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n., pl. -ies.

1. Large-caliber weapons, such as cannon, howitzers, and missile launchers, that are operated by crews.
2. The branch of an army that specializes in the use of such weapons.
3. The science of the use of guns; gunnery.
4. Weapons, such as catapults, arbalests, and other early devices, used for discharging missiles.

[Middle English artillerie, from Old French, from artillier, to equip, perhaps alteration of atiller, from Vulgar Latin *apticulāre, from Latin aptāre, to fit, adapt, from aptus, apt. See apt.]

The word artillery (probably from Old Fr.: atillier, to load or charge) can refer to a type of weapon; to an arm of service, alongside infantry, cavalry and engineers; or to the art and science of utilizing these weapons. The artillery arm has produced many great generals, most notably Napoleon.

As a weapon, artillery is the most lethal form of land-based armament. It now includes guns, howitzers, mortars, and rockets, primarily designed for indirect fire, and also anti-aircraft guns, surface-to-air, and surface-to-surface missiles. In the Napoleonic wars and WW I and II most fatalities—over 60 per cent on the western front in WW I—were caused by artillery. In the desert in WW II, where the hard rocky landscape enhanced the effect of the shells, the percentage rose to 75 per cent. Not for nothing did Stalin, whose artillery arm had a tradition of excellence, call it ‘the God of War’ in a 1944 speech. Furthermore, it is not a clean way to die. The injuries and mutilation caused by artillery, its capricious effects, its operators unseen, make it a hated and feared instrument of war. Artillery's effects are impossible to simulate in peacetime exercises. Troops can manoeuvre and simulate direct fire, but indirect fire, when explosive power descends, unexpected, unseen until the explosions, paralysing, mutilating, and above all deafening, is impossible to mimic. Artillery therefore tends to be underestimated in peacetime. In war the artillery arm is always reinforced. In WW II a quarter of the British army was in the Royal Artillery.

From ancient times until the 14th century, all ‘artillery’ used mechanical principles: either the spring of a bow, as in the Roman ballista—a giant crossbow—or the principle of the counterweight, as in the trebuchet (see siege engines). The first trebuchets appear to have been operated by men pulling on one end of a lever, to propel a rock—or plague-ridden corpse, whether human or animal—in the desired direction, usually at or over a castle or city wall. Later the more familiar counterweight was introduced. By the 14th century counterweighted trebuchets with slings to multiply the force with which the projectile was hurled had reached a high degree of sophistication.

The origins of modern gun artillery are obscure. The Chinese invented gunpowder as a propellant in about ad 1000 but used it only for pyrotechnics. Engels thought guns were invented by the Arabs and came to Europe via the Nasrid kingdom of Granada in Spain. There are references to cannae (from the Latin canna, a hollow reed, the origin of ‘cannon’) in Florence in 1326. However, the first undeniable evidence of artillery in the modern sense—guns—is a picture, and comes from England. In early 1327 Walter de Milemete compiled his tract De Regis Misericordia (On the Duties of Kings) for the young King Edward III of England. The manuscript, now in Christ Church, Oxford, has detailed and expert drawings of ballistae and trebuchets. On the last vellum page, however, the greatest military-technical revolution until the present era is recorded. Mechanical energy is suddenly supplemented by the chemical energy of gunpowder. There is a picture of a curvaceous gun, firing, oddly enough, an arrow (see ammunition, artillery). No recoil control system is shown, suggesting, perhaps, that the artist had heard about guns but had not seen one. It is widely believed the English used some form of guns at Crécy in 1346, and this may have begun the panic of the Genoese crossbowmen.

The gun in the de Milemete manuscript is being fired at a city or castle gate. For another 300 years, at least, this was artillery's principal function: the attack and defence of fortified positions. In common with many new technologies—such as nuclear weapons—artillery was initially deployed as a strategic weapon—against, or in defence of, centres of power and population. It was too clumsy and immobile for anything else. Torsion and counterpoise engines of war—ballistae and trebuchets—could be made in situ with local materials—timber and fibre. Guns, made of rare and expensive metal, required the concentration of resources. The technology was closely linked to the casting of church bells. They were probably beyond the resources of local warlords. Therefore, artillery had a significant impact on centralization and the growth in the power of the nation state. It was very much the weapon of the settled community, and unsuited to the ways of war of the great nomadic Asiatic conquerors like Timur.

