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Holman Projector
The Holman Projector was an anti-aircraft weapon used by the Royal Navy during World War II, primarily between early 1940 and late 1941. The weapon was proposed and designed by Holmans, a machine tool manufacturer based at Camborne, Cornwall. A number of models were produced during the war years, but all worked on the principle of a pneumatic mortar, using compressed air or high pressure steam to fire an explosive projectile at enemy aircraft.〔Lambert ''et al.'', 1990, p191〕 The device was intended primarily as a stop-gap defensive weapon for British merchant ships, which had been suffering heavy losses from Luftwaffe aircraft flying anti-shipping missions. The low altitude that such strikes often took place (such as during torpedo attacks by Heinkel He 111's or skip-bombing attacks by Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor maritime patrol aircraft) meant that even a weapon of such limited range and velocity could throw up an effective screen of fire over a vessel, even if only to create a distracting or deterrent effect. Of course, its short range made it ineffective against normal bombing attacks from higher altitudes, but forcing the enemy to bomb from greater heights much reduced bombing accuracy, and the weapon was far cheaper, and easier to build and install in great numbers than conventional anti-aircraft artillery.
Holmans specialised in producing gas compressors and pneumatic equipment and its owner, Treve Holman, conceived a way that his firm could aid in the war effort beyond the production of tools. Recalling the World War I-era Stokes Mortar and its successor, the Ordnance ML 3 inch Mortar, Holman believed that it would be possible to produce a version powered by compressed air. Preliminary tests showed that the idea was feasible, with an early prototype throwing an eighteen-pound steel weight nearly .
==Mk I==
The design eventually settled on for the Mk I featured a 4½ foot unrifled steel barrel. Rounds were dropped down the barrel from the muzzle, and the pneumatic system triggered instantly upon the round striking the base. The rounds themselves were made from an open-topped metal container, holding a Mills bomb fitted with a 3.5 second fuse. High-pressure air bottles were able to supply enough power to fire fifty rounds each, with a maximum height during trials of around . The rate of fire could reach thirty rounds per minute in the hands of an experienced crew. More appealing yet to the armed forces was the fact that the weapon could be produced using only cast iron and mild steel, both of which were in fairly ready supply at this stage of the war.
An official trial of the Mk I Projector took place in February, 1940 with resounding success. An order was placed by the Royal Navy for 1000 of the Mk I models, and the weapons proved just as successful in action; the first confirmed success reported only three weeks after the initial batch were sent out when a Heinkel aircraft was damaged. While direct hits were rare, the bombs fired by the projector displayed an unexpected property — the explosion would leave a large puff of black smoke, absent from ground-based explosions from similar grenades. Firing a large number in quick succession gave the impression to incoming Luftwaffe pilots that the target vessel was armed with something far more deadly than the Holman Projector, thus deterring him, disrupting the attack, or convincing the aircraft to attack from a greater range, with a commensurate decrease in accuracy.
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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