* * * * {r i} 4-2}? {!.{! ** {{ {{ Journal of The Company of Military Historians Washington, D. C. 1} * *ti * 1r{r Vol. XXII *** 2} MILITARY COLLECTOR & HISTORIAN SUMMER 1970 No.2 {{ {! {! {! 1r {1 * ***4-10 ;;;. {ry.2}
46 The Sims-Dudley 211z-inchDynamite Field Gun. The carriage wheels are 42 inches in diameter with a 4-inch tire, and a 361f4-inchtrack. The trail carriage has 2011z-inchwheels with a Pis-inch tire, and a 37 3 /4-inch track. THE SIMS-DUDLEY 2Y2-INCH DYNAMITE GUN by Konrad F. Schreier, Jr. For many years one of the "many fascinating and unusual displays" of the Francis Bannerman Sons military goods store at 501 Broadway, New York City, was one of the "famous Dynamite Guns used by the Roosevelt Rough Riders in Cuba in 1898," and for years the wonderful Bannerman catalog showed the gun for sale as a relic suitable for a museum. Bannerman said that when President Roosevelt was in New York, after he returned from his hunting expedition to Africa for the Rough Rider reunion and parade, and saw the old dynamite gun on display, he was fascinated by the sight of the old weapon. President Roosevelt had' very good reason to be fascinated by the dynamite gun: he was a completely practical man, and he had seen the monstrosity in action. The Sims-Dudley dynamite gun was built on a very unusual principal, which is best explained by describing how the gun worked. The gun consists of two tubes placed one above the other. The top tube is the gun's barrel, a smooth bore tube with a 2 1 h-inch bore, and almost 14 feet long. The lower tube is the 7-foot long "combustion chamber," and is closed at both ends when the gun is fired. There is an opening connecting the breech end of the combustion chamber to the breech end of the barrel. To load the gun, the breech is opened. The breech mechanism consists of two completed breech block assemblies geared to operate together. The top breech block merely closes the end of the barrel, and the. other, which contains the gun's fir-
47 Rear view of the dynamite gun. The gun's trunnions are 401f2 inches from the ground in firing position, and the trail is 87 inches long. ing lock, closes the end of the combustion chamber. The dynamite filled projectile is then loaded in the barrel, and a special blank cartridge is loaded in the combustion tube. The breech is closed, the gun aimed, and then fired by pulling a lanyard connected to the firing lock on the combustion chamber portion of the breech. The basic idea of the gun is that the powder gasses from the special blank cartridge will fill the combustion chamber, and then flow relatively slowly and smoothly through the connecting opening into the barrel, and gently send the projectile on its way. This complicated process was supposed to give the projectile a slow, steady acceleration rather than the instant jolt of acceleration it would get if a charge of powder were fired in the same barrel with it. It was necessary to accelerate the projectile softly because the projectile was loaded with the high explosive dynamite, and a severe jolt will cause dynamite, which is a mixture of nitroglycerin and absorbent material, to explode from the shock. Although there were shock resistant high explosives available when the Sims-Dudley gun was used in Cuba, they had just come into use, and dynamite had been in use for a good 30 years; the Sims-Dudley gun was invented to fire dynamite filled projectiles when the sensitive high explosive had been the only one available. The dynamite filled projectile, to quote an official report, was "simple and effective." It was 36 inches long, had a body diameter of 2.5 inches, and weighed 11112 pounds loaded. The body of the projectile was made of thin brass, and there were fins on the rear end of the projectile to stabilize it in flight. Fin projectile stabilization is being used in some special types of artillery ammunition today. The shell's impact fuse was unusual in that it used a steel ball hitting a number of percussion caps to start the explosion rather than a single firing pin. The fuse also had a propeller driven arming device in which the propeller turned for the first 200 feet of the proj ectile' s flight to remove an obstruction in the path of the ball and then fell off when the fuse was ready to fire. This is exactly the same as the arming system used on aircraft drop bombs today. After the ball has fired
48 The breech mechanism of the dynamite gun. The gear between the breech blocks (7) is turned by the crank (1) in order to open the breeches. The whole assembly then slides straight back on the bar (A) and, after it is in the full rearward position, is turned out of alignment with the bores about the hinge pin (2). the percussion caps, they fire a larger charge of fulminate of mercury, it fires a charge of guncotton, and then the dynamite goes off. One other unusual feature of the projectile's fuse was a delay element which would allow the explosion to be delayed as much as 6 or 7 seconds after impact. This sort of delay element is still used, but the delay time is in fractions of a second. The whole projectile system of the dynamite gun included several features which, as is evident, were very advanced for the time, and the reports state that they all worked satisfactorily. One good thing about the cumbersome combustion chamber and barrel combination of the dynamite gun was that the gun had very little recoil, and this meant the gun could have a very light ){ rb c E Ammunition for the dynamite gun. (H) is the projectile complete with tail fins, but without fuze. (A) is the projectile fuze. (B), (C), and (D), are internal parts of the fuze. (E) is the guncotton charge which is the explosive relay between the fuze and the main dynamite charge. (F) is the special blank cartridge, and (G) is a shipping cap for the blank cartridge which protects the powder during storage and shipment.
