Book Review - THE HALF SHELL BOOK
THE HALF SHELL BOOK
By Jack W. Melton, Jr.
Published 2018.
I recently received a copy of the book "Civil War Artillery Projectiles - The Half Shell Book " by Jack W. Melton, Jr. My friend and Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) tech CWO4 John D. "Bart" Bartleson, Jr., USN Retired (1936 - 2016) wrote the forward for the book. For many years "Bart" was the historian for the Navy EOD Association (NEODA). Bart authored the book "Civil War Explosive Ordnance 1861 - 1865," U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972, which contains radiographs (x-rays) of Civil War ordnance (available on PDF). Many of Bart's original radiographs are used in the book as examples.
This book is the most detailed and comprehensive book on Civil War artillery ordnance that I have encountered. No light reading here. It is written from an ordnance engineer/designer perspective, with analysis of manufacturing, metallurgy, fuzing, active and non-active filler, plus historical usage of the munitions and where a particular piece of ordnance was found.