Landships II

theburk · Captain

flechettes?

Drader · Lieutenant

The original flechettes were dropped by hand (or scattered) from low flying aircraft as anti-personnel weapons. The vaning on the tails gave them a bit of spin and made them fall a little straighter. They fell out of use once aircraft started to mount machine guns.

BTW flechette ammunition was used by tank guns (and other artillery) in Vietnam - these were known as beehive rounds.

David

-- Edited by Drader at 12:32, 2006-12-13

Centurion · Legend

If one was unfortunate to be hit by one it would probably drill right through you but the chance of being hit was low. If infantry had still operated in wide tightly packed columns out in the open as in Napoleonic times - perhaps they might have been viable but the hit rate against infantry in open order or in trench systems was very low or even zero - this was the same problem with real shrapnel (spherical case shot). In both cases explosive fragmentation weapons (bombs or shells) producing splinters (what today is called shrapnel) was found to be much more effective.

Tim R · Hero

Hey Guys, Here is a little information on Flechettes.

Flechettes are fin stabilized steel projectiles similar in appearance to arrows which have a long history of munitions use. The first projectiles used in early gun systems from the 1300's were flechettes1, they were hand wrought of iron and wrapped with a leather sabot obturating the bore. They exhibited high lethality but fell from early use due to the complexity and expense of manufacture in pre-industrial society, being generally replaced by easily made stone cannon balls.

Flechettes again came into use during the first large scale technological war of 1914-1918, World War 1. With the advent of the industrial revolution and modern metallurgy mass production of flechette projectiles could be cost effectively attained. The typical uses of flechettes were as antipersonnel projectiles dropped from aircraft over enemy lines of defense and troop concentration. The flechettes were 4 inches long weighing 1 1/2 to 2 ounces and capable of penetrating a combatant from head to foot and creating an instantly incapacitating wound. Flechettes were also used as the projectile of choice in the first electromagnetic rail guns2 that were used as artillery by the French against the Germans. (The first electromagnetic rail gun, invented by Andre Fauchon-Villeplee, was used as early as 1917 and utilized the fin area of the flechette as an induction plane for the electromotive force of the rail gun.)

Late 20th century interest in flechette projectiles was rekindled by the first cold war conflict of 1950-1953, the Korean War. The conflict was characterized by the Chinese army tactic of human wave attacks against U.S. lines of defense, and enemy personnel ratios of over 10 to 1. Fundamental thinking about the use of single and multiple projectiles against personnel changed in conjunction with studies of actual combat requirements and effectiveness. The use of flechettes in single and multiple projectile systems for small arms and antipersonnel (APERS) use was accepted and a multiplicity of systems were developed for both criteria3, most are currently in use and new systems are under development.

All the Best

Tim R

theburk · Captain

yes, i recall them mentioning that in "the land ironclad" and how they would refuse them to explode before impact, acting like a giant shotgun of sorts.

eugene · Field Marshal

I have a drawing of how a aircraft would deploy the flechettes Ill try to scan it within reasonable time

Tim R · Hero

Hello Guys

I thought these may be of interest.

1.Is from an old French Magazine

2. Original Flechettes, British

Both were found The Great War Forum.

All the Best

Tim R

-- Edited by Tim R at 01:00, 2006-12-21

-- Edited by Tim R at 01:02, 2006-12-21

Les Fowler · Sergeant

Not too long ago I saw several WW1 flechettes for sale on ebay.
They did look a bit different than the ones in your pics , more like little "rocket ships ".

eugene · Field Marshal

here is a diagram showing how the flechettes would be deployed

Centurion · Legend

Eugene

Thats but one of a number of different ways of delivering the things. Bear with me and I'll post a brief paper.

Paratus23 · Sergeant

As an Australian Leopard tank troop leader nearly 30 years ago, I remember using a 105mm US made flechette round (the M546) which we called a beehive round. We carried a maximum of 5 or 6 of these rounds in a bombload, and used them as a long range antipersonnel weapon. The projectile was fused so that it could be set to go off at ranges out to 4.400m, or it could be fired as muzzle action. Each projectile carried around 8000 steel flechettes, each of which looked very similar to the photo GermanF4.jpg in theburk's post. I still remember how tricky it was to get the fuse setting right, so that the thing went off neither too close nor too far from the target. It had a small puff of yellow smoke to indicate where the flechettes were released, no smoke meant the projectile had spudded in - most embarrassing!

The M546 was eventually considered too expensive, and we replaced it with an Australian designed cannister round, much like a shotgun. However I'm sure that flechette rounds are still in use in modern tanks.

Dave

Rectalgia · Legend

Here is a manual on Fliegerpfeil (flyer's arrows/darts) I download from somewhere a while back. Unfortunately my freebie OCR German-Fraktur OCR makes a mess of converting. Obviously early war when "bombing" with inert objects was considered highly effective. The final page notes the superiority of the German and Austrio-Hungarian aviators in the use of these little darts. (Not quite sure why the heading of that page is about U-boat motherships, presumably that is the article that followed and is snipped from the page shown.) Needless to say a summary/precis English translation would be appreciated if any care to try their hands.