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British Ordnance Collectors Network
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Random Museum Ordnance Photos
- Thread starter US-Subs
- Start date
I can look the size up tonight, but it looks about like a 4.7-inch (US). It is a late WWI chemical round, and as you thought, the holes are there only to show that it is inert. The colored bands indicate the chemical fill, it was a complicated system and I need to look at a chart to see what the fill was.
The 5 inch Common is a High Explosive projectile, similar to an Armor piercing capped, but it doesn't have the penetrating cap, it only has the windshield. So the yellow part of the nose should be one caliber long to signify HE load, followed by the color code of the tracer (orange) and then a band to signify tracer (red). Sometimes the second band will be the color of the spotting dye that is placed in projectiles used for target practice. When a number of ships are having target practice, each ship will have a different color of dye in the nose of the projectile, which colors the water on impact. My 16 inch MK. 9, just like the ones in Jeff's photos above, had a paper bag full of green dye in the nose. Those OD green projectiles with yellow noses in the photos are painted incorrectly (and welded to their pallets). They are solid cast steel from the yellow nose down, and the yellow part is about 1/4 inch thick sheet metal, hollow on the inside. The yellow windscreen will unscrew to leave a flat nosed projectile. They weigh about 2700 Lbs. They should be painted flat red for Blind Loaded Practice, with a white tracer band and a dye color band.
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Thanks a lot for the explanation!
So this is a base fuzed HE. I assume the base fuze has no delay then?
Typically navy base fuzed projectiles have a delay to allow them to penetrate before detonation. I can't find data on the Mk. 20 fuze at present. See the posting above for projo cross section.
Nabob's data sheet below says the delay is .01 seconds. That's pretty common for Navy Base fuzes.
Nabob's data sheet below says the delay is .01 seconds. That's pretty common for Navy Base fuzes.
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It is. It's also one of the few annular designs for the weaponisation of CW.
Pete
Pete