 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Round shot" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(March 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Around shot (also calledsolid shot or simplyball) is a solid sphericalprojectile without explosive charge, launched from a gun. Its diameter is slightly less than thebore of thebarrel from which it is shot. A round shot fired from a large-caliber gun is also called acannonball.
The cast iron cannonball was introduced by French artillery engineers after 1450; it had the capacity to reduce traditional Englishcastle wallfortifications to rubble.[1] Frencharmories would cast a tubularcannon body in a single piece, and cannonballs took the shape of a sphere initially made from stone material. Advances ingunpowder manufacturing soon led the replacement of stone cannonballs with cast iron ones.[2]
Round shot was made in early times from dressed stone, referred to asgunstone (Middle English:gunneston), but by the 17th century, from iron. It was used as the most accurate projectile that could be fired by asmoothbore cannon, used to batter the wooden hulls of opposing ships, fortifications, or fixed emplacements, and as a long-range anti-personnel weapon. However, masonry stone forts designed during theearly modern period (known asstar forts) were almost impervious to the effects of round shot.
In land battles, round shot would often plough through many ranks of troops, causing multiple casualties. Unlike the fake gunpowder explosions representing roundshot in movies, roundshot was more like a bouncing bowling ball that would not stop after the initial impact, but continue and tear through anything in its path. It could bounce when it hit the ground, striking men at each bounce. The casualties from round shot were extremely gory; when fired directly into an advancing column, a cannonball was capable of passing straight through up to forty men[citation needed].
Even when most of its kinetic energy is expended, a round shot still has enough momentum to knock men over and cause gruesome injury. Because such instances often did not leave visible marks, this initially gave rise to the theory that even in the case of a near-miss, the so-called "wind of a ball" could cause internal injury orconcussion, often with fatal results.[3] The actual explanation for these cases, however, turned out to be the toughness and elasticity of thehuman skin.[4]
When attacking wooden ships or land structures that would be damaged by fire, the cannonball could be heated to red hot. This was called a "heated shot". (On the shot called "the single deadliest cannon shot in American history", seeNegro Fort.)
Round shot has the disadvantage of not being tightly fitted into the bore (to do so would cause jamming). This causes the shot to "rattle" down the gun barrel and leave the barrel at an angle, unlesswadding or a discardingsabot is used. This difference in shot and bore diameter is called "windage".
Round shot has been totally replaced by modernshells. Round shot is used in historical recreations and historical replica weapons.
In the 1860s, some round shots were equipped with winglets to benefit from therifling of cannons. Such round shot would benefit fromgyroscopic stability, thereby improving their trajectory, although already obsolete due to the existence of theogival shell[5] since the 1850s.
