The RML 25-pounder gun was a British rifled muzzle-loading light siege gun and gun of position designed in 1871. It was intended to be an intermediate gun between the 16-pounder and 40-pounder Rifled Muzzle Loading guns.[1] It was part of a series of guns designed after the British military reverted to rifled muzzle-loading artillery until a more satisfactory breech-loading system than that of the Armstrong guns was developed.
The gun consisted of a central toughened steel "A" tube surrounded by two wrought-iron coils. Rifling was the "Woolwich" pattern of three broad grooves, with a uniform twist of 1 turn in 35 calibres (i.e. in 166.25 inches).[2]
In firearms, rifling refers to the helical groovings that are machined into the internal (bore) surface of a gun's barrel, for the purpose of exerting torque and thus imparting a spin to a projectile around its longitudinal axis during shooting. This spin serves to gyroscopically stabilize the projectile by conservation of angular momentum, improving its aerodynamic stability and accuracy over smoothbore designs.
In artillery, caliber or calibre is the internal diameter of a gun barrel, or by extension a relative measure of the length.
They were mounted on semi-mobile field carriages, with limbers which enabled them to be moved and mounted in either field fortifications or permanent fortifications.
A gun carriage is a frame and mount that supports the gun barrel of an artillery piece, allowing it to be manoeuvred and fired.
A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to solidify rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from the Latin fortis ("strong") and facere.
The guns used black powder charges in silk bags to fire three types of ammunition – common shell, shrapnel shell or case shot. A copper vent towards the end of the bore of the gun enabled friction tubes to be used to fire the gun.
Shrapnel shells were anti-personnel artillery munitions which carried a large number of individual bullets close to the target and then ejected them to allow them to continue along the shell's trajectory and strike the target 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 The munition has been obsolete since the end of World War I for anti-personnel use, when it was superseded by high-explosive shells for that role. The functioning and principles behind Shrapnel shells are fundamentally different from high-explosive shell fragmentation. Shrapnel is named after Major-General Henry Shrapnel (1761–1842), a British 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.
Service use
Six 25-pounder RML guns were transported from Malta and landed in Egypt in 1882 as part of a Royal Artillery Siege train formed for the Anglo-Egyptian War, however none of them were deployed in action.[3]
The Royal Regiment of Artillery, commonly referred to as the Royal Artillery (RA) and colloquially known as "The Gunners", is the artillery arm of the British Army. The Royal Regiment of Artillery comprises thirteen Regular Army regiments, King's Troop Royal Horse Artillery and five Army Reserve regiments.
The guns were also deployed at Forts and Batteries around Great Britain to form part of the fixed defences. Some were located at Fort Cumberland where they were used for training by the Royal Marine Artillery.[4] They remained in service until 1902, by which time most had been dismounted and scrapped. A heavily rusted example is displayed at Fort Brockhurst in Hampshire.
Fort Cumberland is a pentagonal artillery fortification erected to guard the entrance to Langstone Harbour, east of the Dockyard of Portsmouth on the south coast of England. It was sited to protect the Royal Navy Dockyard, by preventing enemy forces from landing in Langstone Harbour and attacking from the landward side. Fort Cumberland is widely recognised as the finest example of a bastion trace fort in England. It is a scheduled monument and a Grade II* listed building
The Corps of Royal Marines (RM) is the amphibious light infantry and also one of the five fighting arms of the Royal Navy. The marines can trace their origins back to the formation of the English Army's "Duke of York and Albany's maritime regiment of Foot" at the grounds of the Honourable Artillery Company on 28 October 1664.
Fort Brockhurst is one of the Palmerston Forts, in Gosport, England and a Scheduled Ancient Monument. It is now an English Heritage property.
Notes and references
↑ Treatise on the Construction and Manufacture of Ordnance in the British Service, 1877, Page 259.
↑ Treatise on the Construction and Manufacture of Ordnance in the British Service, 1877, Page 258.
↑ Goodrich, Caspar F (Lt Cdr), Report of the British Naval and Military Operations in Egypt 1882, Navy Department, Washington, 1885, p.231
↑ Robinson, Charles N, Cdr RN, Navy and Army Illustrated, Hudson & Kearns, 21 August 1896, p84
The Armstrong RBL 7-inch gun, also known as the 110-pounder, was an early attempt to use William Armstrong's new and innovative rifled breechloading mechanism for heavy rifled guns.
An 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. Such guns involved a built-up gun construction system of a wrought-iron tube surrounded by multiple wrought-iron strengthening coils shrunk over the inner tube to keep it under compression.
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The Armstrong RBL 40-pounder gun was introduced into use in 1860 for service on both land and sea. It used William Armstrong's new and innovative rifled breechloading mechanism. It remained in use until 1902 when replaced by more modern Breech Loading (BL) guns.
The RML 64-pounder 64 cwt gun was a Rifled, Muzzle Loading (RML) naval, field or fortification artillery gun manufactured in England in the 19th century, which fired a projectile weighing approximately 64 pounds (29 kg). "64 cwt" refers to the gun's weight rounded up to differentiate it from other "64-pounder" guns.
The RML 10-inch guns Mk I – Mk II were large rifled muzzle-loading guns designed for British battleships and monitors in the 1860s to 1880s. They were also fitted to the Bouncer and Ant-class flat-iron gunboats. They were also used for fixed coastal defences around the United Kingdom and around the British Empire until the early years of the 20th Century.
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The RML 12-inch 25-ton guns were large rifled muzzle-loading guns of mid-late 1800s used as primary armament on British ironclad turret battleships and coastal monitors, and also ashore for coast defence. They were the shorter and less powerful of the two 12-inch (305-mm) British RML guns, the other being the 35-ton gun.
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The RML 16-pounder 12 cwt gun was a British Rifled, Muzzle Loading (RML) field artillery gun manufactured in England in the 19th century, which fired a projectile weighing approximately 16 pounds (7.3 kg). "12 cwt" refers to the weight of the gun.
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