"Howitzer and capabilities" Topic

Now I have 2 pure Howitzer batteries starting to think what really makes them different. First off should they get a lesser penalty to no penalty firing at troops behind light works or walls.
On the other side, there should be a dead zone that they can't fire due to the limitations of fuses.
Anyone play using either situations?

"Empires, Eagles, and Lions" Issue 109, December 1989 article by Jean Lochet: "On Howitzers and Licornes" presents a fairly detailed look at effectiveness and uses of these pieces.

Je joue les obusiers dans mes batailles.

Ils peuvent mettre le feu aux habitations. Comme cela, l'habitation devient une ruine au bout de quelque temps.
Je change alors ma "figurine" d'habitation par une "figurine" de ruine.
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Je ne leur mets pas de bonus/malus pour le feu contre les retranchements.

I am curious, what army are you fielding that contains the all howitzer batteries? I am no expert, however, I thought that the typical Napoleonic battery contained a mix of cannon and howitzers? I never thought of deploying all howitzer batteries, That would look cool and be able to drop a lot exploding shells on a single target.

Well the French, at Waterloo, followed a ratio of almost exactly 4/2/1 for 6pdrs/Howitzers/12pdrs, but this was maybe a higher ratio of the howitzers than usual. I am told there were skirmishes in the Napoleonic Wars, before 18th June, however and I will accept Quatre Bras and Ligny as of equal importance to The Big Day

The Prussians have 1 all Howitzer batter and now have added Bull's battery

The Prussian Army in June l8l5 had a number of howitzer only batteries.

At Borodino the French had a composite howitzer battery set up in a ravine firing at the Russians battery, the Russians having none couldn't hit them .

En 1809, les Autrichiens regroupés parfois les obusiers de plusieurs batteries pour en faire UNE batterie d'obusiers.

@Deadhead – I thought at Waterloo all French (6pdr & 12pdr) foot companies had 6 cannon and 2 howitzers except horse companies that just had the 6 cannon?

14 Bore : In Empire V there is an optional rule which allows for a 'dead zone' for Heavy Howitzers its between 7.1" to 15.99" and for Medium Howitzers its between 6.1" and 15.99". The optional rule does not apply to Russian Licornes. There are also no cover modifiers for Howitzers (only) if firing at enemy units in redoubts. Does this help?

Richard 1956 That's exactly I want to do.
My Russians are just out of luck having Licornes

14 Bore Why?
Licornes had a longer range and were more accurate having a flatter trajectory than a howitzer
Maybe this is why in some accounts the French stated that the Russians overshot them! It might be the lower lower trajectory they saw or heard?

14 Bore Your reference to a French converged Howitzer battery at Borodino. What is your source?

It's in one of the accounts read recently way to many Borodino narratives around here to remember which.

@BillyNM, all of the French horse batteries at Waterloo had four 6-pounder guns and two 5.5" howitzers.

and my comment about the 4/2/1 ratio was not about any individual unit, but about the French Army of the North, at Waterloo anyway, as in Adkin's Waterloo Companion. The shock for me was only 36 12pdrs when we seem to have far more already for Waterloo Remodelled! Weep.

Background reading:

TMP 2009 – Russian Unicorn Guns

TMP 2017 – Napoleonic Howitzers

TMP 2022 – Russian Heavy Position Companies 1812-14

Things that jumped out of above:
- Russian 20pdr Edinorogs could fire 12pdr canister
- Russian horse batteries had six cannon and six gun-howitzers

It could be argued that the six unicorns deployed as a half-battery are similar to the all-howitzer batteries under discussion.

Assuming that the howitzer grenade/bomb/shell is about morale effects rather than pure destruction – being the target of three or four times more of them landing nearby must have been interesting. (You'd certainly need more buckets of water to put their fuses out.)

