The Romance of War Inventions: A Description of Warships, Guns, Tanks, Rifles, Bombs, and Other Instruments and Munitions of Warfare, How They Were Invented & How They Are Employed

Thomas W. Corbin

The Romance of War Inventions

A Description of Warships, Guns, Tanks, Rifles, Bombs, and Other Instruments and Munitions of Warfare, How They Were Invented & How They Are Employed

Published by Good Press, 2022

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EAN 4064066207625

Table of Contents

CHAPTER I HOW PEACEFUL ARTS HELP IN WAR

CHAPTER II GUNPOWDER AND ITS MODERN EQUIVALENTS

CHAPTER III RADIUM IN WAR

CHAPTER IV A GOOD SERVANT, THOUGH A BAD MASTER

CHAPTER V MINES, SUBMARINE AND SUBTERRANEAN

CHAPTER VI MILITARY BRIDGES

CHAPTER VII WHAT GUNS ARE MADE OF

CHAPTER VIII MORE ABOUT GUNS

CHAPTER IX THE GUNS THEY USE IN THE NAVY

CHAPTER X SHELLS AND HOW THEY ARE MADE

CHAPTER XI WHAT SHELLS ARE MADE OF

CHAPTER XII MEASURING THE VELOCITY OF A SHELL

CHAPTER XIII SOME ADJUNCTS IN THE ENGINE ROOM

CHAPTER XIV ENGINES OF WAR

CHAPTER XV DESTROYERS

CHAPTER XVI BATTLESHIPS

CHAPTER XVII HOW A WARSHIP IS BUILT

CHAPTER XVIII THE TORPEDO

CHAPTER XIX WHAT A SUBMARINE IS LIKE

CHAPTER XX THE STORY OF WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY

CHAPTER XXI WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY IN WAR

CHAPTER XXII MILITARY TELEGRAPHY

CHAPTER XXIII HOW WAR INVENTIONS GROW

CHAPTER XXIV AEROPLANES

CHAPTER XXV THE AERIAL LIFEBOAT

INDEX

CHAPTER I

HOW PEACEFUL ARTS HELP IN WAR

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In the olden times warfare was supported by a single trade, that of the armourer. Nowadays the whole resources of the greatest manufacturing nations scarcely suffice to supply the needs of their armies. So much is this the case that no nation can possibly hope to become powerful in a military or naval sense unless they are either a great manufacturing community or can rely upon the support of some great manufacturing ally or neutral.

It is most astonishing to find how closely some of the most innocent and harmless of the commodities of peace are related to the death-dealing devices of war. Of these no two examples could be more striking than the common salt with which we season our food and the soap with which we wash. Yet the manufacture of soap furnishes the material for the most furious of explosives and the chief agent in its manufacture is the common salt of the table.

Common salt is a combination of the metal sodium and the gas chlorine. There are many places, of which Cheshire is a notable example, where vast quantities of this salt lie buried in the earth.

Fortunately it is very easily dissolved in water so that if wells be sunk in a salt district the water pumped from them will have much salt in solution in it. This is how the underground deposits are tapped. It is not necessary for men to go down as they do after coal, for the water excavates the salt and brings it to the surface.

To obtain the solid salt from the salt water, or brine as it is called, it is only necessary to heat the liquid, when the water passes away as steam leaving the salt behind.

Important though this salt is in connection with our food, it is perhaps still more important as the source from which is derived chlorine and caustic soda. How this is done can best be explained by means of a simple experiment which my readers can try in imagination with me or, better still, perform for themselves.

Take a tumbler and fill it with water with a little salt dissolved in it. Next obtain two short pieces of wire and two pieces of pencil lead, which with a pocket lamp battery will complete the apparatus. Connect one piece of wire to each terminal of the battery and twist the other end of it round a piece of pencil lead. Place these so that the ends of the leads dip into the salt water. It is important to keep the wires out of the solution, the leads alone dipping into the liquid, and the two leads should be an inch or so apart.

