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The fuses could be set to different times, and artillerymen in the fire direction center would do the math to see what time setting was needed for maximum shrapnel burst.īut timed fuses were less than perfect, and small math errors could lead to a round going off too early, allowing the shrapnel to disperse and slow before reaching personnel and planes, or too late, allowing the round to get stuck deep into the dirt before going off - the dirt then absorbs the round’s energy and stops much of the shrapnel. The force of the shell being propelled out of the tube starts a timer in the fuse, and the shell detonates after a set duration. The best way of accomplishing this until 1940 was with a timed fuse. This allows for a much wider spread of lethal shrapnel. While flak and other timed-burst weapons could bring down planes, it typically took entire batteries firing at high rates to actually down anything.īut for anti-personnel, anti-aircraft, or just wide-area coverage fire, artillerymen want the round to go off a couple feet or a couple yards above the ground. bomber flies through clouds of flak with an engine smoking.
![proximity fuze proximity fuze](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/xHFgbtYaf7g/hqdefault.jpg)
This is great for hitting armored targets where you need the explosion pressed as closely as possible against the hull.Ī U.S. A split-second later, this sets off the main explosives in the shell and causes it to explode in a cloud of shrapnel. Impact fuses, sometimes known as crush fuses, go off when they impact something. Before World War II, there were two broad categories of fuses: impact and timed. These explosives are relatively stable, and require the activation of a fuse to detonate. Air defenders using timed fuses had to fire a lot of rounds to bring anything down.Īnti-aircraft and other artillery rounds typically consist of an outer shell packed with a large amount of high explosives. Specifically, impact and timed fuses were switched out for a weapon that had been hypothetical until then: the proximity fuse.Īnti-aircraft guns fire during World War II.
PROXIMITY FUZE UPGRADE
But it was one humble piece of equipment that got an early upgrade that may have actually tipped the war in America’s favor: the fuse. World War II was filled with flashy technological breakthroughs that would change warfare, both during that conflict and in wars to follow.