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Concept
Rifled breech loader
Summary
A rifled breech loader (RBL) is an artillery piece which, unlike the smoothbore cannon and rifled muzzle loader (RML) which preceded it, has rifling in the barrel and is loaded from the breech at the rear of the gun.
The spin imparted by the gun's rifling gives projectiles directional stability and increased range. Loading from the rear of the gun leaves the crew less exposed to enemy fire, allows smaller gun emplacements or turrets, and allows a faster rate of fire.
These rapidly improving breech systems and the powerful new guns they facilitated led to an arms race in fortification and ironclad warship design that lead to the battleship class of HMS Dreadnought and continued until the start of World War I.
The major problem to be solved with breechloading artillery was obturation: the sealing of the breech after firing to ensure that none of the gases generated by the burning of the propellant (initially gunpowder) escaped rearwards through the breech. This was both a safety issue and one of gun performance – all the propellant gas was needed to accelerate the projectile along the barrel.
The second problem was speed of operation – how to close the breech before firing and open it after firing as quickly as possible consistent with safety.
Two solutions were developed more or less in parallel, the "screw breech" block and "sliding wedge" or "sliding block".
At the time of development of the first modern breechloaders in the mid-19th century, gunpowder propellant charges for artillery were typically loaded in cloth bags, which combusted totally on firing. Hence, unlike with a metal rifle cartridge, the breech mechanism itself somehow needed to provide obturation.
The early "screw" mechanisms for sealing the breech consisted of threaded blocks which were screwed tightly into the breech after loading, but the threads themselves were insufficient to provide a gas-tight seal.
Official source
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