Shrapnel shell

This article is about the Shrapnel artillery shell. For fragmentation of artillery shells in general, see Fragmentation (weaponry).
Animation of a bursting shrapnel shell
Setting a time fuse (left) and loading a shell into a gun

Shrapnel shells were anti-personnel artillery munitions that carried many individual bullets close to a target area and then ejected them to allow them to continue along the shell's trajectory and strike targets individually. They relied almost entirely on the shell's velocity for their lethality. The munition has been obsolete since the end of World War I for anti-personnel use; high-explosive shells superseded it for that role. The functioning and principles behind shrapnel shells are fundamentally different from high-explosive shell fragmentation. Shrapnel is named after Lieutenant-General Henry Shrapnel, a Royal Artillery officer, whose experiments, initially conducted on his own time and at his own expense, culminated in the design and development of a new type of artillery shell.[1]

Usage of the term "shrapnel" has changed over time to also refer to fragmentation of the casing of shells and bombs, which is its most common modern usage and strays from the original meaning.[2]

  1. ^ Vetch, Robert Hamilton (1897). "Shrapnel, Henry" . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 52. pp. 163–165.
  2. ^ "What is the difference between artillery shrapnel and shell fragments?". Combat Forces Journal. March 1952. Archived from the original on 10 February 2017.