Abstract
THE time fuze is a device for exploding a shell at any desired interval after it is fired. Before the late war the time fuze was used mainly with shrapnel shell, to burst the shell in the air and so propel the bullets down on to the objective. For this purpose the ordinary “powder-train” fuze gave—considering its simplicity—remarkably good and consistent results; at any rate so good that no serious impetus had been given to a proper scientific study of its properties under a variety of conditions. The development of anti-aircraft gunnery, however, in which the employment of a percussion fuze was useless, and in which the target moved so fast that no preliminary “ranging” on it was possible, not only required a much greater reliance to be placed on the accuracy of the time fuze, but also subjected it to much more severe conditions than had ever occurred before. The conditions referred to were those set up by variations of velocity, air pressure, spin, and temperature. Moreover, the enormous quantity of powder suddenly required for military use made it difficult for the manufacturers to produce it with the same quality and consistency as of old. All these factors led to a series of extraordinary difficulties in connection with time fuzes, such as irregular burning and a wholesale failure to burn at all; these difficulties were never completely overcome in practice, but they stimulated a much fuller investigation of the factors governing them, and have resulted in a far greater understanding of the physical behaviour of fuzes. As so often happens in the history of knowledge, urgent practical need led to scientific discovery.
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HILL, A. The Behaviour of Time Fuzes. Nature 106, 214–215 (1920). https://doi.org/10.1038/106214a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/106214a0