In a few moments you will observe that tiny bubbles are collecting upon the leads and these joining together into larger bubbles will soon detach themselves and float up to the surface. Those which arise from one of the leads will be formed of the gas chlorine and the others of hydrogen.

It will be interesting just to enumerate the names of the different parts of this apparatus. First let me say that the process by which these gases are thus obtained is called electrolysis: the liquid is the electrolyte: the two pieces of pencil lead are the electrodes. That electrode by which the current enters the electrolyte is called the an-ode, while the other is the cath-ode. In other words, the current traverses them in alphabetical order.

Now it is familiar to everyone that all matter is supposed to consist of tiny particles called Molecules. These are far too tiny for anyone to see even with the finest microscope, so we do not know for certain that they exist: we assume that they do, however, because the idea seems to fit in with a large number of facts which we can observe and it enables us to talk intelligibly about them. We may, accordingly, speak as if we knew for a certainty that molecules really exist.

Now when we dissolve salt in water it seems as if each molecule splits up into two things which we then call ions. Salt is not peculiar in this respect, for many other substances do the same when dissolved in water. All such substances, since they can be ionized, are called ionogens.

Now the peculiarity about ions is that they are always strongly electrified or charged with electricity.

At this stage we must make a little excursion into the realm of electricity. You probably know that if a rod of glass be rubbed with a silk handkerchief it becomes able to attract little scraps of paper. That is because the rubbing causes it to become charged with electricity. In like manner a piece of resin if rubbed will become charged and will also attract little pieces of paper. A piece of electrified resin and an electrified glass rod will, moreover, attract each other, but two pieces of resin or two pieces of glass, if electrified, will repel each other. This leads us to believe that there are two kinds of electrification or two kinds of electrical charge. At first these two kinds were spoken of as vitreous or glass electricity and resinous electricity, but after a while the idea arose that there was really one kind of electricity and that everything possessed a certain amount of it, the electrified glass having a little too much of it and the electrified resin a shade too little of it. From this came the idea of calling the charge on the glass a positive charge and that on the resin a negative charge. Recent investigations seem to show that we have got those two terms the wrong way round, but to avoid confusion we still use them in the old way.

It will be sufficient for our purpose, therefore, if we assume that every molecule of matter has a certain normal amount of electricity associated with it and that under those conditions the presence of the electricity is not in any way noticeable. When a molecule becomes ionized, however, one ion always seems to run off with more than its fair share of the electricity, the result being that one is electrified positively, like rubbed glass, while the other is negatively charged, like rubbed resin.

Thus, when the common salt is dissolved in water, two lots of ions are formed, one lot positively charged and the other lot negatively. Each molecule of salt consists of two atoms, one of sodium and one of chlorine: consequently, one ion is a chlorine atom and the other is a sodium atom, the latter being positive and the former negative.

Now the electrodes are also charged by the action of the battery. That connected to the positive pole of the battery becomes positively charged and the other negatively. The anode, therefore, is positive and the cathode negative.

It has been pointed out that two similarly charged bodies, such as two pieces of glass or two pieces of resin, repel each other, while either of these attracts one of the other sort. Hence we arrive at a rule that similarly charged bodies repel each other, while dissimilarly charged bodies attract each other.

Acting upon this rule, therefore, the anode starts drawing to itself all the negative ions, in this case the atoms of chlorine, while the cathode gathers together the positive ions, the atoms of sodium. Thus the action of the battery maintains a sorting out process by which the sodium is gathered together around one of the electrodes and the chlorine round the other. Those ions, by the way, which travel towards the an-ode are called an-ions, while those which go to the cath-ode are termed cat-ions.

Thus far, I think, you will have followed me: the chlorine is gathered to one place and the sodium to the other. The former creates bubbles and floats up to the surface and escapes. But where, you will ask, does the hydrogen come from, which we found, in the experiment, was bubbling up round the cathode. Moreover, what becomes of the sodium?