In the 15th century artillery emerged as a strategic weapons system. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 and Charles VIII of France's rapid demolition of north Italian fortresses in 1494 showed that artillery was the preserve of—and the decisive advantage enjoyed by—well-organized, powerful national rulers with well-organized military systems. Writing at the beginning of the 16th century, Machiavelli correctly surmised that the introduction of gunpowder was probably the greatest military revolution since the Romans. However, artillery was still relatively ineffective in the field. Had Machiavelli been able to wait a few more years, he might have thought differently. In 1537 the Italian mathematician Nicolo Tartaglia set out the ratio of calibre to the mass of shot in his La Nova Scientia, beginning a process of standardization of calibres which enhanced the efficiency and availability of artillery.

The Hussites used light artillery in concert with crossbows in their wagenburg mobile forts. In the 15th century many guns were breech-loaders, the charge being packed in a chamber which was then slotted into the breech of the gun and held in place with wooden wedges. It was impossible at this time to make a tight seal and by the late 16th century muzzle-loaders were preferred, and they dominated battlefields for another 300 years. The introduction of trunnions, the pivots in the middle of the barrel permitting it to move independently of the carriage, was a simple but important development.

In the early 16th century, the first professional bodies of artillerymen appeared across Europe: the Honourable Artillery Company (HAC), founded in 1537, in London and the Russian pushkary, at the about the same time. The word ‘artillery’ at this time still referred to any mechanical contrivances and members of the HAC were primarily archers at first. Artillery was seen as a ‘black art’. It made a horrible noise, covered its operators with black residue—probably the reason why gunners adopted a very dark blue or black uniform—and sometimes blew up.

The use of artillery as a mobile weapon in the field began in the Thirty Years War. Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden equipped his armies with 6- and 12-pounder guns, grouped in batteries of ten. However, he also developed a light gun—the 4-pounder ‘leather gun’, two of which were assigned to each infantry battalion. These were feeble little weapons, but marked the first permanent allotment of artillery to infantry units. Artillery could still not be considered a battle-winning arm, and still appears to have been used for psychological preparation rather than military effect. However, by the beginning of the 18th century light artillery was being used in concert with infantry movements. At Blenheim, Marlborough ordered Col Blood, his light artillery commander, to bring a battery forward to support his final move to break into the French centre. At Malplaquet about a third of Marlborough's artillery was detailed for close support from the start, and several times it was used to provide flanking fire in support of infantry attacks.

The appearance of modern artillery regiments, organized on the same lines as the rest of the army, mirrored its integration into the general scheme of battle. The formation of the Royal Artillery, in 1716, coincides pretty well with artillery's tardy appearance as an essential part of the combined arms team on the battlefield. Frederick ‘the Great’ departed from the tradition of using all the heavy artillery for a preliminary bombardment. He kept it concentrated and moved into action in support of his plan to blast an opening at the point chosen for the decisive attack. The creation of horse artillery, to provide a mobile reserve, assisted this process. Only now, in the Seven Years War, did artillery begin to come of age.

Technical developments in the late 18th century, led by the French designer Gribeauval, made artillery more mobile and enabled it to become the decisive weapon of the Napoleonic wars. A round shot, ricocheting in successive bounces, would slice through any man or horse in its path. Against densely packed formations, round shot was devastating. Closer in, guns fired grapeshot—bunches of shot about the size of snooker balls—and then case-shot—a tin container filled with musket balls. A 12-pounder case shot contained 63-170 balls, so an artillery battery could fire far more than an infantry battalion, and at much greater range. In a twenty-minute engagement, with each gun firing 20 to 30 rounds, a battery of ten guns might discharge 40, 000 balls.

Napoleon knew that ‘artillery, like the other arms, must be collected in mass if one wishes to achieve the decisive result’. He also placed great reliance on converging fire. During the Napoleonic wars there were increasing attempts to form huge batteries of 100 guns and more, but these were difficult to control. Individual guns and gunners, shrouded in their own smoke, became isolated. Because most artillery fire was direct, the guns had to be placed amongst or in front of the infantry. When the latter formed squares—if attacked by cavalry, for example—the gunners would leave their guns and retire to the protection of the square.

