Artillery Through the Ages

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Sometimes, as at Guilford Courthouse, the ever-present forest
diminished the effectiveness of artillery, but nevertheless the arm
was often put to good use. The skill of the American gunners at
Yorktown contributed no little toward the speedy advance of the siege
trenches. Yorktown battlefield today has many examples of
Revolutionary War cannon, including some fine ship guns recovered from
British vessels sunk during the siege of 1781.

In Europe, meanwhile, Frederick the Great of Prussia learned how to
use cannon in the campaigns of the Seven Years' War (1756-63). The
education was forced upon him as gradual destruction of his veteran
infantry made him lean more heavily on artillery. To keep pace with
cavalry movements, he developed a horse artillery that moved rapidly
along with the cavalry. His field artillery had only light guns and
howitzers. With these improvements he could establish small batteries
at important points in the battle line, open the fight, and protect
the deployment of his columns with light guns. What was equally
significant, he could change the position of his batteries according
to the course of the action.

Frederick sent his 3- and 6-pounders ahead of the infantry. Gunners
dismounted 500 paces from the enemy and advanced on foot, pushing
their guns ahead of them, firing incessantly and using grape shot
during the latter part of their advance. Up to closest range they
went, until the infantry caught up, passed through the artillery line,
and stormed the enemy position. Remember that battle was pretty
formal, with musketeers standing or kneeling in ranks, often in full
view of the enemy!

[Illustration: Figure 9--FRENCH 12-POUNDER FIELD GUN (c. 1780).]

Perhaps the outstanding artilleryman of the 1700's was the Frenchman
Jean Baptiste de Gribeauval, who brought home a number of ideas after
serving with the capable Austrian artillery against Frederick. The
great reform in French artillery began in 1765, although Gribeauval
was not able to effect all of his changes until he became Inspector
General of Artillery in 1776. He all but revolutionized French
artillery, and vitally influenced other countries.

Gribeauval's artillery came into action at a gallop and smothered
enemy batteries with an overpowering volume of fire. He created a
distinct materiel for field, siege, garrison, and coast artillery. He
reduced the length and weight of the pieces, as well as the charge and
the windage (the difference between the diameters of shot and bore);
he built carriages so that many parts were interchangeable, and made
soldiers out of the drivers. For siege and garrison he adopted 12- and
16-pounder guns, an 8-inch howitzer and 8-, 10-, and 12-inch mortars.
For coastal fortifications he used the traversing platform which,
having rear wheels that ran upon a track, greatly simplified the
training of a gun right or left upon a moving target (fig. 10).
Gribeauval-type materiel was used with the greatest effect in the new
tactics which Napoleon introduced.

Napoleon owed much of his success to masterly use of artillery. Under
this captain there was no preparation for infantry advance by slowly
disintegrating the hostile force with artillery fire. Rather, his
artillerymen went up fast into closest range, and by actually
annihilating a portion of the enemy line with case-shot fire, covered
the assault so effectively that columns of cavalry and infantry
reached the gap without striking a blow!

After Napoleon, the history of artillery largely becomes a record of
its technical effectiveness, together with improvements or changes in
putting well-established principles into action.

UNITED STATES GUNS OF THE EARLY 1800's

The United States adopted the Gribeauval system of artillery carriages
in 1809, just about the time it was becoming obsolete (the French
abandoned it in 1829). The change to this system, however, did not
include adoption of the French gun calibers. Early in the century cast
iron replaced bronze as a gunmetal, a move pushed by the growing
United States iron industry; and not until 1836 was bronze readopted
in this country for mobile cannon. In the meantime, U. S. Artillery in
the War of 1812 did most of its fighting with iron 6-pounders. Fort
McHenry, which is administered by the National Park Service as a
national monument and historic shrine, has a few ordnance pieces of
the period.

[Illustration: Figure 10--U. S. 32-POUNDER ON BARBETTE CARRIAGE
(1860).]

