"Why both howitzers and cannon?" Topic

Why did most artillery units have a 2 cannon to one howitzer ratio

Doesn't it seem silly to cart around all those useless howitzers? Why not just use a reduced powder charge to send off shells?

G'Day Alex

Which country had a two cannon to one howitzer ratio?

Best Regards
Art

One might presume on the balance of probability that they weren't useless after all.

TMP link

Howitzeres were also useful, because they could fire not only shells, but canister as well.

With the higher caliber of howitzers as compared to that of the guns, they highly added to the canister fire effectiveness of the battery.

The usual ratio in Prussian field batteries was 3:1: 6 guns and 2 howitzers.

Also, whereas cannon had a relatively flat trajectory, howitzers could fire at a relatively high angle to produce air burst and an early form of indirect fire especially against troops behind obstacles.

G'Day Gents

I could be wrong, but I think that all countries used a two gun section.

The British had three sections to a battery, therefore their batteries, and even French horse artillery would have one section of howitzers and two section of guns.

According to Lauerma; the reason that the British had three sections is based upon their own artillery system which was based on the following Continental Systems, or modified to meet their needs: "Bataille Rangée" and system "L'Artillerie de Position" or also known as "L'artillerie de Reserve"

(L'Artillerie de Campagne Francaise Pendant les Guerres de la Revolution: Evolution de l'Organization et de la Tactique by Matti Lauerma, Helsinki 1956)

Best Regards
Art

The Royal Artillery, both foot brigades and horse artillery troops, had five guns and one howitzer.

French horse artillery companies had either four guns and two howitzers or six guns.

There was also one British artillery unit at Waterloo that was armed with all howitzers.

As I recall, by 1815 the Prussians aimed to have one complete battery of howitzers per corps, in addition to all their 6 gun + 2 howitzer batteries so they must have seen some value in them.

Possibly more to the point, while generally regarded as a dead end in terms of both design and use, the Russian efforts to combine gun with howitzer certainly seems to me to show that no one in the armies of the time was thinking howitzers were useless…

If howitzers were useless, then they wouldn't have been used.

Possibly more to the point, while generally regarded as a dead end in terms of both design and use, the Russian efforts to combine gun with howitzer certainly seems to me to show that no one in the armies of the time was thinking howitzers were useless

Wargamer Myth alert. The unicorn was NOT an attempt to combine the gun and the howitzer. It was simply a longer barreled howitzer. And it wasn't a dead end – compare mid-19th Century howitzers (e.g., ACW) with unicorns v. Napoleonic howitzers.

Also, as to ratios, the Russians liked 1:1 in their Light Position (6-pdr) batteries and 2:1 in Heavy Position (12-pdr) batteries.

'Possibly more to the point, while generally regarded as a dead end in terms of both design and use,'

Not really dead end – the British 25 Pounder was a gun-howitzer.

So were the US 105mm, the M198 155mm, and the latest, the M777 155mm, to name a few.

I was looking through the French order of battle for Jena and the four Guard horse artillery companies all had five long guns and one howitzer.

Even in the Prussian heavy batteries those of Prussian manufacturer had 10 pdrs and as mentioned in the 1815 campaign increased the howitzer battery numbers. They must have thought they were very useful in both canister and shell ammunition.

I'd say if a weapon was used by multiple mutually-hostile countries over a period of generations, the presumption is that it WAS useful, and if rules say otherwise, there is something wrong with the rules.

I'd be thinking of villages and dead ground to the battery's front, myself. Or earthworks. A reduced charge doesn't get you a high arc.

Actually the only failed howitzer design as far as I can work out was the "Secret" howitzer designed by Shuvalov in the 1750s. This gun looked like a normal "unicorn" howitzer at first sign but with a bore that was remarkable flattened\the horizontal plane, with the width of a 24pdr and height of a 3pdr. It was intended to fire only anti-personnel rounds.

Loading was troublesome and slow resulting to only one round being fired before cavalry overran a battery at Zorndorf (1758).

The design was withdrawn from the inventories by the 1780s.

Russian battery artillery company (2:1 ratio)
4x 12-pound standard canon (bore is 16 calibers without the breech)
4x 12-pound short canon (bore is 13 calibers without the breech)
4x 20-pud (=24-pound) unicorn (bore is 10 calibers without the breech)
administratively attached through 1807 : 2x 3-pound unicorn (intended as battalion pieces for jäger, although their use in the European campaigns may be questionable – they did feature in the defense of strongpoints in the Caucasus, along with a strange little 6-pound mortar on a skid)

Russian light artillery company (2:1 ratio)
8x 6-pound canon (bore is 17 calibers without the breech)
4x 10-pud (=12-pound) unicorn for foot artillery (bore is 11 calibers without the breech)

Russian horse artillery company (1:1 ratio)
6x 6-pound canon (bore is 17 calibers without the breech)
6x 10-pud (=12-pound) unicorn for horse artillery (bore is 10 calibers without the breech)

"Sections" were of 2x identical guns, commanded by an officer and called vzvod (literally, platoon).
6x vzvod/platoon = 1 rota/company

See, for example, PSZRI 20.672 of 19 March 1803 (O.S.) – although the general organization was created in the reign of Paul I and lasted throughout the era.
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138Squadron

The "secret" Shuvalov design is a great example of Russian management techniques : all the leading designers, some ex-pats from England and Scotland, said "No, boss – please let's just make unicorns" – but Shuvalov liked the oval bore and so they built it. As you said, utter failure. They melted them down in the 1780's – but they stopped using them almst at once.

The then-colonel Nilus (Нилус Андрей Александрович, 1858-1941) writes about the episode in some detail in his «История материальной части артиллерии» (1904), and his footnotes will lead you to more details.
See : link