"Napoleonic Howitzers" Topic

For years I've always assumed, probably incorrectly, that Howitzers lobbed their rounds towards their chosen target in much the same way as a mortar does. That is, without the round bouncing before it reaches the target. However having done a little reading I found tables which give "first graze" ranges which were not too dissimilar to guns. I appreciate that howitzers could fire at low trajectories which could account for this but would be interested to know if bouncing shells as opposed to lobbing them was the norm.

There are artillerists who will come along I'm sure but I'll have a go.
Cannon fire is basically straight on but elevated up to a couple of degrees.
Russian licornes or unicorns fire can fire a few more degrees in elevation
Howitzer really are made to lob shells but could fire cannister so would have to be closer to level
Mortars have to lob being on fixed base.
Prussia and the British I've read used howitzer to fire over objects at Waterloo the British fired over their own troops but this was a dangerous task with ammunition technology.

Hello.

Howitzers replaced the old mortars on the battlefield.

The higher angle of elevation allowed common shell to be hurled at the enemy with a close range canister facility if required. Whilst indirect fire as we know it today was impractical, the elevation allowed plunging fire such as that mentioned at Waterloo by 14Bore at suspected targets. In this case Bull's battery at Hougoumont.

The round shape of the shell along with an imperfect powder fuse system meant that the projectiles could skip, spin or just bury themselves upon impact.

Do not forget that with such an imperfect ignition system the missile might not even explode and if time/courage permitted, the fuse could be plucked from the hissing shell. Not for the faint hearted, but the Russian Tsar and King of Prussia survived the battle of Bautzen due to an artilleryman doing just that!

Our hero got an Iron Cross and a pay rise.

Chris

many thanks for the responses, however I'm still no wiser regarding the standard employment of howitzers. I understand how they work but am trying to find out how they were used. For instance one of my sources quotes British howitzers as having a maximum elevation of 12 degrees whereas the Gribeauval system had a maximum of 30 degrees. This said it appears that there was more stress on the carriages at higher elevations with incidences of carriages falling apart during prolonged firing.
I assume there would be a standard bracket of elevation, lets say at a guess 5 to 8 degrees for normal use. At longer ranges wouldn't this still require the shell to graze before reaching its target?

I almost hear Summerfield here…almost

The idea of the howitzer is to use plunging fire, especially useful against enemy formations that might be in undulating ground, trees etc.

Against formations in the open the idea would be to have the shell explode just in front and above the target in order that the 'throw' ( ie forward momentum and explosion debris) caused maximum damage.

The problem, as stated lies in the reliability of the fuse. Hence if the round hit the ground it might bounce, skid, spin, stop dead or even go out.

Roundshot, relies on momentum, the kinetic energy causing havoc as it bounced through the ranks. Once again the gunner would aim just in front of the formation selected for maximum effect.

If it is any help I keep it simple. A howitzer shell that hits it intended target dices to see if it is a dud, and if not casualties/ damage are then assessed.

Chris

One thing which I know is howitzers also have a dead zone in which if the target is in it can't be hit. It's between the canister range and the shortest limit of shells which is the shortest fuse possible.

naw…until I hear from Summerfield…

I'll stick with Howitzers might bounce but were not meant to. They were meant to land like a mortar round, in order to allow this daft Russian officer to gaze at the clouds and decide that he does not want to die. When he should just walk away, dive flat or snuff out the fuse.

I suffered it again last night. S Bondarachuk will be forgiven in the bowels of Hell, but not by me. HIs W and P was truly awful

One thing which I know is howitzers also have a dead zone in which if the target is in it can't be hit. It's between the canister range and the shortest limit of shells which is the shortest fuse possible.

I have a feeling that, either here or at napoleon-series, somebody asked about that very question and someone who knew their stuff said that, in fact, this was not so….
- that canister spread and first drop of a shell overlap.

(There is a distinction to be made between distance- range- and time – fuse length. In other words you can drop a shell within canister range. It just might not go off immediately. See 'War and Peace'!)

One thing which I know is howitzers also have a dead zone in which if the target is in it can't be hit. It's between the canister range and the shortest limit of shells which is the shortest fuse possible.

Do you have a source for this? Fuses were cut in order to burn for a certain length of time:

'To fire bombs [howitzer shells] at a small distance, the fuse may be cut to a longer slant, so that the bomb may take effect sooner, and may not remain a long time in the place where it falls, without bursting.'

-Louis de Tousard, American Artillerist's Companion, Volume I, 267.

Howitzers fired at 1 degree elevation will have their first graze at 200 yards (See Adye's Bombardier and Pocket Gunner), and the French firing tables have the maximum elevation at 45 degrees. I believe, but cannot find at present, that canister fired from howitzers would carry at least 200 yards.

There is one important thing to remember about period artillery is that all of them were direct fire weapons, meaning that the gunners had to see their targets in order to hit them, whether long guns or howitzers.