During the Mexican War, the artillery carried 6- and 12-pounder guns,
the 12-pounder mountain howitzer (a light piece of 220 pounds which
had been added for the Indian campaigns), a 12-pounder field howitzer
(788 pounds), the 24- and 32-pounder howitzers, and 8- and 10-inch
mortars. For siege, garrison, and seacoast there were pieces of 16
types, ranging from a 1-pounder to the giant 10-inch Columbiad of
7-1/2 tons. In 1857, the United States adopted the 12-pounder Napoleon
gun-howitzer, a bronze smoothbore designed by Napoleon III, and this
muzzle-loader remained standard in the army until the 1880's.

The naval ironclads, which were usually armed with powerful 11- or
15-inch smoothbores, were a revolutionary development in mid-century.
They were low-hulled, armored, steam vessels, with one or two
revolving turrets. Although most cannonballs bounced from the armor,
lack of speed made the "cheese box on a raft" vulnerable, and poor
visibility through the turret slots was a serious handicap in battle.

[Illustration: Figure 11--U. S. NAVY 9-INCH SHELL-GUN ON MARSILLY
CARRIAGE (1866).]

While 20-, 30-, and 60-pounder Parrott rifles soon made an appearance
in the Federal Navy, along with Dahlgren's 12- and 20-pounder rifled
howitzers, the Navy relied mainly upon its "shell-guns": the 9-, 10-,
11-, and 15-inch iron smoothbores. There were also 8-inch guns of 55
and 63 "hundredweight" (the contemporary naval nomenclature), and four
sizes of 32-pounders ranging from 27 to 57 hundredweight. The heavier
guns took more powder and got slightly longer ranges. Many naval guns
of the period are characterized by a hole in the cascabel, through
which the breeching tackle was run to check recoil. The Navy also had
a 13-inch mortar, mounted aboard ship on a revolving circular
platform. Landing parties were equipped with 12- or 24-pounder
howitzers either on boat carriages (a flat bed something like a mortar
bed) or on three-wheeled "field" carriages.

RIFLING

Rifling, by imparting a spin to the projectile as it travels along the
spiral grooves in the bore, permits the use of a long projectile and
ensures its flight point first, with great increase in accuracy. The
longer projectile, being both heavier and more streamlined than round
shot of the same caliber, also has a greater striking energy.

Though Benjamin Robins was probably the first to give sound reasons,
the fact that rifling was helpful had been known a long time. A 1542
barrel at Woolwich has six fine spiral grooves in the bore. Straight
grooving had been applied to small arms as early as 1480, and during
the 1500's straight grooving of musket bores was extensively
practiced. Probably, rifling evolved from the early observation of the
feathers on an arrow--and from the practical results of cutting
channels in a musket, originally to reduce fouling, then because it
was found to improve accuracy of the shot. Rifled small-arm efficiency
was clearly shown at Kings Mountain during the American Revolution.

In spite of earlier experiments, however, it was not until the 1840's
that attempts to rifle cannon could be called successful. In 1846,
Major Cavelli in Italy and Baron Wahrendorff in Germany independently
produced rifled iron breech-loading cannon. The Cavelli gun had two
spiral grooves into which fitted the 1/4-inch projecting lugs of a
long projectile (fig. 12a). Other attempts at what might be called
rifling were Lancaster's elliptical-bore gun and the later development
of a spiraling hexagonal-bore by Joseph Whitworth (fig. 12b). The
English Whitworth was used by Confederate artillery. It was an
efficient piece, though subject to easy fouling that made it
dangerous.

Then, in 1855, England's Lord Armstrong designed a rifled breechloader
that included so many improvements as to be revolutionary. This gun
was rifled with a large number of grooves and fired lead-coated
projectiles. Much of its success, however, was due to the built-up
construction: hoops were shrunk on over the tube, with the fibers of
the metal running in the directions most suitable for strength.
Several United States muzzle-loading rifles of built-up construction
were produced about the same time as the Armstrong and included the
Chambers (1849), the Treadwell (1855), and the well-known Parrott of
1861 (figs. 12e and 13).

