.

[Led225]

So it took a physicist designing a new accelerometer to alert engineers testing fuzes on proving ground ranges that their fuzes were not going BANG? Good to know.

In reality, fuzes were tested regularly for functionality and reliability. For example, APG Firing Record No. 6693 tested powder-train time fuzes fired from the 3" AA Gun M1917. In 33 rounds fired there were two failures (94%) and time variability averaged about 0.79 seconds from the setting. The major reason for the development of the VT fuze was the lack of timing precision in mechanical and powder-train time fuzes rather than because they did not explode.

Sorry to resurrect a long dead thread but I stumbled across Mr Webb's YouTube video the other day and this has been playing on my mind. Seems incredible to me that the artillery fuses would have a failure rate of 50 percent and this wouldn't have caused someone to kick up a fuss.

Can you recommend a source (book, article whatever) on the failure rate?

[Led225]

I'd agree with Rich--Horse pucky.

If the shells went off (90%+), they produced fragments weighing anywhere from several ounces to tiny fractions of an ounce. These would return to earth at low velocities dictated by gravity versus their air resistance. The vast majority were non-lethal as a result. Sure, one of the few from a shell weighing somewhere close to a pound could seriously injure or kill you, but those made up a tiny fraction of the total fragments falling.

If the shell failed to detonate, and it returned to earth intact, it was unlikely to go off on impact, since it didn't go off earlier, or so one would think. So, unless you were so unlucky as to be standing right where it landed, you didn't get hit.

More on Mythbusters shooting bullets in the air
https://www.wired.com/2009/10/more-on-m ... aight%20up.

Do we know that the shells detonated 90%+ of the time? Mr Webb has cited a scientist called Jack Allen who (he says) wrote that the failure rate was 50%. That strikes me as impossibly large and irritatingly I've not seen a reference given where Allen made this assessment.

But do we have better data elsewhere?

[Sheldrake]

I'd agree with Rich--Horse pucky.

If the shells went off (90%+), they produced fragments weighing anywhere from several ounces to tiny fractions of an ounce. These would return to earth at low velocities dictated by gravity versus their air resistance. The vast majority were non-lethal as a result. Sure, one of the few from a shell weighing somewhere close to a pound could seriously injure or kill you, but those made up a tiny fraction of the total fragments falling.

If the shell failed to detonate, and it returned to earth intact, it was unlikely to go off on impact, since it didn't go off earlier, or so one would think. So, unless you were so unlucky as to be standing right where it landed, you didn't get hit.

More on Mythbusters shooting bullets in the air
https://www.wired.com/2009/10/more-on-m ... aight%20up.

Do we know that the shells detonated 90%+ of the time? Mr Webb has cited a scientist called Jack Allen who (he says) wrote that the failure rate was 50%. That strikes me as impossibly large and irritatingly I've not seen a reference given where Allen made this assessment.

But do we have better data elsewhere?

The answer is in #37 - data on casualties during air raids

[Led225]

I'd agree with Rich--Horse pucky.

If the shells went off (90%+), they produced fragments weighing anywhere from several ounces to tiny fractions of an ounce. These would return to earth at low velocities dictated by gravity versus their air resistance. The vast majority were non-lethal as a result. Sure, one of the few from a shell weighing somewhere close to a pound could seriously injure or kill you, but those made up a tiny fraction of the total fragments falling.

If the shell failed to detonate, and it returned to earth intact, it was unlikely to go off on impact, since it didn't go off earlier, or so one would think. So, unless you were so unlucky as to be standing right where it landed, you didn't get hit.

More on Mythbusters shooting bullets in the air
https://www.wired.com/2009/10/more-on-m ... aight%20up.

Do we know that the shells detonated 90%+ of the time? Mr Webb has cited a scientist called Jack Allen who (he says) wrote that the failure rate was 50%. That strikes me as impossibly large and irritatingly I've not seen a reference given where Allen made this assessment.

But do we have better data elsewhere?

The answer is in #37 - data on casualties during air raids

Apologies but I am not sure what "#37 - data on casualties during air raids" refers to. Is this something in this forum?