Regarding howitzers:

'The howitzer is a kind of mortar, but rather longer, which is mounted upon a carriage, resembling those of field pieces, with this difference, that the wooden plate under the breech is moveable, in order that by taking it away the howitzer may be elevated to forty-five degrees.'

-Louis de Tousard, American Artillerist's Companion, Volume I, 269.

Ricochet fire could result when the howitzer was fired at 6, 10, and 15 degrees. If fired at 30 and 45 degrees the round will not ricochet.

Besides size and carriages, the main difference between howitzers and mortars was the placement of the trunnions; the howitzers had them placed at or near the balance of the gun tube, mortars at or near the breech.

The French would mass howitzers for effective fire and did it at Borodino and Waterloo. Howitzers were employed against built-up areas and could be used as incendiary weapons. While they could be fired inside of an enclosure, such as a fortress or walled farm, the effectiveness of the rounds could not be judged from the firing position only that the rounds had impacted inside.

The Russian unicorn was what would be called now a gun-howitzer. It had the characteristics of both and was not a true howitzer. They could not be elevated to the same degrees that a howitzer could.

I think that thinking of napoleonic howitzers as giving "plunging fire" is not the right way to understand their use. "Plunging fire", comes from modern and napoleonic mortars. The angle of up and down are much greater that 45 degrees, and without high explosives or modern proximity fuzes is not really good for anything but an area fire.

Napoleonic howitzers are not a point the barrel up into the sky weapon. (Look up the maximum angles of elevation that they could use !!!) They get the "sink" of their trajectory from sending the shot out at VERY SLOW muzzle velocity and allowing the acceleration of gravity to bend the path downward.

At the risk of offending a lot of people (not that I have every cared much), I'll say that most people basically DO NOT understand the properties of gravitational acceleration or the simple physics of the acceleration equations. I have taught science in college and grad school- even the math savvy geeks, don't get it. It just doesn't seem "right" that acceleration makes the speed increase by the SQUARE of the time of travel, rather than just increase speed equally with each time interval. Most of what we see and experience with moving bodies is conservation of momentum with its scalar addition math. That is where the "seat of the pants" expectation comes from.

Velocity = starting velocity + 1/2 {acceleration) {time squared}………….[[acceleration gravity= 32 feet/(sec)**2

What the howitzer does is send the ball out slowly, so it takes a lot of time (seconds) to get to the target area. Then when it gets there, it is going downward quickly and can get behind and down on the other side of a hill.

If a cannon fires and gets the ball to a hilltop in 1 second, then as it goes over the crest:
Velocity downward= 16 feet/second=
1/2 32ft/t**2 x 1sec x 1sec

If a howitzer fires and gets the ball to the hilltop in 3 second, then as it goes over the crest:
velocity downward= 144 feet/second=
1/2 32ft/t**2 x 3sec x 3 sec

so as those two shots travel beyond the hill, in the next period of time, the howitzer shot is going to hit something down and well-hidden, while the faster cannon shot is going to go sailing on.

So you use a small charge with a howitzer. You make the bore BIG, so the bigger diameter shell will have a lot of "wind resistance" and slow down quickly. That gets the ball out there but slows it down better when it gets at the target. And as a tactical bonus,you also have a real nice big bore shotgun for shooting cannister at short range direct fire.

Thank you billsfan. Nobody has explained that to me before. I did get to degree level in physics, but never worked that one out for myself.

so as those two shots travel beyond the hill, in the next period of time, the howitzer shot is going to hit something down and well-hidden, while the faster cannon shot is going to go sailing on.

So you use a small charge with a howitzer. You make the bore BIG, so the bigger diameter shell will have a lot of "wind resistance" and slow down quickly. That gets the ball out there but slows it down better when it gets at the target. And as a tactical bonus,you also have a real nice big bore shotgun for shooting cannister at short range direct fire.

Just a couple of points:

First, you're not going to fire to the backside of a hill if you cannot see what is behind it. Firing blind is just a waste of ammunition.

Second, even though howitzers usually fired at a higher elevation than long guns, they were still direct fire weapons as, again, the gunners had to see the target to hit it.

Sorry Bec, but disagree.

Fredrick the Great love the How, and used them in his last few years of war to shell the back sides of hill.

just look at kriegspiel, rules cover firing over towns woods and what effect on troops there you cannnot see. so the experince in the Napoleonic was that was a large part what they did.

Frederick was singularly ignorant on the subject of artillery, and treated both his artillerymen and engineers with both contempt and disrespect.

And as indirect fire techniques were not developed at all during the period, how did Frederick propose to hit targets with his artillery that he could not see and with direct fire weapons?

Is this a wargames question, or a reality one?

I ask as, when I read "The French perspective", I was astounded to read how batteries would deploy only a few guns at a time. So my long held idea of my battery of 3 modl guns and a howitzer all lined up on the table for me to roll dice is incorrect.