Both those questions can be answered together. The sodium ions, having been drawn away from their old partners the chlorine ions, are unhappy, and long for fresh partners. They therefore proceed to join up with molecules of water. But water contains too much hydrogen for that. Every molecule of water has two atoms of hydrogen linked up with one of oxygen, but sodium does not like two atoms of hydrogen: it insists on having one only. Accordingly the oxygen atom from the water, together with one of the hydrogen atoms, join forces with the sodium atom into a molecule of a new substance, a most valuable substance in many manufactures, called Caustic Soda, while the odd atom of hydrogen, deprived of its partners, has nothing left to do but to cling for a while to the cathode and finally float up and away.

The sum-total of the operation therefore is this: when we pass an electric current through salt water, between graphite electrodes, chlorine goes to the anode and escapes, while caustic soda is formed round the cathode and hydrogen escapes. Let us see now how this is applied commercially.

For the production of Chlorine the apparatus need be little more than our experimental apparatus made large. The anode can be covered in such a way as to catch the gas as it bubbles upwards. In times of peace this gas is chiefly used for making bleaching powder. It is led into chambers where it comes into contact with lime, with which it combines into chloride of lime, a powder which is sometimes used as a disinfectant, but the chief use of which is for bleaching those cotton and woollen fabrics for the manufacture of which this country is famous throughout the world.

The Germans, however, have taught the world another use for chlorine. Those gallant Canadians who were the first victims of the attack by poison gas who suddenly found themselves fighting for breath, and a few of whom, more fortunate than the rest, have reached their homes shattered in health with permanent damage to their lungs, those brave fellows suffered from poisoning by chlorine.

We cannot obtain the other product, the caustic soda, by the same simple means. In our little experiment we succeeded in manufacturing some of it in the region around the cathode, and had we drawn off some of the liquid from there we would have been able to detect its presence. But it would have been mixed up with much ordinary salt, and for commercial purposes we need the caustic soda separate from the salt. The principle is, however, just the same, as you will see.

Imagine a large oblong vat divided by vertical partitions into three separate chambers. These partitions do not quite reach the bottom of the vessel, so that there is a means of communication between all three chambers. This is closed, however, by filling the lower part of the vat with mercury up to a level a little higher than the lower ends of the partitions.

Thus we have three separate chambers with communication between them but that communication is sealed up by the mercury.

The two end chambers are filled with salt water, or brine, while the centre one is filled with a solution of caustic soda. In each end compartment is a stick of graphite, both being electrically joined together and so connected up that they form anodes, while in the centre compartment is the cathode.

When the current flows from the anodes it carries the sodium ions with it, just as it did in our little experiment. But its course, this time, is not straight, since in order to travel from anode to cathode it has to pass through the openings in the partitions, in other words through the mercury.

On arrival at or near the cathode the ions of sodium cause the caustic soda to be formed just as in our experiment, but in this case, you will notice, the formation takes place in a chamber from which the salt brine is completely excluded by the mercury.

Brine is continually fed into the outer chambers and the solution of caustic soda is drawn from the centre one, while the chlorine is collected over the anodes.

And now we can go a step further on our progress from common salt to explosive.

In the soap works there are enormous coppers in which are boiled various kinds of fat. The source of the fat may be either animal or vegetable, many kinds of beans, nuts and seeds furnishing fats practically identical with that which can be got from the fat flesh of a sheep, for instance. To this fat is added some caustic soda solution and the whole is kept boiling for some considerable time. This protracted boiling is to enable the soda thoroughly to attack the fat and combine with it, whereby two entirely new substances are formed.

At first the two new substances are not apparent, for they remain together in one liquid. The addition, however, of some brine causes the change to become obvious for something in the liquid turns solid, so that it can be easily taken away from the rest. That solid is nothing else than soap. It remained dissolved in the water which forms part of the liquid until the salt was put in, but as it will not dissolve in salt water, as you will discover if you attempt to wash in sea water, it separates out as soon as the salt is added.

