Technology: Protecting the Package

In the desert at China Lake, Calif., Army ordnancemen play catch with artillery shells. It is a dangerous and demanding game. For as scientists cram the shells with proximity fuses and nuclear warheads, the ordnancemen must learn how to protect the package on its way from gun to target. Their research requires that they examine shells after they have been subjected to the searing heat and crunching pressures of firing, but before they have been damaged in landing. So the old-fashioned weapon is getting space age treatment.

The high-powered game of catch begins with a supersonic rocket sled streaking down three miles of rail shoved by five Nike-Hercules missile engines (see diagram). After traveling along the track for half a mile, the sled is moving at more than 1,000 m.p.h. and its rockets are cut off. Split seconds later, a pair of iss-mm. howitzers beside the track blast away at the decelerating sled. Their shells, moving at 1,088 m.p.h., quickly catch up with the target, slam into it, and are stopped with scarcely a scratch by a bale of synthetic rubber. Then the sled itself splashes to a stop in a trough of water.

The daring experiment was devised three years ago by Engineers Anthony Gogliucci and Ralph Vecchio from the Army’s Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey. By catching the shells in midflight, they are able to assess the damage caused by firing. Hopefully, their observations will help them to prescribe the proper design and materials to maintain the difficult hairline balance between strength and weight. By last week 40 shells had been fired, and new alloys and casing designs have already been contrived for the Army’s 155-mm. shells.