SO I imagine the battery commander would hold the howitzers for special tasks.

And plunging fire seems possible, out of direct sight. My reading of Waterloo implies that the artillery lobbed many a shot and shell over the crest and hoped they would hit something – and judging by the casualties and reports, some did find their mark.

Great topic, and interesting responses.

This has to be an IIRC as I cannot track down the reference.

There is a reference at Waterloo to a french cavalryman (or more likely artilleryman) planting a flag on the french side of the ridge presumably to serve as an aiming mark for the artillery.

Perhaps a mechanism for indirect fire.

Bull (Waterloo Letter #78) mentions only seeing the effect of his fire against the troops in the woods after the event and mentions Ramsey being able to see the effect of Bull's troop better than he and even informing Bull as to the effectiveness of one shot.

In this case is not Bull aiming at the woods as target knowing there are troops below. The same would be said for aiming at the crest to hit troops behind the crest.

Well guess what? Both sides in a battle were very familiar with how cannon worked. Level the sucker (which because of the shape of the barrel, actually elevated the bore a few degrees), and shoot away with round shot. You loved a flat target zone and an important skill of an artillery officer was to find such killing zones and where to put your guns to fire into them. One of the first characteristics of a gun was what the charge, gun elevation and first graze point. What you wanted to do was have the shot travel at less then head height all the way out to the first graze and the bounce onward, also below head height. The cannon ball had tremendous kinetic energy and would splatter through multiple human bodies. Things that made it less good: shooting at a long range meant that the gun elevation was too much at shorter ranges and the ball would go over the heads of the bad guys,,,,,,,,a soft ground that would have the ball plow into the ground and stop killing people who were further away and unlucky,,,,,,,, a significant slope up which would do the same………..AND there are a lot of dips, hollows and valleys around…..there are a lot of areas of trees, houses and walls that the cannon ball could kerplunck into and the stop killing…..

Guess what folks?? Veteran commanders of approaching enemy were very aware of these things and would take advantage of every one. (surviving is part of becoming a veteran). So, if you know the performance envelope of the cannon, you stay out of its good killing areas. Make your approach where things were steep as seen from the cannon. Duck down behind a swale and put tall things between you and the cannon. (Not too much different from attacking an area swept by emplaced pig MG's. ) The officer in charge of cannon, would have multiple "kill zones" identified, within which he could put down effective fire on approaching or stationary enemy troops. So he might fire for a while and then wait for the approaching enemy troops to reach the next good spot. (Of course, if you and the terrain were luck, you could just level away and shoot away into the smoke). But the cany enemy is unwilling to play fair with the cannons.

Oh yeah? They try to hide in that swale that is perpendicular to line of sight? Enter the howitzer!! Let's drop a couple of balls just over the creast and even some shells with the fuzes cut longer and longer until the shell just disappears before they should explode. As a matter of fact, if we even SUSPECT (from obvious future tactics, dust clouds, staff officer and courier movements) that you are building up forces for a push or defense….

Get the picture- it is a complement to the roll-the-ball-stright-into- you cannon. They have complementary performance envelopes.

Just a note in an the 1840's French papers would carry stories from vets., one Old Garde stated that the 12 pdr he was manning was aimed at the space where the French Cavarly pass over the hill at Waterloo and split. This was where the squares must be so they aim waited for the cav to come back and then fire on that area. thease gents where not dumb.

I try to find the accout of that battle.

oh and the earlist account of adjustment from a op was Jackson at Harpers Ferry where the wigwagers on the hill sent adjustment to the batteries bhind them.

which is different than some one in a tower or roof top yelling "a little to the left". same effect.

<<<<<<redo of my post above. brain-fart above had velocity not distance in equation >>>>>>>

I think that thinking of napoleonic howitzers as giving "plunging fire" is not the right way to understand their use. "Plunging fire", comes from modern and napoleonic mortars. The angle of up and down are much greater that 45 degrees, and without high explosives or modern proximity fuzes is not really good for anything but an area fire.

Napoleonic howitzers are not a point the barrel up into the sky weapon. (Look up the maximum angles of elevation that they could use !!!) They get the "sink" of their trajectory from sending the shot out at VERY SLOW muzzle velocity and allowing the acceleration of gravity to bend the path downward.

At the risk of offending a lot of people (not that I have every cared much), I'll say that most people basically DO NOT understand the properties of gravitational acceleration or the simple physics of the acceleration equations. I have taught science in college and grad school- even the math savvy geeks, don't get it. It just doesn't seem "right" that acceleration makes the speed increase by the SQUARE of the time of travel, rather than just increase speed equally with each time interval. Most of what we see and experience with moving bodies is conservation of momentum with its scalar addition math. That is where the "seat of the pants" expectation comes from.

distance traveled downward = 1/2 {acceleration) {time squared}………….[[acceleration gravity= 32 feet/(sec)**2

What the howitzer does is send the ball out slowly, so it takes a lot of time (seconds) to get to the target area. Then when it gets there, it is going downward quickly and can get behind and down on the other side of a hill.

