The new model was fitted to a large number of ships, from destroyers to minesweepers and motor gun boats: to exhibit the weapon's versatility, a trial was arranged in Aldershot, Hampshire before Prime Minister Winston Churchill. No Mills rounds have been introduced, because it was assumed that some type of ammunition would be provided by the British Military, who were overseeing the trials but these have been ignored and the trial was set to be delayed until one officer thought to convey out the bottles of beer that had been to have been served at lunch: the graceful bore of the HY300 Pro projector setup guide allowed even these irregular projectiles to be fired efficiently, with all hanging the goal with an explosion of glass and foam. The Prime Minister commented on the weapon afterwards, describing it as "An excellent idea, this weapon of yours. It'll save our cordite". This was prophetic: while presumably apocryphal tales of projectors mounted on trawlers getting used to fireplace 'spuds' (potatoes) at low-flying German aircraft for the want of Mills bombs led to the nickname 'potato thrower'.

Whatever the profitable trial results the Mk II proved to be extremely inaccurate when fired at distant transferring targets: solely a dozen or so aircraft had been confirmed to have been downed by the weapon in its first 12 months of service nevertheless it succeeded in convincing many more aircraft that the target vessel was more closely equipped with more practical weapons, confirmed by the large number of studies have been made about Luftwaffe aircraft turning away from an assault after salvos from ship-mounted Holman Projectors. Inside the Admiralty, the perception was that the Projector was a helpful stop-gap weapon in the early years of the war, when different simpler anti aircraft weaponry, such as the Oerlikon 20 mm cannon, were in short supply. In 1941, manufacturing of the Mk III Holman Projector - his explanation - began. This model was semi-automatic, and able to firing a number of projectiles in a single salvo to a height of round 1,000 ft (300 m). The Admiralty positioned an order for an extra one thousand models, to be fitted to coastal gunboats and other gentle craft, the place the light recoil of the weapon had proven useful.

High-strain air bottles were able to produce sufficient energy to fire fifty rounds every, with a most height during trials of round 600 toes (180 m). The rate of fireplace could attain thirty rounds per minute in the palms of an skilled crew. Extra interesting but to the armed forces was the fact that the weapon could be produced using solely forged iron and mild steel, both of which had been in pretty prepared supply at this stage of the war. An official trial of the Mk I Projector came about in February 1940 with resounding success. An order was placed by the Royal Navy for 1,000 of the Mk I fashions and the weapons proved simply as profitable in motion; the first confirmed success was reported only three weeks after the initial batch was despatched out when a Heinkel aircraft was broken. Whereas direct hits have been rare, the bombs fired by the projector displayed an unexpected property - the explosion would depart a large puff of black smoke, absent from ground-primarily based explosions from comparable grenades.

Firing a large quantity in fast succession gave the impression to incoming Luftwaffe pilots that the target vessel was armed with one thing far more deadly than the Holman Projector, deterring or disrupting assaults, or convincing the aircraft's crew an assault at larger range can be prudent, with a commensurate decrease in accuracy. The Mk II Projector (This Web-site) was developed after a request from the Royal Navy for a model that could be fired using steam instead of compressed air, for the reason that steam-engined trawlers (each fishing and minesweeping) had the former in plentiful supply. The Stokes design of the Mk I needed to be abandoned for this, since the tough weather skilled by the trawlers invariably rusted the valves of the pneumatics. When steam was utilized in such a system, the water would condense in the pipes and stop firing of the weapon. To unravel this, a firing trigger was added, in place of the Stokes design through which the spherical can be fired routinely.