High-Explosive Round

Fig 64 HIGH-EXPLOSIVE ROUND M329 FOR 4.2-inch MORTAR M30... 

Nitrostarch was used as an explosive because it did not use the same precursor chemicals as TNT or amatol. The Trojan Powder Company at Allentown, Pennsylvania, produced up to 1,720,000 pounds per month. It was used in the 3-inch Stokes mortar and in hand grenades. DuPont also made a form of nitrostarch called grenite. Nitrostarch is a flour-based explosive often mischaracterized by EOD persoimel as a flour-filled inert round instead of a high-explosive round. 

Nitrocellulose (gun cotton was loaded into some high-explosive rounds)... 

High-Explosive-Antitank (HEAT).. This is a special HE type, the effect of which derives from its shaped charge. The metal cone which shapes the charge, standoff (provided by projectile design), fuze action, and rotation affect depth of penetration. In high-velocity HEAT rounds, greater penetration is achieved with fin-stabilization and spin-compensation... 

HEI-T, SD (High-Explosive, Incendiary-Tracer, Shell Destroying) Projectile is described here as 40-mm Fixed Ammunition MK2 MK11 for Automatic Guns and its complete round is shown in Fig 34 (See also Ref 40b, p 27 and Ref 52, p 2-19)... 

In Fig l-21b is shown a complete explosive train (comprising both low- and high-explosive trains) in fixed round of artillery ammunition... 

Figure 1. Diagram of an Assembled Round of High-Explosive Ammunition. The picture is diagrammatic, for the purpose of illustrating the functions of the various parts, and does not correspond exactly to any particular piece of ammunition.

A recent example of chemical energy ammo utilizing this principle are so-called HESH (High Explosive Squash Head) rounds. In this type of round, a large quantity of plastic HE is carried in a shell. When it strikes armor plate, the HE filling mushrooms on the armor face, and a base fuze detonates it. This system does not go thru the plate — the shock wave from the detonation is transmitted thru it. When it reaches the far side it is reflected back, which overstresses the metal on the inside of the plate so that a large scab , often several feet across, is de-... 

This bomb uses the smallest rcfillable propane bottle commercially available. The 5-gallon size is the common, squat, round bottle used for trailers and barbecue grills and holds a little more than 20 pounds of liquefied propane when full. A 10-pound high-explosive main charge detonates this bomb. To prepare ... 

Contrast this record with high-explosive, rifle, and machine-gun casualty results. About 5,000,000,000 lb. of high explosives w ere used by all belligerents in the war, from which it is estimated 10,000,000 battle casualties resulted thus each casualty required 500 Ib. of high explofflve. Again, a total of 50,000,000,000 rounds of rifle and machine-gun ammunitiim produced 10,000,000 casualties thus each casualty required 5,000 rounds. 

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