If a cannon fires and gets the ball to a hilltop in 1 second, then as it goes over the crest:
distance downward =16 feet
1/2 32ft/t**2 x 1sec x 1sec

If a howitzer fires and gets the ball to the hilltop in 3 second, then as it goes over the crest:
velocity downward= 144 feet =
1/2 32ft/t**2 x 3sec x 3 sec

so as those two shots travel beyond the hill, in the next period of time, the howitzer shot is going to hit something down and well-hidden, while the faster cannon shot is going to go sailing on.

So you use a small charge with a howitzer. You make the bore BIG, so the bigger diameter shell will have a lot of "wind resistance" and slow down quickly. That gets the ball out there but slows it down better when it gets at the target. And as a tactical bonus,you also have a real nice big bore shotgun for shooting cannister at short range direct fire.

I had a brain fart. the formula is distance=
(1/2) (32ft/sec*sec) time x time

v= g x t= (32 ft/sec*sec) x (time sec)

The conclusions still hold. The purpose of having the typical (one howitzer to 2 cannon) in a battery was to be able to fire a slowly moving shell that would curve downward quickly with distance and get into places below the line of sight better. Firing up into the sky (mortar) was an alternative but was less accurate with the weapons and sighting of the time.

Note that the Russians fought a lot of battles in the gently rolling eastern European plains. I wonder if their longer barreled licornes were deliberately designed to have a higher muzzle velocity and therefore a more gentle drop than other nation's howitzers to better fit their typical vertical profiles?

The licorne did not outrange French howitzers and if the French pieces were firing from defilade, the licornes could not bring fire on them.

The licorne was what would now be called a gun-howitzer, having the characteristics of both the long gun and the howitzer.

The French prized those that they captured and had them travel with the French parcs.

My guess is that Napoleonic armies built and used howitzers principally, if not entirely, because they were the only reliable way to deliver explosive shells. Howitzers have a shorter barrel and (particularly when firing a smaller charge than a gun of comparable size) a lower muzzle velocity. That means you need a higher trajectory to land a projectile at the same point – that "first graze" somebody mentioned above. The French word for howitzer is, incidentally, "obusier," literally "shell gun" ("obus"= shell).

But that higher trajectory wasn't meant to get a round behind an intervening crest, at least not inNapoleonic times. A howitzer firing a lower velocity round on a higher trajectory has a lower "probable error in range," which is important- particularly if your fuzes aren't reliable. Flat trajectory rounds like modern naval gunfire have huge probable errors in range compared to modern howitzers. We can easily compensate with modern fuzes, but I doubt you could have reliably landed shells on target in the Napoleonic era, once you combined the challenges of probable error in range with primitive fuze cutting.

G'Day Gents

If I may….

In regards to whether artillery fire was executed at an object behind an intervening crest.

Yes it was called Feu Fichant.

And it was also a feu d'infanterie as well, which was a mode of fire that was executed as a tactical fire.

A while back…Hans-karl and I discussed this issue, and it is not found in the Reglement or Rules and Regulations because it is considered under the principles of feu d'artillerie et du fortifications (et mousqueterie).

It is used for firing into trenches, depressions, into fortifications, large stationary objects, such as a large mass formation (large), and artillery.

Artillery executed this fire against both cavalry and tirailleurs hidden in close proximity.

It was meant to push them from a position temporarily with a hail of non-aimed continuous fire. It was not used on moving objects, and as Gneisenau states..at best, 'unaimed vertical fire, rarely hits anyone, but could make men nervous'. It was considered by most a waste of ammunition, with little results. Nevertheless it was executed through the Napoleonic Era by both artillery and infantry.

Best Regards
Art

A couple of things…

First the French did have firing tables for both long guns and howitzers, and the data on those tables was taken from actual rounds being fired from the artillery pieces.

Second, Napoleon massed howitzers for greater effect. For example, it was done at Borodino, Dresden and Waterloo.

Third, after you fire your field piece long enough, be it long run or howitzer, you're going to know how it fires. And it should be noted that no two guns fired alike-they still don't.

The French would emplace howitzers in defiles and fire from there. The Russians commented on this and noted that they could not reach them with their licornes as they did not have the elevation to do it.

Howitzers were used to fire inside villages and fortifications. The target could be seen, but what was inside could not.

And it should be noted that even though howitzers fired at a higher angle than long guns, they were still direct fire weapons as the target had to be seen to be hit.

I've read a number of sources saying that howitzers were very useful for dropping even a solid round into enemy trenches, where it could bounce around and do mischief. Apparently, sometimes they even used hollow "solid shot", which would lose speed quickly with distance (there was less kinetic energy in the round, so it lost speed quickly, went slower and sunk more) since it worked better. Conversly, solid shot make from lead rather than iron, would have and retain more kinetic energy and speed, so it would have more range. This would be of advantage in some siege operations.