The 19th-century industrial revolution produced bigger guns, for use in sieges, but initially no advance in their employment in the field. The numbers used in the Crimean war, and especially at the siege of Sevastopol where 800 Allied guns fired one-and-a-quarter million rounds, marked a revolution in scale, if not in quality or concept. The general introduction of the rifle and the cylindroconical bullet gave every infantryman a weapon, which could, initially, strike at the same range as artillery. Because of its greater technological complexity and problems of scale, it took longer for the advantages of rifling, then breech-loading, and then rapid firing to be applied to artillery. Even when they were, artillery's ability to use its long range was hampered by the folds of the ground. The more numerous and less conspicuous infantry could often pick off the gunners, as happened in the American civil and Franco-Prussian wars. American civil war artillery was handled much as it had been in the Napoleonic wars. After the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1 the Prussians began to explore the possibilities of using indirect fire, fire at targets invisible from the guns themselves, which revolutionized warfare and enabled targets to be engaged by all guns within range. Artillery was hardly used in the 1877-8 Russo-Turkish war and the lethal effect of artillery relative to other arms reached its nadir: 2.5 per cent, as against 94.5 per cent from small arms. In the Russo-Japanese war, where indirect fire was widely used, artillery's share of the carnage increased to 22.9 per cent in sieges and 13.7 in the open field. In WW I the British suffered 58.5 per cent of battlefield casualties from hostile artillery.

The 19th century also saw developments in rocketry. The Briton Sir Samuel Congreve introduced successful rockets in the early 19th century, and the Russians became particularly interested in them during their fighting in the Caucasus because they could be carried over terrain unsuitable for guns. The Russian Konstantin Konstantinov (1817-71) realized that the problem of ‘throwing a very large projectile with a very high velocity’ would be solved using rockets, not guns. However, it would be another century before his prophecy was fulfilled.

The French 'Seventy-Five' was the first widely produced gun offering the combination of 'fixed' ammunition, permitting rapid loading, and a recoil mechanism permitting the gun carriage to remain in the same place while firing. When these developments were combined with indirect fire, improved communications and survey methods, a revolution in warfare took place and artillery returned to dominate the battlefield
(Click to enlarge)

In the Crimean war French and British rifled muzzle-loaders showed clear advantages over the Russian smooth-bores, and European powers began their general adoption in the 1850s. The American civil war was fought with a mixture of smooth-bores and rifled muzzle-loaders. Rifled Parrot guns were used in the defences of Washington, and by 1863 about half the Union's artillery was rifled, but the mainstay of the Confederate artillery remained the smooth-bored ‘Napoleon’. However, scarcely had rifled muzzle-loaders become commonplace than a new generation of guns appeared. The second component of this revolution was the reintroduction of breech-loading, made possible by improved technology and especially obturation—the sealing of the breech. Rifled guns loaded from the breech were brought in by the British in 1859 (although unhappy experiences caused them to return briefly to muzzle-loaders), Prussia in 1861, Russia in 1867, and the USA in 1870.

Another disadvantage of smooth-bore artillery had been that the entire gun and carriage recoiled, about 13 feet (4 metres). The piece therefore had to be re-aimed after each shot. Recoil systems, which enabled the barrel, sliding in a trough, to recoil independently of the carriage and then return to its original position using springs or hydraulics, were the next component of the artillery revolution. Between 1872 and 1875 the Russian inventor Vladimir Baranovskiy (1846-79) designed a remarkable 2.5 inch calibre gun incorporating all the features of a modern quick-firing field gun, which the Russians accepted in 1877. In 1879, Baranovskiy was killed while experimenting with ammunition designs.

Even these changes might not have brought artillery back as the greatest battlefield killer if it had only been able to fire solid shot. Explosive shells had been around for centuries, but from the mid-19th century scientifically designed explosive shells multiplied artillery's effect. In a fast-moving battle, shrapnel shells, which carried a case-shot effect right to the enemy, were ideal. However, as all the combatants discovered in the Great War, shrapnel was little use against trenches and high-explosive shell was required to dig enemy troops out of them.

The last component of the artillery revolution was the metal cartridge case and ‘fixed ammunition’. Instead of loading the shell (projectile) and charge separately, quick-firing guns sometimes had the two together. However, even a relatively small calibre gun like the British 25-pounder requires the shell to be loaded first and rammed home, so that the copper ‘driving band’ engages with the rifling, and the brass shell-case, which can be filled with varying charges, is inserted afterwards. Larger guns still used ‘bag charges’.

