Bullet and Shell Civil War Projectiles Forum
Relic Discussion => Artillery => Topic started by: noonanda on August 09, 2017, 01:06:40 PM
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Gentlemen,
I have a question concerning Confederate Iron Case shot. Where I have been detecting Around chancellorsville, I have found case shots of varying sizes, all in the same area, some visibly smaller than others. some slightly larger than .69 cal.
Has anyone else seen this before?
here is a picture of some of them with a slightly flattened lead .69 Cal for size reference (it is slightly larger than .69 cal in the diameter shown in the picture) The 2 right side middle ones IIRC are just smaller than/ around .69 Cal, whereas the 3 above are much smaller, and the 4 lower left are larger.
(https://image.ibb.co/kZ03Kv/20751186_10213279621612491_1197353982_n.jpg)
more pictures can be seen here https://ibb.co/album/gWfZ1F
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This is a picture of the iron case shot out of a 24 pounder I picked up from Harry. The ball was recovered from Bermuda Hundred and he said he took every ball out of the shell (about 100 balls) when he restored it. The case shot look to be identical to the ones you recovered from Chancellorsville. Some are smaller than others and all from the same ball. I didn't want to take all the balls out because it makes a mess with all the black powder remnants.
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I dug 167 of these in one day at an exploded Confederate ammo dump about 10 miles north of Vicksburg, MS. They are nice finds.
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CS case shot as well as canister were made in many sizes. Case shot were bigger in bigger projectiles. This photo if it comes through on this website shows some of the sizes and reassembled canisters from Selma that I found over the years.
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I have many case shot from Wilmington, NC and they are in a full array of sizes.
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Are the different sizes found in a single projectile done on purpose (I.e, optimizing some sort of calculus of battlefield lethality) or out of necessity (I.e., just using what's available)?
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Are the different sizes found in a single projectile done on purpose (I.e, optimizing some sort of calculus of battlefield lethality) or out of necessity (I.e., just using what's available)?
I wondered the same thing myself
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I have always thought it was what was available to fill the can. I have had a couple late war river find canister dug intact with varying shot sizes. I had one from Savannah that also had nails and bolts in it.