Nine pound round: I don't agree. You can fire a "cannon" at a lower muzzle velocity just by putting in less powder. I do handloading for pistol and rifle- you can look up a lot of tables for this hobby and check it out. If you want to shoot a shell at lower velocity, just put in less gunpowder. Why would they pull around 1/3 of the artillery as a different type rather than just use a lower powder load, if there wasn't another good reason?

You also seemed to miss the concept that the howitzer used the increased drop with distance/time aspect of the downward acceleration of gravity to drop shells/shot behind things and NOT the mortar "rainbow trajectory" method.

Brechtel198 Supporting Member of TMP
04 Jun 2017 3:34 p.m. PST

A couple of things…

First the French did have firing tables for both long guns and howitzers, and the data on those tables was taken from actual rounds being fired from the artillery pieces.

Second, Napoleon massed howitzers for greater effect. For example, it was done at Borodino, Dresden and Waterloo.

Third, after you fire your field piece long enough, be it long run or howitzer, you're going to know how it fires. And it should be noted that no two guns fired alike-they still don't.

The French would emplace howitzers in defiles and fire from there. The Russians commented on this and noted that they could not reach them with their licornes as they did not have the elevation to do it.

Howitzers were used to fire inside villages and fortifications. The target could be seen, but what was inside could not.

And it should be noted that even though howitzers fired at a higher angle than long guns, they were still direct fire weapons as the target had to be seen to be hit.

I am familiar with those comments, the ones that I remember were from Boradino. Actually, they got me thinking about why. The significant difference between the Russian and French "howitzers" was the barrel length and, thereby, probably the typical muzzle velocity in practice. So a lower initial velocity howitzer would have more "sink" and might win such a duel, where the amount of "sink" became critical. I speculate that for longer range and more gentle slopes (as in the eastern European plains), the licorne shot projectory might better match the vertical/horizontal terrain ratio and better scoure the far-side of gentle hills. Also, consider that the Russians DID have the choice as to how to construct their artillery and spent a lot of energy and resources on it. I think they optimized it for the terrain in their homeland.

As to "the target had to be seen to be hit", that is not completely true. An advancing unit would know where it was under flatter trajectory direct fire from cannon. They also would know where there were dips in the ground or intervening hills or walls that would block such fire. So they would take the hidden approach to avoid the fire. (Isn't this what any NCO does today as well?). The mixed artillery battery could see the approaching enemy's direction of march and would understand that what they were doing. So dropping some rounds into the area that the enemy disappeared into, and hasn't come out of, is an easy thing to figure out. …. not exactly rocket science.

Presumably there was nothing stopping an artillery commander firing indirectly at where he thought a worthwhile target was. But doing this entails tiring your crew and using up your ammunition on a presumed target that may have moved, so I imagine you wouldn't do it often if at all.

But it is still direct fire, as the company/battery commander saw the target before he began firing.

Whether or not the infantry 'disappeared' because of a natural obstacle doesn't alter that fact.

"The Russians commented on this and noted that they could not reach them with their licornes as they did not have the elevation to do it."

No they didn't.

The comment is that the French had their howitzers well protected in a gulley at Borodino and the Russians fired many times but failed to knock them out. If a shell burst on ground level above the gulley, it would have been effective. There was no need for "higher elevation" of the pieces, just better aim and cutting the fuzes correctly. No one at that time commented about lack of needed elevation. That was a later comment, not from the original source.

And there is only exactly one, unconfirmed original source for this incident – but even this one source's provenance is not unproblemmatic.

The materials identified as "Ratch, Artillery Journal, 1861, Number 11" or similar in several secondary sources in French and, especially, English are the General Ratch's "Сведения об Алексее Петровиче Ермолове" ("Information about Aleksey Petrovich Yermolov"). This was published as a transcription of a lecture given by General Ratch. The lecture was based on a series of oral interviews conducted with General Yermolov shortly before General Yermolov's death. It was an essentially biographic work (not a tactical or technical study). General Yermolov was at that time about 85 years old and it had been about 45 years since Borodino. Also, he was not in command of the guns in question, only observing that the French battery was not silenced.

So, this was not something that "Yermolov wrote". It was at best something that the elderly General said, that was reported in lecture, which lecture was transcibed for publication almost half a century after the fact, that our modern author has picked up on, translated and repeated.

Maximum elevation of French howitzers was indeed 45 degrees, and 29 degrees for Russian unicorns. But with standard charges, these elevations would have launched the shells well over 2km! And if you really needed the extra inclination, and had a little time, you could just grade the ground under the piece to add 16 degrees.

The firing table with the greatest elevation I have seen for the French howitzers was in the de Morla Tables : 46 lignes de hausse, with a range to first bound of 672 meters. Note that this was in "lignes de hausse", not degrees of elevation – it was about 3 degrees of elevation. I would be interested in tables showing French howitzers firing at greater angles of elevation. I have seen 6 degrees quoted (1168 meters to first bound), but not in a firing table.