Been looking all morning for howitzer ranges, thinking the 7.1- 15.99 is for 28mm scale as looks like 600 yds is minimum range in 1 table for a 5.5in British howitzer.
Also figured where this French using a covert to fire without repercussions came from. It's all over the links above and have book mentioned

I always understood that howitzers performed similarly to (very!) large bore shotguns when firing canister, so perhaps give them a bonus for short-range fire?

Canister is a given, it's tables for that dead zone which is minimum for the fuse.
In all my reading this morning, and found everything on Russian Licornes in a Ordanance Journal

I see, in our understanding of howitzers, a large lack of understahlnding of their value. I like to ask simple questions. Here is one. … IF the howitzer was pretty much f'ing useless and offered little, then why were so many howitzers in every artillery battery????? The ratio of cannon to howitzers was (roughly) 3:1 for French, 2:1 for many countries and 1:! (licornes) for the Russian. Why not more cannon instead of howitzers? Almost all wargame rules for artillery are written around cannon ranges and effects. ………. Is it that people these days are so so much smarter than people in the 1800's…. or are people these days just ignorant about their abilities and use?

I didn't see anyone suggesting howitzers were "pretty much f'ing useless and offered little". Have I missed something?

Cheers,
John

Erzherog Johann, ,,,,,, have you EVER seen a description of how Napoleonic howitzers were used in battle? A description of why this common type of weapon (33 to 50% or the artillery) were useful because of their quite different capabilities? This might be an unfair question to ask, but anyway::: any "praise" for having howitzers around to "solve" an artillery problem?………….. Maybe I'm just completely ignorant but.. The only description of howitzer is the old stories, from a very aging Russian non-artillery officer, misquoted about Borindo. Do you have two or more, or even one other story from the literature? (I'm old enough to have been there, but my memories are suspect). …….. A problem for us today is that artillery then, was not a proper career for high caste noble type officers, who were likely to be writing about themselves after the war. Also, those in artillery were likely from the engineering, shopkeeping and other lower class people and not likely to write books about themselves. Hence, a lot of information is missing to us………..and, starting about 1900, howitzer became an indirect, very high trajectory weapon with wired and wireless spotting. A completely different performance envelope. Currently, we have direct fire weapons that are smart enough to explode AFTER passing by defensive walls. Things change.

Reading John Gill's excellent "Thunder on the Danube"series about the 1809 campaign there was quite a lot of fighting in villages and they seemed to catch fire very easily under artillery fire. I'm guessing that it was mostly the howitzers which did that.

1968 bills fan, I haven't but I was surprised by your comment because I thought the contributors to this thread seemed to assume they were at least reasonably useful.

Cheers,
John

I'd suggest three reasons to use howitzers: -
Setting fire to things, particularly thatched/wooden buildings
Firing on troops behind cover or in sunken ground [if you know they are there], by setting the fuse to go off above the target
Wider spread with cannister, albeit at the expense of range

In answer to the question about minimum range, there has to be one because the wall of a shell has thickness, which gives a minimum length of fuse, but I have no idea what it was. The gunners would also want it to be more than the blast radius of the shell

In the first Grande Armée of 1805 there were 62 howitzers for 272 cannons (18,5%)
the second Grande Armée of 1812, the French Army Corps, gathered 170 howitzers for 804 pieces (~21%)
the average ratio is around 1 for 4½

The practical impossibility of designing a piece capable of fulfilling all artillery missions (the howitzer cannon only dates back to the Second Empire) forced designers to retain a diverse range of weapons and projectiles. As a result, at the time, we had

the "cannon" itself, which fired a solid spherical cast iron cannonball that was incapable of exploding, but whose direct impact or rebounds (ricochets) proved very deadly.

the "howitzer," with its much shorter barrel, which fired a hollow cannonball or "shell," a hollow spherical projectile filled with powder that exploded not on impact but during its flight or after falling (…). A shell launched between 600 and 800 meters exploded 30 to 40 seconds after firing, either in front of enemy ranks, which it riddled with shrapnel, or inside an entrenchment or a house, setting it ablaze.

and finally, the "mortar," which fired a curved bomb that, like the shell, had a time-delay priming system that brought the projectile to its final explosion.

