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Federal
DIAMETER: 2.94 inches |
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| Benjamin Berkeley Hotchkiss patented an improvement for the Hotchkiss projectile on May 16, 1865, patent #47,725. According to his patent a wooden disk was to be inserted between the base cup and the base of the nose to decrease the risk of premature fracture of the shell during initial firing. The insufficient burning time of the standard-style Federal 5 1/4 second Bormann time fuze led to the development of the 14-second version for rifled ordnance. The protective cover of the Hotchkiss combination fuze pictured here was not removed prior to firing. The Hotchkiss sub-pattern projectile with a rounded base have been recovered from late-war battlefields, such as Petersburg, Virginia. | ||||