Floating Batteries are such as are erected either on rafts or on the hulls of ships.
Gun-battery is a defense constructed of earth faced with green sods or fascines, sometimes of gabions filled with earth. It consists of a breastwork, epaulment, or parapet; the open spaces through which the muzzles of the cannon are pointed are called embrasures, and the solid masses between the embrasures, merlons; the genouilleres are those parts of the parapet which cover the carriage of the gun. The platforms are plank floors made to prevent the cannon from sinking into the ground; they are made with a slope to check the recoil of the guns, and to render it more easy to bring them forward again when loaded.
Half-sunken Battery. This term is applied to a battery in which the earth to form the parapet is derived partly from a ditch in front and partly from the excavation of the terre-plein. See Artillery, also Cavalier.
Mortar-batteries differ from gun-batteries in this, that the parapets have no embrasures, and the platforms have no slope, but are exactly horizontal; the shells being fired quite over the parapet, commonly at an elevation of 45°.
Open Battery is a number of cannon, commonly field-pieces, ranged in a row abreast on some natural elevation of ground, or on an artificial bank raised for that purpose.
Raised Battery, one whose terre-plein is elevated considerably above the ground.
Redan Batteries are such as flank each other at the salient and re-entrant angles of a fortification.
Ricochet Battery, so called by its inventor Vauban, was first used at the siege of Aeth in 1697. It is a method of discharging cannon with a very small charge of powder, and with just elevation enough to fire over the parapet. When properly managed its effects are most destructive; for the shot, rolling along the opposite rampart, dismounts the cannon and disperses or destroys the troops. Ricochet practice is not confined to cannon alone; small mortars and howitzers may be effectually employed for the same purpose.
Sunken Battery, where the sole of the embrasures is on a level with the ground, and the platforms are consequently sunk below it.
Battery-boxes are square chests or boxes, filled with earth or dung; used in making batteries, where gabions and earth are not to be had. They must not be too large, but of a size that is governable.
Battery-wagon. It consists, besides the limber, of a long-bodied cart with a round top, which is connected with the limber in the same way as all other field-carriages. The lid opens on hinges placed at the side; and in the rear is fixed a movable forage-rack for carrying along forage. One of these wagons accompanies each field battery, for the purpose of transporting carriage-maker’s and saddler’s tools, spare parts of carriages, harness, and equipments, and rough materials for replacing different parts. Both it and the forge are made of equal mobility with the other field-carriages, in order to accompany them wherever they may be required to go. See Ordnance, Carriages for.
Battery, Electric. The apparatus used to generate a current of electricity.
Battery, or Traveling Forge. See Ordnance, Carriages for.
Battery Gun. A gun capable of firing continuously a great number of shots in a short time. Applied to guns mounted upon tripods, stands, swivels, or carriages. A magazine cannon in contradistinction to a magazine small-arm. Also called machine gun and mitrailleur. Guns of this kind existed as early as the 14th century. From the arrangement of the barrels they were called killing organs. They have always been used in various forms, but were comparatively inefficient till recent times, when the introduction of the metallic cartridge gave the subject a new importance.
Puckle’s revolver, 1718, was ingeniously mounted upon a tripod with good elevating and traversing arrangements. It had one barrel and a movable rotating breech containing nine charges. These were fired in succession, and a new breech, ready charged, was slipped on. Two kinds of bullets were used—round bullets against Christians and square ones for Turks.
Winans’s steam gun, invented about 1861 by the celebrated American inventor and engineer Thomas Winans, of Baltimore, was a battery gun of large calibre. The shot fell from a hopper into a breech-chamber, and were projected through the barrel by the sudden admission behind it of steam under enormous pressure.
The infernal machine with which Fieschi killed Marshal Mortier and a large number of others in his attempt to assassinate Louis Philippe, in 1835, was a crude form of battery gun, consisting of a row of gun-barrels fired by a train of powder. Many battery guns are of this type.
The Requa battery—American—used in the civil war, 1861–65, consisted of a row of 24 barrels on a wheel-carriage, so arranged as to give either parallel or divergent fire. It was breech-loading, the cartridges being forced into the barrels by a transverse bar worked by levers. It was capable of seven volleys a minute.
One of the forms of mitrailleur used in the Franco-Prussian war was very much the same. The loading-bar was rotating, and had two sets of chambers. One set was fired while the other was being loaded.
The Abbertini gun used in Europe has 10 barrels arranged as in the Requa battery. It is worked by a crank. The cartridges are conveyed by mechanical devices from a box magazine to the rear of the barrels.
The form in which a cluster of barrels is used was probably first introduced in France, and was made by inserting 25 gun-barrels into the bore of a brass field-piece, into the breech of which a slot was cut, the open rear ends of the barrels being flush with the front wall of the slot. A cylinder-case containing cartridges being placed in the slot, a set of plungers pushed the cartridges into the barrels. The case was then replaced by a firing-block containing a lock and pin for each cartridge.
This was improved by mounting the barrels (37) without the casing and replacing the cartridge-case by a steel block in which the cartridges were fired without being pushed into the barrels.
The first successful gun in which the cluster of barrels was made to revolve was the Gatling. (See Gatling Gun.) In this both the barrels and the locks revolve. The Gatling gun in its various forms is used by all the leading nations of Europe. It is used in a variety of ways for field service, mountain service, flank defense of fortifications, in the main-tops of ships, etc. It has been mounted upon the backs of camels, on tripods, swivels, and field-carriages. In Europe its principal rival is the Nordenfelt, in which the barrels are stationary and the breech mechanism works horizontally. It is probably superior to the Gatling in the amount of metal thrown in a given time. In mechanism and accuracy it is inferior. Its principal claim to superiority is that it fires either volleys or single shots. The recoil, which is always great in volley-guns, requires a very heavy stand, making it clumsy and unwieldy compared to the Gatling. Accidents have also happened in its use from defective mechanism. Among other American battery or machine guns are the Lowell and Gardner, both of which have won enviable reputations. A late form of the Gardner consists of two barrels fixed in a brass casing, giving it the external appearance of an ordinary field-piece. It has less rapidity of fire (its maximum being about 357 shots a minute) than some other guns, but it is simple, strong, and efficient.
The Taylor gun was something like the Nordenfelt in principle, having a fixed cluster of barrels and a sliding breech mechanism, firing volleys or single shots at discretion. A later form of Taylor gun has the barrels in a horizontal row. The improvement consists in rapidity of loading. The cartridges are carried in the ordinary paper or wooden cases, exposing the heads. The gun has a number of upright pieces at the breech with grooves between them. By drawing the cartridge-case downward over these uprights the cartridges are caught in the grooves by their flanged heads. They fall by gravity, and are conducted by suitable devices in grooved channels to the barrels. This gun, it is believed, fires more shots a minute than any other, but its mechanism is not so perfect as several of its rivals.
The Hotchkiss revolving