If you shot at over 30 degrees of elevation, there was essentially no ricochet. So, what the French could do (and the Russians could not do so easily) was to elevate the howitzers over 30 degrees and then manage the range by varying the size of the charge. The round would "plunge", and not continue via ricochet.
But exactly why they would do this I don't know. Usually, one just cut the fuze so the round would blow where you wanted it. Manually adjusting the charge was very rare, and something done during sieges, not during battle.

The extra elevation *will* give you the ability to shoot over taller blocking terrian or uphill : the Russian could clear up to about 500 m and the French 700 m . One supposes that this might have been useful in some siege situations, but recalling that with standard charges the resulting ranges were far out of line of sight, it was unlikely that the difference was useful on the battlefield very often. Only one possible instance of the French firing from the defilade of a rather high hill at long range into the Russian reserves at the battle of Bautzen comes to mind. But again, it is not clear if the Russians "couldn't" hit the French for a technical reason, or just failed to silence them out when so ordered.

See : TMP link
See : TMP link

Le Breton, when I was an artilleryman ages and ages ago, the invariable range control rule for 105mm rounds was no firing with a quadrant elevation of less than 268 mils (roughly 15 degrees), because of the danger of the shell striking the ogive, rather than the fuze cap, and ricocheting uncontrollably. So your suggestion does not seem off base to me, particularly given the angle of descent of the projectile.

One thing about artillery: when firing shell, particularly time-fuzed shell, you want a different set of ballistic characteristics than you want from a gun that's designed to knock people down at range. That's why modern howitzers have short barrels and low muzzle velocities, compared with modern tank guns.

Guns (and I am using the classic artillery definition here) tend to have a high muzzle velocity and a flat trajectory for a given range, compared to howitzers. You can vary the charge, it's true, but if you only have a very limited ability to elevate the piece, it would be very, very challenging to actually hit anything, and hard to use time fuzes. That's because very flat trajectory artillery has a high "probable error in range," the space to which we would expect a given shot to fall long or short of a target. That doesn't matter when you're trying to penetrate an armored face or men in formation: you want it to go as far and as hard as you can. But even today, we acknowledge that flat trajectory pieces deposit a lot of rounts long or short of the target. That's why naval gunfire has a "danger close" distance that's several times larger than comparable howitzer fire: a lot of the rounds land short or long, because the trajectory is so flat. Napoleonic pieces (and guns in general, until well into WWI) typically had limited ability to elevate; the need to hit men standing up in line was the greater need.

With lower velocity rounds, you have to elevate the barrel more to hit a target at a given range, and your trajectory describes more of a parabola than a straight line. This actually REDUCES the probable error in range (ceteris parabus, and eliminating stuff like meterological considerations). I haven't touched a firing table in over a decade, but my recollection was that at the lowest elevations, the circle of probable error was basically a long, narrow elipse along the gun-target line. As you elevated the piece, that elipse would gradually widen out and shorten, and it came pretty close to a circle as you hit the magic 45 degree point (maximum range). Beyond that, for high-angle fire, the elipse would elongate to the sides, with very little probable error in range, but a huge probable error in deflection.

If you're firing time-fuzed shells, that smaller probable error in range makes the round much more likely to burst close to the target, and if you can cut the fuze correctly, you wind up with the round bursting in what even today is the doctrinally perfect spot – just above the heads of standing troops in the open, so the shrapnel is driven forward and into the ground. Once percussion fuzes were developed, of course, shells became a more practical proposition from guns – but they didn't have those in the Napoleonic period.

It would be interesting to know how the Napoleonic gunners obtained higher elevations. Reverse slopes would do it (and the battery commander could just ride up to the crest and spot the fall of shot, always the biggest challenge for indirect fire in pre-radio days). Ramps could do it, possible something as simple as a hole for the trail.

The more modern pieces, such as the M198 and M777, are superior to the old 105s as they have long tubes, are classed as gun-howitzers, are effective on direct fire as well as indirect fire, and have a high muzzle velocity as well as a larger family of ammunition and longer range.

One Marine Corps artillery battery in the First Gulf War was attacked by 4 Iraqi T-62s and the Marines won 4-0: all four hits were catastrophic kills with either the turret bolts sheared off by the kinetic energy of high velocity HE rounds or the tanks were penetrated and blew up.

@Brechetl (or anyone else):- Why did the French not form howitzer batteries, whilst other powers did?

On changing powder loads, I always assumed most shells were already attached to a load, and there was little or no loose powder involved in a Nap battle. So elevation was probably a key way to change range, and I assume howitzers had different loads per-made.

Happy to be wrong of course.

Marc

My understanding is slightly different…as a complete amateur. (Most I ever fired was a 25pdr, an Abbot and an M109 SP 155mm…..)

