Editing Shrapnel shell (section)

{{Short description|Anti-personnel artillery munitions}}
{{About|the Shrapnel artillery shell|fragmentation of artillery shells in general|Fragmentation (weaponry)}}
[[File:Shrapnel shell.gif|thumb|right|Animation of a bursting shrapnel shell]]
[[File:Illustrated War News, Dec. 23, 1914, page 38, right side - British Gunners in Action at the Front.jpg|thumb|Setting a time fuse (left) and loading a shell into a gun]]
'''Shrapnel shells''' were [[anti-personnel weapon|anti-personnel]] artillery munitions that carried many individual [[bullets]] close to a target area and then ejected them to allow them to continue along the shell's trajectory and strike targets individually. They relied almost entirely on the shell's velocity for their lethality. The munition has been obsolete since the end of [[World War I]] for anti-personnel use; [[high explosive shell|high-explosive shells]] superseded it for that role. The functioning and principles behind shrapnel shells are fundamentally different from high-explosive shell [[fragmentation (weaponry)|fragmentation]]. '''Shrapnel''' is named after Lieutenant-General [[Henry Shrapnel]], a [[Royal Artillery]] officer, whose experiments, initially conducted on his own time and at his own expense, culminated in the [[design]] and development of a new type of [[artillery shell]].<ref>{{Cite DNB |wstitle= Shrapnel, Henry |volume= 52 |last= Vetch |first= Robert Hamilton |author-link= Robert Hamilton Vetch |pages = 163–165 |short=1}}</ref>

Usage of the term "shrapnel" has changed over time to also refer to fragmentation of the casing of shells and bombs, which is its most common modern usage and strays from the original meaning.<ref name=shrapneldef>{{Cite journal|url= http://www.history.army.mil/faq/shrapnel.htm|title= What is the difference between artillery shrapnel and shell fragments?|date= March 1952|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20170210123724/http://www.history.army.mil/faq/shrapnel.htm|archive-date= 10 February 2017|journal= Combat Forces Journal}}
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