If then we can fill the small cavity in the shell with an explosive which will not ignite prematurely, and yet will burst the shell properly after it has passed through the armor, the problem will be solved.  Wet or paraffined gun-cotton can be made sluggish enough to satisfy the first condition; but at present the difficulty is to make it explode at all.  The more sluggish the gun-cotton, the more powerful must be the fuse exploders to detonate it, and such exploders are themselves liable to premature ignition in passing through the armor.

The Italians and Germans claim to have accomplished the desired result up to a thickness of five inches of armor; gun-cotton and fuse both working well.  But the English authorities say that no one has yet accomplished it.  The Austrians claim to have succeeded in this direction within the last year with a new explosive called ecrastite (supposed to be blasting gelatine combined with sulphate or hydrochlorate of ammonia, and claimed to be one and one-half times as powerful as dynamite).

With a gun of 8.24 inches caliber and an armor-piercing shell weighing 206.6 pounds, containing a bursting charge of 15.88 pounds of ecrastite, they are said to have perforated two plates four inches thick, and entered a third four-inch plate where the shell exploded.  There is a weak point in this account in the fact that the powder capacity of the shell is said to be 4.4 pounds.

This amount is approximately correct, judging from our own eight-inch armor-piercing shell, but if this is true, there could not have been more than nine pounds of ecrastite in the shell instead of sixteen, or else there is an exceedingly small proportion of blasting gelatine in ecrastite, and if that is the case it is not one and one-half times as powerful as dynamite.  If it is weak stuff, it is probably insensitive, and even if it were strong, one swallow does not make a summer.  The English fired quantities of blasting gelatine from a two-inch Nordenfeldt gun in 1884, but when they tried it in a seven-inch gun, in 1885, they burst the gun at once.

I have only analyzed this Austrian case, because the statement is taken from this year’s annual report of the Office of Naval Intelligence, which is an excellent authority, and to illustrate the fact that of the thousands of accounts, which we see in foreign and domestic newspapers, concerning the successful use of high explosives in shells, fully ninety per cent. are totally unreliable.  In many cases they are in the nature of a prospectus from the inventors of explosives or methods of firing, who are aware of the fact that it is almost impossible to dispute any statements that they may choose to make regarding the power of their new compounds, and thinking, as most of them do, that power alone is required.