There have been recent endeavors to create huge shot-shell type rounds for the main gun of some current battle tanks, to increase their effectiveness in combatting infantry.
Now, in this day and age, rarely is an idea entirely new.
I was wondering, were there ever similar ideas in WWI? I could imagine the 6 pounders on male British tanks not being entirely effective at stopping infantry. Perhaps augmenting the tanks magazine with a percentage of shot-shells, would make the vehicle even deadlier.
British male tanks carried case shot, or rather something called case shot. Case shot is normally a thin canister filled with shot (musket balls). On leaving the muzzle the canister ruptures leaving the balls to continue in a spreading cloud - much like a giant shot gun. The case shot used in the tanks had the balls linked on lengths of wire making it a sort of mini chain shot. Very nasty and highly effective against infantry and field guns in the open.Case shot was very short range as (as with a shot gun) small balls loose momentum faster than large ones (its a factor of air resistance and weight - in a vacuum there would be no difference)
BTW there was also spherical case shot, eventualy renamed shrapnel after its inventor Henry Shrapnel. In this the casing did not disintigrate on leaving the gun but continued on with the same momentum as a normal shell. A small, timed, bursting charge would rupture the casing at the end of the flight leaving the shot to continue with the same momentum - much longer range. As shrapnel proved ineffective against troops in trenches it was abandoned in 1916. Technically speaking no one has been wounded of killed by shrapnel for 90 years - what is today called shrapnel is technically shell splinters from the bursting of the thicker casing of explosive shells. Shrapnel was not carried by tanks HE shells were.
Regarding shot, shrapnel, shell splinters and anti personel weapons 'The technology of killing' by Eric Prokosch (ISBN 1-85649-358-X) has a lot to offer on both definitions and technical development of anti personel weapons. The book covers mostly modern types (anti personel mines and cluster weapons) but has a good historical overview and some good technical description of terms like 'wound ballistics', 'tissue displacements', 'fragment ballistics' etc. Not a book for the faint hearted, although the book never gets 'gory' but is kept strictly technical.