The German Krupp rifle had an especially successful breech mechanism.
It was not a built-up gun, but depended on superior crucible steel for
its strength. Cast steel had been tried as a gunmetal during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but metallurgical knowledge of
the early days could not produce sound castings. Steel was also used
in other mid-nineteenth century rifles, such as the United States
Wiard gun and the British Blakely, with its swollen, cast-iron breech
hoop. Fort Pulaski National Monument, near Savannah, Ga., has a fine
example of a 24-pounder Blakely used by the Confederates in the 1862
defense of the fort.

[Illustration: Figure 12--DEVELOPMENT OF RIFLE PROJECTILES
(1840-1900). a--Cavelli type, b--Whitworth, c--James, d--Hotchkiss,
e--Parrott, f--Copper rotating band type. (Not to scale.)]

The United States began intensive experimentation with rifled cannon
late in the 1850's, and a few rifled pieces were made by the South
Boston Iron Foundry and also by the West Point Foundry at Cold Spring,
N. Y. The first appearance of rifles in any quantity, however, was
near the outset of the 1861 hostilities, when the Federal artillery
was equipped with 300 wrought-iron 3-inch guns (fig. 14e). This
"12-pounder," which fired a 10-pound projectile, was made by wrapping
sheets of boiler iron around a mandrel. The cylinder thus formed was
heated and passed through the rolls for welding, then cooled, bored,
turned, and rifled. It remained in service until about 1900. Another
rifle giving good results was the cast-iron 4-1/2-inch siege gun. This
piece was cast solid, then bored, turned, and rifled. Uncertainty of
strength, a characteristic of cast iron, caused its later abandonment.

[Illustration: Figure 13--PARROTT 10-POUNDER RIFLE (1864).]

The United States rifle that was most effective in siege work was the
invention of Robert P. Parrott. His cast-iron guns (fig. 13), many of
which are seen today in the battlefield parks, are easily recognized
by the heavy wrought-iron jacket reinforcing the breech. The jacket
was made by coiling a bar over the mandrel in a spiral, then hammering
the coils into a welded cylinder. The cylinder was bored and shrunk on
the gun. Parrotts were founded in 10-, 20-, 30-, 60-, 100-, 200-, and
300-pounder calibers, one foundry making 1,700 of them during the
Civil War.

All nations, of course, had large stocks of smoothbores on hand, and
various methods were devised to make rifles out of them. The U. S.
Ordnance Board, for instance, believed the conversion simply involved
cutting grooves in the bore, right at the forts or arsenals where the
guns were. In 1860, half of the United States artillery was scheduled
for conversion. As a result, a number of old smoothbores were rebored
to fire rifle projectiles of the various patents which preceded the
modern copper rotating band (fig. 12c, d, f). Under the James patent
(fig. 12c) the weight of metal thrown by a cannon was virtually
doubled; converted 24-, 32- and 42-pounders fired elongated shot
classed respectively as 48-, 64-, and 84-pound projectiles. After the
siege of Fort Pulaski, Federal Gen. Q. A. Gillmore praised the
84-pounder and declared "no better piece for breaching can be
desired," but experience soon proved the heavier projectiles caused
increased pressures which converted guns could not withstand for long.

The early United States rifles had a muzzle velocity about the same as
the smoothbore, but whereas the round shot of the smoothbore lost
speed so rapidly that at 2,000 yards its striking velocity was only
about a third of the muzzle velocity, the more streamlined rifle
projectile lost speed very slowly. But the rifle had to be served more
carefully than the smoothbore. Rifling grooves were cleaned with a
moist sponge, and sometimes oiled with another sponge. Lead-coated
projectiles like the James, which tended to foul the grooves of the
piece, made it necessary to scrape the rifle grooves after every half
dozen shots, although guns using brass-banded projectiles did not
require the extra operation. With all muzzle-loading rifles, the
projectile had to be pushed close home to the powder charge;
otherwise, the blast would not fully expand its rotating band, the
projectile would not take the grooves, and would "tumble" after
leaving the gun, to the utter loss of range and accuracy.
Incidentally, gunners had to "run out" (push the gun into firing
position) both smoothbore and rifled muzzle-loaders carefully. A
sudden stop might make the shot start forward as much as 2 feet.