But still a liquid remains: what can that be? It is mainly salt water and glycerine, that sticky stuff which in peace times we put on our hands if they get sore in winter, or take, in a little water, to soothe a sore throat. That it has other and very different uses was brought home to me when, during the war, I tried to buy some at a chemist's, only to learn that it could not be sold except in cases of extreme need under the orders of a doctor.

The mixed liquid is distilled with the result that the water is driven off and the salt deposited, which with other minor purifying processes gives the pure glycerine.

The next step takes us to the explosives factory, where the glycerine is mixed with sulphuric and nitric acids. Now glycerine, as you will have observed, comes from the animal or vegetable sources and therefore is one of those substances known as organic, and, like many other of the organic compounds, it consists of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Nature has a marvellous way of combining these same three things together in many various ways to form many widely different substances and if, to such a compound, we can add a little nitrogen, we usually get an explosive. Thus, the glycerine, with some nitrogen from the nitric acid, becomes nitro-glycerine, a most ferocious and excitable explosive, the basis of several of those explosives without which warfare as we know it to-day would be impossible.

CHAPTER II

GUNPOWDER AND ITS MODERN EQUIVALENTS

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The origin of gunpowder appears to be lost in antiquity. At all events it has been in use for many centuries and is still made in many countries.

Most boys have tried to make it at some time or other and with varying degrees of success. Such experiments generally lead to a glorious blaze, a delightfully horrid smell and no harm to anyone, the experimenter owing his safety to his invariable lack of complete success, for although other and better explosives have superseded it for many purposes it is capable of doing a lot of harm when it is well made.

It consists of a mixture of charcoal, sulphur and saltpetre ground up very fine and mixed very intimately together. The mixture is wetted and pressed into cakes and dried, after which it is broken up into small pieces. The precise proportions of the various materials seem to vary a great deal in different countries, but generally speaking there is about 75 per cent of saltpetre (or to give it its scientific name, nitrate of potash), 15 per cent of charcoal and 10 per cent of sulphur.

Now gunpowder, like all explosives, is simply some thing or mixture of things which is capable of burning very quickly. When we light the fire we set going the process which we call combustion, or burning, and, as we know from our own experience, that process causes heat to be generated.

What takes place in the fire-grate is that the carbon of the coal enters into combination with oxygen from the air, the two together forming a new compound called carbonic acid gas. There is nothing lost or destroyed in this process, the carbon and oxygen simply changing into the new substance, and could we weigh the gas produced we should find that it agreed precisely with the weight of the carbon and oxygen consumed. For the purpose for which we require the fire, namely, to heat the room, the chief feature about this process is not what is formed in the shape of gas, for that simply goes off up the chimney, but the heat which is liberated. We believe that in some mysterious way the heat is locked up in the coal. Latent is the term we use, which means hidden: in other words we believe that the heat is hidden in the coal: we cannot feel it or perceive it in any way, but it comes out when we let the carbon combine with the oxygen.

Why these two things combine at all is one of those mysteries which may never be solved. We have theories on the subject, but all we really know is that under certain conditions if they be in contact with one another they will combine, apparently for the simple reason that it is their nature so to do.

When we apply the match to the fire all we do is to set up the conditions under which the carbon and oxygen are able to follow their natural instincts, so to speak.

A coal fire, as we all know, burns slowly, for the simple reason that it is only at the surface of the lumps that carbon and oxygen are in contact. If we grind up the coal into a fine powder and then blow it into a cloud, so that every tiny particle is surrounded with air, a spark will cause an explosion. That is how these terrible explosions in coal-pits are caused.

This is sometimes seen on a small scale when one shakes the empty fire-shovel after putting coal on the fire to get rid of the fine dust adhering to it and to save making a mess in the fender. That little cloud of fine dust will often burst into flame like a mild explosion.

