This system had just been developed by Martin von Wahrendorff and Giovanni Cavalli in Sweden. The cast iron shell, similar in shape to a Minié ball, had a thin lead coating which made it fractionally larger than the gun's bore and which engaged with the gun's rifling grooves to impart spin to the shell. The guns' rifling was on the "polygroove" system the bore of the gun had 38 grooves along its length with a twist of one turn per 38 calibres. The Royal Navy used all these guns and all except the 20-pounder saw service in New Zealand.Īrmstrong's guns used a "built-up" construction, comprising a central "A" tube (initially of wrought iron, and from 1863 of mild steel toughened in oil) holding the bore over which were shrunk several wrought iron coils which kept the central tube under compression, a breech-piece, and a trunnion ring. Over the next three years he developed his system of construction and adapted it to guns of heavier calibre.Īrmstrong's system was adopted in 1858, initially for "special service in the field" and initially he only produced smaller artillery pieces, 6-pounder (2.5 in/64 mm) mountain or light field guns, 9-pounder (3 in/76 mm) guns for horse artillery, and 12-pounder (3 inches /76 mm) field guns.Īrmstrong did not consider his system suited to heavier guns but higher authorities had him develop a 20-pounder (3.75 inches /95 mm) field & naval gun, a 40-pounder (4.75 inches (121 mm)) siege gun, and a 110-pounder (7 inches /180 mm) heavy gun. Later increased in bore to 5-pounder, the design performed successfully with respect to both range and accuracy. In 1854, Armstrong approached the Secretary of State for War, proposing that he construct a rifled breech-loading 3-pounder gun for trial. The Armstrong rifled breechloading guns of the 1850s-1860s Such guns involved a built-up gun construction system of a wrought-iron (later of mild steel) tube surrounded by a number of wrought-iron strengthening coils shrunk over the inner tube to keep it under compression. Armstrong gun deployed by Japan during the Boshin War (1868–69).Īn Armstrong gun was a uniquely designed type of rifled breech-loading field and heavy gun designed by Sir William Armstrong and manufactured in England beginning in 1855 by the Elswick Ordnance Company and the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich.
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