49 carriage. The complete dynamite gun weighed 528 pounds, and its carriage 583, while the 3.2-inch conventional model 1890 field gun in use at the time weighed 794 pounds and its carriage weighed 1,197 pounds. Neither gun, by the way, had an on-carriage recoil system, so they rolled backwards to dissipate their recoil. The dynamite gun was normally pulled by one horse, or three or four men, and could be broken down into two loads, the barrel and the carriage, for pack animal transportation. According to the regulations of the time, the gun's total weight of 1,217 pounds was the proper load for two, not one, horses, and no pack animal should be loaded with over 300 pounds. The carriage of the dynamite gun, like all field gun carriages of the period, had only elevation adjustment provisions for the gun, and it was laid in azimuth (pointed at the target) by manhandling the trail. The sights provided were crude open sights for pointing, and a gunner's quadrant, which was laid on the barrel when setting the gun's elevation. When properly aimed the dynamite gun could fire an ll-pound projectile just over a mile. This is not very much range when compared to the U. S. Army's then standard 3.2-inch field gun, which had a range of 6,600 yards (3 3 /4 miles) with a 16 1 h pound shell. When the dynamite guns were built the violent explosion of the dynamite gave them an advantage over black powder filled shells in use in regular field artillery. In 1898 the latest model shells for the 3.2-inch field gun were being loaded with the new Explosive D (ammonium picrate), and were as effective as shells loaded with dynamite. The 3.2-inch gun could also fire shrapnel proj ectiles and canister, which were both popular at the time, and the dynamite gun could not fire either of these loads. When it was fired, the dynamite gun suffered from a poor standard of accuracy for a field gun. At a mile, its proj ectiles could hit as much as 100 The dynamite field gun in action during the Siege of Santiago, Cuba, 1898.
50 yards short, or past the target, and the error from left to right could be as much as 10 or 12 yards. The 3.2-inch field gun had about this same degree of accuracy at 5,000 yards (almost 3 miles). As far as can be determined the only time the Sims-Dudley 2lf2-inch Dynamite Field Gun was ever deployed for action was during the Battle of San Juan Hill and the following Siege of Santiago in the Cuban Campaign of 1898, during the Spanish-American War. The dynamite gun was only part of the artillery used in these actions; there were also several batteries of 3.2-inch field guns and some sections of Gatling guns which were considered as a part of the artillery. All these conventional weapons performed very well. of the rapid improvements being made in conventional artillery, and their use in the SpanishAmerican War was only because there was a shortage of artillery weapons. All 16 of them were probably issued to provisional units such as Roosevelt's Rough Riders, and they were replaced with conventional field guns as quickly as possible because they were clumsy, complicated, and very short ranged. In those days Bannerman was a very large purchaser of war surplus from the U. S. services, and that is how they came to have the freak dynamite guns which so attracted President Roosevelt's eye. REFERENCES At San Juan hill the dynamite gun wasn't used, the gun was merely there, and only one gun at that. There is a mention of the ammunition for the dynamite gun being lost, and another comment that the projectiles were located in a medical aid station. This missing ammunition was typical of the badly confused supply situation at the time of the Battle of San Juan Hill, and also of the folly of building artillery without limbers or other special ammunition vehicles. Report of the Chief of OTdnance, 1898 and 1899. Francis Bannerman Sons Mi.litary Goods Catalogue 1940. Friedel, Frank, The Splendid Little War. New York, 958. Halstead, Murat, Full Hisionj of the War with Spain. New Haven, 1899. The writer wishes to acknowledge Frank Wheeler, and Mr. J. William him materials from their collections. the assistance La Rue, who 'of Mr. loaned During the Siege of Santiago the dynamite guns went into action for the first, and probably only, time. General Funston's report records what one of the dynamite filled projectiles did: When it gave its characteristic cough, we saw the projectile sail through the air and strike the block house square in the center. The shell penetrated and burst inside, killing sixteen defenders. The structure was all demolished, portions of the roof b einz blown a hundred feet in the air. The 1899 Report of the Chief of Ordnance says all 16 guns were issued for the campaign in Cuba and the West Indies, and that the guns were in an arsenal being modified before being sent to the Phillippines for issue there, however, the only mention of the guns in an action is the one above. It is highly doubtful that the dynamite guns were ever issued after they were returned from the Caribbean area. The dynamite guns completely disappeared from the Army's artillery inventory by 1905 or 1906. The dynamite gun was a freak weapon based on the need for a field gun which could fire the only high explosive available when it was developed in the 1800's: highly sensitive dynamite. By the time the dynamite guns were built and issued the need for them was almost past because ;... /. -.-....v:i..:.:...«: "'-... 4!.. "'<:.'_':':.:::'... -' - - 'fl'. '.:1 The dynamite field gun in the trenches at Santiago, 1898.