Napoleonic shells, balls, canister came attached to a sabot..a wooden shoe to fit the barrel. Fixed ammunition. Many also did come ready use, with powder propellant, in a canvas bag, fixed behind the sabot. But the round and the bagged charge could come separately as well. The loader could put the whole round in at once, or the propellant followed by the projectile/sabot.

I think……….

But loose powder on a battlefield, with that chap waving his portfire and linstock around….that is asking for trouble

Yes, pre-made in arsenals. And yes, usually, but not always, the charge was attached to the exploding shell. So fussing with the amount of powder was essentially something for sieges or similar only.

Russian shell round :

Howitzer-only artillery companies/batteries would have been limited in their capabilities and employment. I would suggest that roundshot fired by long guns are the most effective at normal range against troops, which was their primary target.

And howitzers could be detached from their companies if necessary for special missions. Napoleon did this at Borodino, Dresden, and Waterloo.

Deadhead et all, you've put your finger on an important point that I didn't respond to earlier: powder is bagged for a reason – and those discrete charges make it effectively impossible to adjust a round by varying the charge: that's what your elevating quadrant and traversing mechanism are for! Even today we cut the charge twenty or thirty feet from the breech – with good reason.

Brechtel, the operative word in your story was "Marines." Never was a jarhead myself, but learned gunnery from one at Fort Sill, and have nothing but respect for the breed. That howitzer battery defeated those tanks because it saw them first and fired first: most tank guns have a muzzle velocity that's 3-4 times faster than even a 155 round. My guess is a lot of cumulate disadvantages preceded those four flashes: bombing, fatigue, hunger, compounded by poor training and uncertain leadership, the breakdown of the chain of command in a highly centralized army, confusion, a platoon leader lost and looking in the wrong direction, who knows?

The guns I had were the M119s, which went into development at Royal Ordnance around the same time as the M198 at Rock Island. The latter does have a higher MV, by about 200 m/s, but the tactical relevance of that is the range it gave the piece; even the times of flight for indirect fire aren't dramatically different.

The natural advantages are those of a bigger and heavier weapon – a 96lb round versus a 33lb round (and 12-odd pounds of Comp B versus 5 pounds) – but the natural disadvantages are the same. If you don't care how heavy it is, you can design the carriage and recoil system to give you the range you want. If it has to fit under a Blackhawk to get to the action, well….different story. So it's not so much that the one is superior to the other; they have a different purpose. A gun is like any other device: it has the characteristics you design into it. Where it goes from there depends on the use you put it to.

One thing that's often lacking from discussions of historical artillery use is the technical side: even the gunners themselves too seldom explain the things that would give you a sense of why they did what they did ("we had to position ourselves three hundred yards back to clear that ***** intervening crest!"). It comes in fits and starts – James-Marshall Cornwall's explanation of how bad fuzes helped cause the Somme is a classic, but even the really good books often just scratch the surface – and old field manuals are hard to interpret apart from the context for which they were designed – use and experience (and an NCO to help underscore the truly important points).

From Tactics of the Russian Army in the Napoleonic Wars, Volume II, pages 73-74:

'At the same time, Russian artillery had a significant disadvantage: the unicorn was not well-adapted to plunging fire, because its barrel could not be elevated at such a high angle as the barrel of the howitzer, and Russian artillerymen were not well-trained in plunging fire. Ermelov wrote that, at Borodino, the enemy placed eighty howitzers into the ravines of the Kolotcha river and Semenovskii Brooki, so that only the heads of the enemy artillerists were seen, and Russian artillery was unable to silence or dislodge them. The maximum range of French howitzers was longer than that of Russian unicorns. IS Shirkevich, an officer in the 2d Guard Light Artillery Company, writes that, at Bautzen, French howitzers fired at his battery at such a range that he was unable to reply to them.'

Brechtel, the operative word in your story was "Marines." Never was a jarhead myself, but learned gunnery from one at Fort Sill, and have nothing but respect for the breed. That howitzer battery defeated those tanks because it saw them first and fired first: most tank guns have a muzzle velocity that's 3-4 times faster than even a 155 round. My guess is a lot of cumulate disadvantages preceded those four flashes: bombing, fatigue, hunger, compounded by poor training and uncertain leadership, the breakdown of the chain of command in a highly centralized army, confusion, a platoon leader lost and looking in the wrong direction, who knows?

The 120mm gun on the M1 Abrams has a muzzle velocity, depending on the round, of 5150 feet per second. The muzzle velocity of the M198 is 2200 feet per second. That is not 3-4 times, but about 2.5.

The Iraqi tanks saw the artillery battery first and opened fire on the Marines. They then manned their pieces, used both sights to find their targets, and opened fire. So, the Iraqis got the first shots in and missed. The Marines did not.

Using what kind of shell/propellant combination? And what source? The standard combinations of green bag and white bag with a 4 square HE round give you an MV of just north of 600 m/s, not 2200.