When the U. S. Ordnance Board recommended the conversion to rifles, it
also recommended that all large caliber iron guns be manufactured on
the method perfected by Capt. T. J. Rodman, which involved casting the
gun around a water-cooled core. The inner walls of the gun thus
solidified first, were compressed by the contraction of the outer
metal as it cooled down more slowly, and had much greater strength to
resist explosion of the charge. The Rodman smoothbore, founded in 8-,
10-, 15-, and 20-inch calibers, was the best cast-iron ordnance of its
time (fig. 14f). The 20-inch gun, produced in 1864, fired a
1,080-pound shot. The 15-incher was retained in service through the
rest of the century, and these monsters are still to be seen at Fort
McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine or on the ramparts of
Fort Jefferson, in the national monument of that name, in the Dry
Tortugas Islands. In later years, a number of 10-inch Rodmans were
converted into 8-inch rifles by enlarging the bore and inserting a
grooved steel tube.

THE WAR BETWEEN THE STATES

At the opening of this civil conflict most of the materiel for both
armies was of the same type--smoothbore. The various guns included
weapons in the great masonry fortifications built on the long United
States coast line since the 1820's--weapons such as the Columbiad, a
heavy, long-chambered American muzzle-loader of iron, developed from
its bronze forerunner of 1810. The Columbiad (fig. 14d) was made in
8-, 10-, and 12-inch calibers and could throw shot and shell well over
5,000 yards. "New" Columbiads came out of the foundries at the start
of the 1860's, minus the powder chamber and with smoother lines.
Behind the parapets or in fort gunrooms were 32- and 42-pounder iron
seacoast guns (fig. 10); 24-pounder bronze howitzers lay in the
bastions to flank the long reaches of the fort walls. There were
8-inch seacoast howitzers for heavier work. The largest caliber piece
was the ponderous 13-inch seacoast mortar.

[Illustration: Figure 14--U. S. ARTILLERY TYPES (1861-1865). a--Siege
mortar, b--8-inch siege howitzer, c--24-pounder siege gun, d--8-inch
Columbiad, e--3-inch wrought-iron rifle, f--10-inch Rodman.]

Siege and garrison cannon included 24-pounder and 8-inch bronze
howitzers (fig. 14b), a 10-inch bronze mortar (fig. 14a), 12-, 18-,
and 24-pounder iron guns (fig. 14c) and later the 4-1/2-inch cast-iron
rifle. With the exception of the new 3-inch wrought-iron rifle (fig.
14e), field artillery cannon were bronze: 6- and 12-pounder guns, the
12-pounder Napoleon gun-howitzer, 12-pounder mountain howitzer, 12-,
24-, and 32-pounder field howitzers, and the little Coehorn mortar
(fig. 39). A machine gun invented by Dr. Richard J. Gatling became
part of the artillery equipment during the war, but was not much used.
Reminiscent of the ancient ribaudequin, a repeating cannon of several
barrels, the Gatling gun could fire about 350 shots a minute from its
10 barrels, which were rotated and fired by turning a crank. In Europe
it became more popular than the French mitrailleuse.

