"Firing into the Brown" #90 - large projectiles, dames and stuff

"So Carnehan weeds out the pick of his men, and sets the two of the Army to show them drill and at the end of two weeks the men can manoeuvre about as well as Volunteers. So he marches with the Chief to a great big plain on the top of a mountain, and the Chiefs men rushes into a village and takes it; we three Martinis firing into the brown of the enemy".

Kipling "The Man Who Would Be King"

Time for another update..   somewhat unbelievably this is my 1,110th post, but is a bit of a mish-mash (in fact, a true 'Firing into the Brown' article😏) as I have been mostly busy elsewhere ..

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Blimey!

Charge and projectiles for a 18 inch heavy artillery gun - AP shell on the left, HE shell middle, propellant/charge on the right.. piccie taken sometime between 1920-1924 and courtesy of the Imperial War Museum

...as to what fired it, well there was a Royal Navy gun of that calibre, but it was largely done and dusted with by the time this picture was taken, so I'm going to assume they may have been from the Royal Artillery's 18" Railway Howitzer [clicky]

...either way - your day ain't going to get any better if either one of those shells lands on you... 😏

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..another one to add to the fort-speak dictionary...

...that (the pointy hatted stack, centre) my friends, is called a "Dame" - it's purpose is defensive, specifically, obstructive. In this example it's is on the roof of the caponier (see previous dictionary entry 😏) to stop anyone attacking along the roof, but they could reasonably be on the top of any wall or covered way that you want to obstruct access along.....  possibly apocryphal story for the source of the name is that they are named for a large lady you can't get your arms around.... 😁

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It's been noted among the Bloggeratti that something funny is going on - lots are reporting excessive page views in the last month or two, but this is even funnier than most of what's been reported.. when I looked a few hours ago, that one (which was the post before this), was less than 14K.. so it's increased by 400 odd views in just a couple of hours!  

Now bear in mind my usual page view is 2 to 300, you can understand I'm fascinated to see how high it's going to go... 😂

Utterly meaningless of course - it's just some AI/ChatGPT/data mining bot, working overtime in a dark computer hall somewhere....

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Laters, as the young people are want to say... crossed fingers for a more informative post next time... 😁