s. with the 88 inch mortar and claim to
have obtained 2,000 f.s. in long guns up to 62 inch caliber. However
this may be, they are known to have had severe accidents at the
manufactory at Belfort and at least one 56 inch gun was burst at the
Bellequense experiments in firing a sixty-six pound shell containing
twenty-eight pounds of melenite. The French are said to have large
quantities of melenite shells in store, but they are not issued to
service.
Probably one reason why we have so many conflicting yet positive
accounts of great successes in Europe with torpedo shells is because
each nation wishes its neighbors to think that it is prepared for all
eventualities, and they are obliged to keep on hand large quantities
of some explosive, whether they have confidence in it or not.
Fortunately we are not so situated, but singularly enough what we have
done in the field of high explosive projection has been accomplished
by private enterprise, and we have attacked the problem at exactly the
opposite point from which European nations have undertaken it. While
they have assumed that the powder gun with its powerful and relatively
irregular pressures was a necessity and have endeavored to modify the
explosive to suit it, we have taken the explosive as we have found it,
and have adapted the gun to the explosive.
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