The smaller smoothbores were _effective_ with case shot up to about
600 or 700 yards, and _maximum_ range of field pieces went from
something less than the 1,566-yard solid-shot trajectory of the
Napoleon to about 2,600 yards (a mile and a half) for a 6-inch
howitzer. At Chancellorsville, one of Stonewall Jackson's guns fired a
shot which bounded down the center of a roadway and came to rest a
mile away. The performance verified the drill-book tables. Maximum
ranges of the larger pieces, however, ran all the way from the average
1,600 yards of an 18-pounder garrison gun to the well over 3-mile
range of a 12-inch Columbiad firing a 180-pound shell at high
elevation. A 13-inch seacoast mortar would lob a 200-pound shell 4,325
yards, or almost 2-1/2 miles. The shell from an 8-inch howitzer
carried 2,280 yards, but at such extreme ranges the guns could hardly
be called accurate.

On the battlefield, Napoleon's artillery tactics were no longer
practical. The infantry, armed with its own comparatively long-range
firearm, was usually able to keep artillery beyond case-shot range,
and cannon had to stand off at such long distances that their
primitive ammunition was relatively ineffective. The result was that
when attacking infantry moved in, the defending infantry and artillery
were still fresh and unshaken, ready to pour a devastating point-blank
fire into the assaulting lines. Thus, in spite of an intensive 2-hour
bombardment by 138 Confederate guns at the crisis of Gettysburg, as
the gray-clad troops advanced across the field to close range, double
canister and concentrated infantry volleys cut them down in masses.

Field artillery smoothbores, under conditions prevailing during the
war, generally gave better results than the smaller-caliber rifle. A
3-inch rifle, for instance, had twice the range of a Napoleon; but in
the broken, heavily wooded country where so much of the fighting took
place, the superior range of the rifle could not be used to full
advantage. Neither was its relatively small and sometimes defective
projectile as damaging to personnel as case or grape from a larger
caliber smoothbore. At the first battle of Manassas (July 1861) more
than half the 49 Federal cannon were rifled; but by 1863, even though
many more rifles were in service, the majority of the pieces in the
field were still the old reliable 6- and 12-pounder smoothbores.

It was in siege operations that the rifles forced a new era. As the
smoke cleared after the historic bombardment of Fort Sumter in 1861,
military men were already speculating on the possibilities of the
newfangled weapon. A Confederate 12-pounder Blakely had pecked away at
Sumter with amazing accuracy. But the first really effective use of
the rifles in siege operations was at Fort Pulaski (1862). Using 10
rifles and 26 smoothbores, General Gillmore breached the
7-1/2-foot-thick brick walls in little more than 24 hours. Yet his
batteries were a mile away from the target! The heavier rifles were
converted smoothbores, firing 48-, 64-, and 84-pound James projectiles
that drove into the fort wall from 19 to 26 inches at each fair shot.
The smoothbore Columbiads could penetrate only 13 inches, while from
this range the ponderous mortars could hardly hit the fort. A year
later, Gillmore used 100-, 200-, and 300-pounder Parrott rifles
against Fort Sumter. The big guns, firing from positions some 2 miles
away and far beyond the range of the fort guns, reduced Sumter to a
smoking mass of rubble.

The range and accuracy of the rifles startled the world. A 30-pounder
(4.2-inch) Parrott had an amazing carry of 8,453 yards with 80-pound
hollow shot; the notorious "Swamp Angel" that fired on Charleston in
1863 was a 200-pounder Parrott mounted in the marsh 7,000 yards from
the city. But strangely enough, neither rifles nor smoothbores could
destroy earthworks. As was proven several times during the war, the
defenders of a well-built earthwork were able to repair the trifling
damage done by enemy fire almost as soon as there was a lull in the
shooting. Learning this lesson, the determined Confederate defenders
of Fort Sumter in 1863-64 refused to surrender, but under the most
difficult conditions converted their ruined masonry into an earthwork
almost impervious to further bombardment.

THE CHANGE INTO MODERN ARTILLERY

With Rodman's gun, the muzzle-loading smoothbore was at the apex of
its development. Through the years great progress had been made in
mobility, organization, and tactics. Now a new era was beginning,
wherein artillery surpassed even the decisive role it had under
Gustavus Adolphus and Napoleon. In spite of new infantry weapons that
forced cannon ever farther to the rear, artillery was to become so
deadly that its fire caused over 75 percent of the battlefield
casualties in World War I.