Edited- my bad, I was using m/s, you were using feet.

The round used was HE/PD with Charge 8 Redbag-the war charge.

The US Army has insisted for years that artillery rounds could not hurt tanks, and that was a load of BS.

The battery that was engaged was one of the two Marine Corps Reserve batteries assigned to 11th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division (the other two were assigned to 10th Marines, 2d Marine Division).

One of the officers in the subject battery I had served with when both of us were 2dLTs in 10th Marines. He told me after we had returned to Saudi Arabia for redeployment home about the engagement as it was his battery that was in the fight. I had the duty of verifying all four batteries fit for deployment before we left, and, among other things, had given the officers and SNCOs of the four batteries a class on direct fire before we deployed.

By the way, the term 'jarhead' is pejorative. Marine is preferred and correct. It is in the same vein as a Marine calling a soldier in the US Army a 'doggie.' It can start a fight.

Back to Naps please gentlemen…

But yes, the fixed propellant as indeed my point – Liam picked up on this nicely. It tends to deflate the arguments around changing the "charge load", and so does make howitzers a different beast to cannon.

At the end of the day, the major powers thought the differences worth exploiting, so included both types in their batteries

Interesting

It is interesting. They found it necessary to make something like a fifth to a third of the artillery tubes howitzers. My question is that this is completely ignored in pretty much every set of wargame rules I have seen.

What I see in wargame rules is that you can pretty much plop your battery down ANYWHERE on the table and seldom have a problem. There might be a patch of woods some places. A forest or impassible hill on both flanks. And a hill that you can't fire over as well. Maybe 2 or 3 small hills. Other than that, you are playing on a completely flat plain and the cannon have perfect conditions and bouncability out to the maximum range. So what good are those howitzers and why did the stupid people in the 1800's carry them around?

What I think was the situation is that most of the world was dominated by those big features above AND by a lot of the slight up-down slopes that limited the cannon. A good part of generalship was looking at the ground and seeing where the cannon could be used well, and then building the defense/offense from that foundation. A lot of the artillery might only have a few good killing zones in front of them. The howitzer could search out and hit all those other areas.

In addition, it seems in a lot of games, (especially F&F like games), that all the cannon on the tabletop can join fire (after careful point-counting and a level of cooperation not achieved until the walkie-talkie was common) on a single target, far-away and insignificant to most of the shooters. Every target is in clear sight and on perfect, flat, bouncy place. No problem- they all operate just like it is a billard table. Sigh…….

1968Billsfan-

Excellent point. What if we allowed a maximum field of fire equal to the max range of the guns only at the initial deployment point, then subtracted from that range if/when the battery moves? You could go further with the abstraction by adding the uncertainty to the approach itself: when a battery under a sub-commander redeploys his arty he rolls a few dice against a factor basrd on the terrain and his skill, plus national doctrine, then place the guns at a distance to the target equal to the result.

Mr. Brechtel,

"Russian artillery had a significant disadvantage" is a conclusion of Aexander & Yuri Zhmodikov, the original just says "unable to silence or dislodge them"

"Ermelov wrote that ….." No he didn't.
Alexander & Yuri Zhmodikov translated the published transcript of a oral lecture on the life of Yermolov, for which, in his dying days, the general had been interviewed.
And in the original, it was a more believable 8 howitzers, not 80 – 80 would be the howitzer complement for *40* French artillery companies (75% of the total at Borodino), and which never would have fit – wheel to wheel – in the mentioned ravine.

Confirmed from the French side in the "Revue d'artillerie" : link

====================

The difference in range is sourced to a specific example where French 24 pound howitzers on a high hill were firing at a range of 2.13 km (1000 Russian fathoms) and the Lieutenant Shirkevich's 12-pound unicorns could not hit them in reply. However, the incident is given as an example of infantry senior officers giving uninformed orders to artillery, as the French shelling was wild, random and essentially ineffective at such a range.

====================

I see with the "Search" function that you have repeatedly offered these little gems. But if you provide the full context, in the original sources, the "lesson" is a different from what the gems as you offer them imply. Sorry about that.

I ask you, if the high angle of elevation, longer range, plunging fire , etc., etc. was such a great feature of French howitzers to please provide a firing table or report of firing exercise where the elevation is stated to be more than the 29 degrees to which a Russian unicorn could elevate.

The source and evidence was posted.

Regarding the angle of firing for howitzers:

During firing tests French howitzers were fired at a maximum elevation of 45 degrees.

Adye's Bombardier and Pocket Gunner lists the French howitzer tables at 30 degrees, with a range of 1870 paces.

The French 6-inch howitzer was fired at 45 degrees with a range of 2,386 yards. At 30 degrees the range was 2172 yards.

The French 8-inch howitzer at 45 degrees had a range of 3200 yards.

See Tousard's American artillerist's Companion, Volume I, for the firing table on page 271.