Word: brassed
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Jamie Brooke's grandnephew, Sir Charles Vyner Brooke, now Raja of Sarawak, said some bitter words on this matter in Australia, in ironic counterpoint to Grand-uncle Jamie's complacency: "Brass hats . . . lah-di-dah old-school-tie incompetents, who are responsible for the fantastic position in Malaya, should be sacked immediately. When I left, I was given to understand that, should Sarawak be attacked, it would receive air support. The only protection over Sarawak today is Dutch...
Steel-helmeted, fortified with tommy guns and flasks of vin ordinaire, landing parties took over the village in less than half an hour. Eleven brass-buttoned, picture-postcard gendarmes shrugged their shoulders, helped round up their superior officers. Most administrative officers were told to stay at their posts, but suave Parisian Baron Gilbert de Bournat, Administrator, was called to account before the flotilla's commandant, Vice Admiral Emile Henri Muselier, Commander of the Free French naval forces...
Steel may soon replace brass in U.S. shell casings; and if it does, the substitution will cut by nearly 50% 1942's estimated copper shortage of 770,000 tons...
...been found that some of steel's former disadvantages can be overcome by plating it thinly with copper. This protects the steel from 1) rust, 2) damage by powder fumes, which corrode unplated steel casings so badly that they can be used only once, though brass casings can be re-used four times. Copperplated steel casings, however, seem to be resistant enough to be re-used 15 times-a great saving even though steel is harder to tool in the first place...
...great advantage of brass casings is that, at detonation, they quickly heat up, expand, seal the gun breech; then they quickly cool, shrink, can easily be ejected. Steel has a slower heat conductivity, a lesser coefficient of expansion, which can probably be somewhat overcome by crafty alloying...