Many of the vital changes took place during the latter years of the
1800's, as rifles replaced the smoothbores. Steel came into universal
use for gun founding; breech and recoil mechanisms were perfected;
smokeless powder and high explosives came into the picture. Hardly
less important was the invention of more efficient sighting and laying
mechanisms.

The changes did not come overnight. In Britain, after breechloaders
had been in use almost a decade, the ordnance men went back to
muzzle-loading rifles; faulty breech mechanisms caused too many
accidents. Not until one of H.M.S. _Thunderer's_ guns was
inadvertently double-loaded did the English return to an improved
breechloader.

The steel breechloaders of the Prussians, firing two rounds a minute
with a percussion shell that broke into about 30 fragments, did much
to defeat the French (1870-71). At Sedan, the greatest artillery
battle fought prior to 1914, the Prussians used 600 guns to smother
the French army. So thoroughly did these guns do their work that the
Germans annihilated the enemy at the cost of only 5 percent
casualties. It was a demonstration of using great masses of guns,
bringing them quickly into action to destroy the hostile artillery,
then thoroughly "softening up" enemy resistance in preparation for the
infantry attack. While the technical progress of the Prussian
artillery was considerable, it was offset in large degree by the
counter-development of field entrenchment.

As the technique of forging large masses of steel improved, most
nations adopted built-up (reinforcing hoops over a steel tube) or
wire-wrapped steel construction for their cannon. With the advent of
the metal cartridge case and smokeless powder, rapid-fire guns came
into use. The new powder, first used in the Russo-Turkish War
(1877-78), did away with the thick white curtain of smoke that plagued
the gunner's aim, and thus opened the way for production of mechanisms
to absorb recoil and return the gun automatically to firing position.
Now, gunners did not have to lay the piece after every shot, and the
rate of fire increased. Shields appeared on the gun--protection that
would have been of little value in the days when gunners had to stand
clear of a back-moving carriage.

During the early 1880's the United States began work on a modern
system of seacoast armament. An 8-inch breech-loading rifle was built
in 1883, and the disappearing carriage, giving more protection to both
gun and crew, was adopted in 1886. Only a few of the weapons were
installed by 1898; but fortunately the overwhelming naval superiority
of the United States helped bring the War with Spain to a quick close.

[Illustration: Figure 15--Ranges.]

During this war, United States forces were equipped with a number of
British 2.95-inch mountain rifles, which, incidentally, served as late
as World War II in the pack artillery of the Philippine Scouts.
Within the next few years the antiquated pieces such as the 3-inch
wrought-iron rifle, the 4.2-inch Parrott siege gun, converted Rodmans,
and the 15-inch Rodman smoothbore were finally pushed out of the
picture by new steel guns. There were small-caliber rapid-fire guns of
different types, a Hotchkiss 1.65-inch mountain rifle, and Hotchkiss
and Gatling machine guns. The basic pieces in field artillery were
3.2- and 3.6-inch guns and a 3.6-inch mortar. Siege artillery included
a 5-inch gun, 7-inch howitzers, and mortars. In seacoast batteries
were 8-, 10-, 12-, 14-, and 16-inch guns and 12-inch mortars of the
primary armament; intermediate rapid-fire guns of 4-, 4.72-, 5-, and
6-inch calibers; and 6- and 15-pounder rapid-fire guns in the
secondary armament.

The Japanese showed the value of the French system of indirect laying
(aiming at a target not visible to the gunner) during the
Russo-Japanese War (1904-05). Meanwhile, the French 75-mm. gun of
1897, firing 6,000 yards, made all other field artillery cannon
obsolete. In essence, artillery had assumed the modern form. The next
changes were wrought by startling advances in motor transport, signal
communications, chemical warfare, tanks, aviation, and mass
production.

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