WWII'ish Misfire drill and HE\spgr?

[marty_01]

Perhaps the wrong forum to ask this sort of question. I was reading a T.Jentz's book "Panzertruppen". They talked about problems with casing extraction of 50mm KwK projectiles. The casing would hang up in the breech.

This got me wondering about misfire drills associated with explosive\spgr shells. What if an HE projectile misfires and for whatever reason the shell casing is lodged in the breech. How would these guys go about extracting the projectile. I was thinking of cleaning rods or a ram rod and pushing from the muzzle. But than I am thinking "how wise is that if the HE\spgr has a nose fuze set to super-quick". Is the nose fuze active? Or does the nose fuze require the accleration of getting fired to activate the fuze. How stupid is it to try and push the round out from the muzzle when I am pushing on the nose with a ram rod?

 

[StielGr]

The majority of percussion nose fuses that are direct action or graze action will have ay least one safety mechanism.
The German fuses had a spring system and small weighted blocks. When the projectile was spinning up the barrel the centrifugal force caused the blocks to move out and then allow a free path for the striker when the shell stopped.

If I remember right for a misfired projectile there was a blank extra charged shell case to try and get it free.

PC

 

[Gspragge]

We used a bronze

cone shaped fitting on the ram rod that did not directly contact the PD fuze.
This was on the 105 Howitzer, but I imagine every one used something like that. Under fire in a tank might be another matter~

 

[marty_01]

Thanks for the replies. I know that was a pretty obscure question.

 

[US-Subs]

There are a number of unclassified EOD procedures for lodged projectiles which were used when the gun crew's normal drills failed. Without going into specifics, this involved flooding the barrel with water and using a variable amount of energetics to be functioned mid-way down the barrel, propelling the projectile rearward. In this manner you did not complete the arming sequence of the fuze.

There were a number of problems associated with this, it is pretty rough on the barrels and you need to be very cautious to follow the specifics of the pubs. There are a number of factors that can go wrong, you are dealing with some serious pressures in a manner that the weapon/projectile/fuze were not designed for. Not a trick you would do for parties.