We see from this that to make an explosion we require fuel, just as we do to make a fire: but we need that it shall be very intimately mixed with oxygen, so that all of it can burn up in practically a single instant. Now in gunpowder we get these conditions fulfilled. We have the carbon in the shape of charcoal, we also have some sulphur which likewise burns readily, and we have saltpetre which contains oxygen.

Thus, you see, we do not need to go to the air for the oxygen, for the gunpowder possesses it already, locked up in the saltpetre. Moreover, we can see now why it is so important for all the materials to be ground up very fine, for it is only by so doing that we can ensure that every particle of charcoal or sulphur shall have particles of saltpetre close by ready to furnish oxygen at a moment's notice.

Another thing to be observed, for it lets us into the great key to the manufacture of nearly all explosives, is the scientific name of saltpetre. It is nitrate of potassium, and all substances whose names begin with nitr- contain nitrogen: while the termination ate signifies the presence of oxygen. We need the oxygen to make the explosion but we do not need the nitrogen, yet the latter has to be present for without it the oxygen would be too slow in getting to work.

Nitrogen is one of the strangest substances on earth. Extremely lazy itself, it has the knack of hustling its companions, particularly oxygen, and making them work with tremendous fury. Whenever we get the lazy gas nitrogen to enter into a combination with other things we may confidently look for extraordinary activity of some sort.

So when we put a light to a quantity of gunpowder we set up those conditions under which the carbon and oxygen can combine, and at the same moment our lazy friend the nitrogen turns out his partner oxygen from the nitrate in which they were till then combined and a sudden burning is the result. The solid gunpowder is suddenly changed into a volume of hot gas 2500 times as great. That is to say, one cubic inch of gunpowder changes suddenly into 2500 cubic inches of gas. That sudden expansion to 2500 times its volume is what we term an explosion. If it takes place in an enclosed space so that the gas formed wants to expand but cannot, the result is a pressure of about forty tons per square inch.

If that enclosed space were the interior of a gun, that force of forty tons per square inch would be available for driving out the projectile.

Now, gunpowder is still used for sporting purposes and also for some special purposes in warfare, but it has the great disadvantage that it makes a lot of smoke, so that the enemy would be easily able to locate the guns were it to be used in them. As we know so well, by the messages from France, guns and rifles drop their shells and bullets apparently from nowhere and are extremely difficult to locate. That is owing to the use of improved powders one of the great features of which is their smokelessness.

The reason why gunpowder makes a dense smoke, is because the burning which takes place is very incomplete. Therefore, by some such means as a more intimate mixture of the materials a better and more complete burning must be brought about.

One of the best known of the new powders (they are all spoken of as powders, whatever their form, since they have taken the place of the old gunpowder) is nitro-glycerine, the basis of which is glycerine.

The way in which we obtain this useful material has already been explained. It consists of carbon, a lot of hydrogen and some oxygen. These are not merely mixed together but are in combination, just as oxygen and hydrogen are combined in water. Carbon and hydrogen will both combine with oxygen and will give off heat in the process, but in glycerine they are already happily united together and so glycerine itself is no use as an explosive. If, however, we bring nitric acid and sulphuric acid into contact with it a pair of new partnerships is set up, one being water and the other a compound containing carbon and hydrogen, a lot of oxygen and, most important of all, some of that disturbing, restless though lazy nitrogen.

This is nitro-glycerine, a particularly furious explosive, for that curious nitrogen seems to be so uncomfortable in his new surroundings that at the smallest provocation he will break up the whole combination and then there will be a mass of free atoms of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, all seeking new partners, just right for a glorious explosion.

So furious and untamed is this stuff that it was almost useless until the famous Nobel hit upon the idea of taming it down by mixing it with an earth called Kieselguhr, which reduces its sensitiveness sufficiently to make it a very safe explosive to use. To this mixture Nobel gave the name of dynamite.

It is interesting at this point to compare the action of this typical modern explosive with that of the older gunpowder. The latter is only a mixture: the former is a chemical