Explosive ammunition

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Explosive incendiary ammunition for a machine gun of USS Fort Worth (LCS-3) (2014)

Explosive ammunition is a type of ammunition that has the purpose of destroying the target by explosive effect and by fire.

history

The first modern explosive ammunition was developed by the British Army during World War I to shoot down German zeppelins . It had been shown that simple fire, even with tracer ammunition, was not enough to set airships on fire. The breakthrough was not achieved until the combination of explosives , which tore open the shell over a large area on impact and mixes the hydrogen with air, with the subsequent ignition of the mixture. The first zeppelin to be shot down with this new ammunition was LZ 47 / "LZ 77" on February 21, 1916.

See also

literature

  • Christopher Chant: A compendium of armaments and military hardware. Routledge, Abingdon (Oxfordshire) 2013, pp. 101-120.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Peter Meyer: Airships. The history of the German zeppelins . Bernard & Graefe, Bonn 1996, ISBN 3-7637-5951-4 .