Always wondered why 155mm artillery are not equipped with “shot gun” shells that can be radar directed aimed, positioned and fired at aircraft up to twelve miles away. Also why weren’t the big guns on battleships equipped with such shells to aid in anti aircraft defense. The Yamato was sunk with multiple hits by aircraft who were teeing off on the ship with almost no effective AA to disrupt them. If those big 18 inch guns fired “shot gun” shells at their attackers, suspect the attacks would have been less effective. Shot gun shells may also be last line of defense for surface combatants facing incoming missiles or drones.
Good Luck to those Indian defenders !They don’t seem to have much of a choice,but are willing to do what’s necessary to
defend their Country.
These things are for killing people, usually large groups of them, at long distances. When they get close enough to be annoying, we were trained to fire at them ("direct fire") using either an HE round time fuzed at something brief - or there used to be a flechette round for the 105mm that would have been your "Buchshot round".
We would always do our best to not let them get that close, or our gun would end up being a lawn ornament for their VFW hall.
In short, unless the enemy plane was very slow-moving, a manually cranked 4 1/2 ton cannon with a very limited arc would be a very poor choice.
The Yamato-Class battleships ( both of them) did have an 18.1 "buckshot round" for antiaircraft fires and they used those rounds enthusiastically during the battles around the Phillipines in 1944 and for the Yamato alone on its way to Okinawa. Didn't hit anybody as far as anyone knows and not all that many crews survived so we don't have any of their accounts about how effective they thought they were.