(…)

to saturate the ground, bullet boxes known as "boites à mitraille" were also used, which produced an effect similar to that of an infantry salvo: cylindrical sheet metal boxes filled with "biscaïens" (large wrought iron bullets wedged with sawdust or bran).

La Grande Armée Analyse d'une Machine de Guerre
Jean-François Brun

Among Artillery memorialists

canonnier Bricard, against Frankfurt 1796
Immediately, all the divisions' howitzers were summoned, and around midnight, about a dozen guns fired shells at the town. The enemy responded with a few cannon shots. At daybreak, we learned that our shells hadn't caused much damage, as most had gone beyond the town and fallen in the gardens.

Pion des Loches, against Lübeck 1806
Our army corps arrives and we set up batteries of howitzers firing over the country houses to rein in the town. This was a decision made by the Marshal; the enemy was throwing cannonballs through the gardens and orchards, and we could have continued like this without any harm on either side other than needlessly consuming our ammunition.

Lieutenant Vergnaud, company (4 cannons of 6 and 2 howitzers) of the 4e Régiment d'Artillerie à cheval, serving with Brigade Schmitz, Army of Italy
Ala expedition, near Roveredo, on the Tyrol road 1813
The fierce battle at Ala was very brilliant for our artillery, with which Father Bonneau (the captain) performed wonders, for which his generosity gave me all the credit. While he was advancing on the line of our tirailleurs to extinguish the fire of the Austrian 7-pounders from the front with four 6-pounders, he had detached two howitzers under my command, recommending that I use them to attack them from the side. The twists and turns of the very uneven terrain had led me to discover the bulk of the enemy infantry lying flat on their stomachs in a mass in a ravine that concealed them in such a way that they could surprise ours as they approached and shoot them at point-blank range, then surround them as they emerged from this ambush, which, on the contrary, proved disastrous for those who had laid it. The majority were destroyed by the murderous fire of my two howitzers, firing grapeshot with great accuracy, and the rest surrendered at discretion. The enemy's losses amounted to no less than 1,500 men, including 400 taken prisoner with their weapons and baggage, while ours consisted of only a very small number of wounded, and even then only slightly. This last result had put Prince Eugene in a very good mood, who, rightly attributing it to the prompt and decisive effect of the artillery, complimented Captain Bonneau on it, asking him what he preferred for his reward, a rank or a decoration:
— With your permission, Monseigneur, I accept the rank, not for myself but for my lieutenant who did everything with his two howitzers;

Baron Séruzier, after having used his howitzers to break the ice at Austerlitz or against Vienna, still in 1809 at Baumersdorf
This village was very well fortified and full of troops; I received orders to drive the enemy out. The dispositions ordered to me came a little late; my efforts were not in vain, but they were not enough to force the abandonment of this position.
Throughout that day and until ten o'clock in the evening, we rained a hail of cannonballs on it in vain. I understood why we were not successful in this attack: we had neglected to secure a passage through which the enemy continually received reinforcements; in short, we had not properly recognized the point under attack. The assembled grenadiers of our army corps (2nd Corps) were ordered to charge with bayonets; but this formidable column was again driven back, as it is true that a first mistake leads to incalculable accidents. Indeed, this column of old and intrepid soldiers returned in disorder, and the grenadiers, furious at the false approach they had been made to take, came trembling to rally behind my artillery; I did not know how it would end, because the enemy was always receiving fresh troops. I resolved to damage the village in such a way that it would be impossible to establish ourselves there any further; I then directed all my howitzers on the largest houses where I presumed (as it turned out) that there were stores. In less than an hour I had reduced this unfortunate village to the most deplorable state: the fire spread everywhere, it was no longer possible for the Austrians to return, nor for us. All night we were lit by the fire; it was a dreadful spectacle.

Thank several people for some stories about the use of howitzers.