PREFACE
TO
FIRST
EDITION.
The Official Text Book is probably the most perfect treatise on Gunnery now existing in any language. Many officers are, however, deterred from studying it by the real or imaginary terrors of the mathematical demonstrations with which its pages bristle. For officers whose business it is to design and to make guns, carriages and ammunition, an exact mathematical knowledge of the science of Gunnery is indispensable; but for officers who have to use the gun it is sUfficient to have a clear understanding of the principles of Gunnery, in order that they may be able to apply these principles to the best advantage in handling their guns. Thus, it is not necessary that a Field Battery Commander should know how to calculate the strains in the buffers of his guns, but it is most desirable that he should know that his shrapnel bullets cover a wider front at a long range than at a short one, if burst at the same distance from the target, and why this is so. This book is intended 'to serve two purposes: first, as an easily understood manual for those whose daily duty leaves them no time to attack and thoroughly master such a difficult science as Gunnery; and secondly, it is intended as an introduction to the study of more advanced books. Many of the facts stated in this elementary manual have to be accepted without proof, as, for instance, Barlow's Law, and it is hoped that many readers will be dissatisfied with such unsupported statements and will be at the trouble to read up the demonstration of them in more Scientific books. The general scheme of this book differs in one respect from that of previous treatises on the same subject. Hitherto the science of Gunnery has been held to include only theoretical ballistics and the theory of gun con.struction. But with the advent of the Q.F. gun the principles of the deSIgn of the carriage and of the ammunition have assumed an importance least equal to those governing the design of the gun;. and a sound dn~wledge of these principles is indispensable both to the officer who eSIgns the equipment and to his comrade who has to use it.
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