WI: No de Bange system?

Charles de Bange was a French artillery officer who in 1872 manage to invent the so-called de Bange system, a method for safely sealing breech-loading cannons. (Before this they'd had an unfortunate tendency to explode in the middle of battle, due to the stress of repeated firing.) What if de Bange had never been born, and the system he invented was either not invented at all or at least delayed by several decades? How would military tactics and technology develop without him?

One difference would probably be the absence of the sort of massive naval guns which battleships IOTL started carrying in the late 19th century. Since it would now be harder to penetrate enemy armour, we might see torpedoes taking over as the primary naval weapon instead. Since torpedo boats tended to be quite small, this could result in navies building a large number of smaller vessels instead of a few big battleships as they did IOTL.
 
You are too late. Krupp already have a breach mechanism based on a sliding block and a brass case at the end of the ammunition load. It scales up just fine, not just to battleship guns, but to literally the largest cannon ever made. And the de Bange system is just scaling up a known principle, using a cup under recoil to squeeze a ring or pad out and seal the breach. It's too obvious an approach for someone not to figure out how to make it work for artillery.
 
You are too late. Krupp already have a breach mechanism based on a sliding block and a brass case at the end of the ammunition load. It scales up just fine, not just to battleship guns, but to literally the largest cannon ever made.

Do you have a source for that? All the information I've seen suggests that the de Bange system was the first reliable method for sealing breech-loaders.
 
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