The first widely used field gun to incorporate all these features was the superb French 75 mm M-1897, which was still regarded as the best field gun in the world twenty years later. The Germans had 77 mm, the Russians the excellent 76.2 mm (3 inch—the origin of what may appear to be slightly odd Russian calibres), and the British the 18-pounder. However, the onset of trench warfare altered the balance of artillery. By the end of the war the proportion of howitzers—firing their shells at up to a 70 degree angle—had increased to 40 or 50 per cent. At the beginning of the war the principal European combatants had 26, 000 pieces of artillery: by the end (not counting Austria) 62, 800. The total British artillery strength had increased from 1, 352 to 11, 000 guns, although only 6, 000 were on the western front; the German from 9, 400 to 19, 800; and the French from 4, 300 to 11, 600. Artillery was a major reason for the development of air forces (see surveillance and target acquisition).

WW I was an ‘artillery war’ par excellence, witnessing the dramatic development of indirect fire and artillery fire control. It also saw the first ‘super-guns, ’ particularly the 210 mm Pariskanone, which, in a return to artillery's original role, began a strategic bombardment of Paris on 23 March 1918 at a range of 79 miles (128 km). Known as ‘Long Max’, because of its 130 foot (40 metre) barrel, supported by a suspension cable to stop it bending, it fired 203 shells in all. It killed 256 people and injured 620, but did not disrupt Parisian life seriously. WW I also saw the appearance of anti-aircraft artillery (AAA or ‘triple-A’) and by its end 4, 200 pieces were in use, often field guns remounted on special carriages.

During the inter-war period specially designed anti-aircraft guns were built and ‘artillery’ expanded to include anti-armour guns. Initially, anti-armour guns were of small calibre—typically 37 or 45 mm, often the same designs as those mounted in tanks. However, the experience of the Spanish civil war was an object lesson in flexibility. The German 88 mm FLAK (anti-aircraft) gun proved ideal for destroying tanks, and was later modified with a carriage for the latter role, and field guns, as the future Red Army chief of artillery, Nikolai Voronov (1899-1968) realized, could kill tanks just as effectively, if more messily, than specialized anti-armour guns. Modern mortars, relatively light and easy to move and quite different from the massive, plant-pot-like devices of the Crimean and American civil wars, had been introduced for high-angle fire from the trenches in WWI and now assumed their modern role as the infantry's own artillery. However, in the USSR, heavy mortars of 120 mm calibre and above were regarded as artillery weapons.

Artillery was an important part of the ‘deep battle’ thinking of the 1920s and 1930s but its role was perhaps underrated, especially by the Germans who parcelled it out in penny packets rather than retaining a structure for centralized control. The Soviets did so, and their use of artillery on the eastern front in WW II is the principal repository of knowledge for the operational deployment of artillery. In addition to guns, howitzers, and mortars, all sides, most notably the Soviets, introduced multiple rocket launchers—the German Nebelwerfer, the Soviet 132 mm BM-13 or Katyusha, the latter known as ‘guards mortars’. The need to provide fire support for tanks also meant guns that could keep up with them. There were two broad philosophies. The Germans and Soviets tended to go for assault guns or ‘tank destroyers’, which were direct fire weapons but had bigger guns than the tanks. The British and Americans preferred self-propelled (SP) guns: indirect-fire artillery pieces but mounted on tracked chassis so they could keep up with the tanks. By 1943-5 the density of artillery concentrated on 0.62 mile (1 km) of front had reached 200-300 pieces, and in the assault on Berlin the Red Army used 45, 000 guns, mortars, and multiple rocket launchers.

After WW II gun artillery experienced a relative decline, as ever-scarcer resources were concentrated on aircraft and missiles. The first surface-to-surface missiles were operated by the artillery, in all countries, and when the USSR created its new Strategic Missile Forces (RVSN) in 1959, those with a range below an arbitrary 621 miles (1, 000 km) were left under control of the army's artillery. Anti-armour and anti-aircraft missiles may still be operated by the artillery, as well as by other arms and services.

The most revolutionary improvements in artillery fire control since the introduction of indirect fire have been the result of Global Positioning Systems and laser rangefinders which help a good observer put the first round on the target. The Multiple Launch Rocket System now used by US and British armies proved highly successful in the Gulf war, eliminating entire Iraqi units at a range of 25 miles (40 km). The Iraqi ‘supergun’—a giant gun designed by the Canadian Gerald Bull, probably to put satellites in orbit—also indicates that the long struggle between the rocket and the gun is not yet over. In the recent past, liquid propellants have modified the use of chemical energy which was first shown in de Milemete's manuscript 670 years ago. Electromagnetic (EM) guns, which use an electrical pulse to fire the projectile faster than is possible with a chemical propellant, may create the greatest revolution in artillery technology since then. But there are problems finding a suitably compact source of energy supply. By a strange irony, the plates of a suitably powerful battery would need to be as close together as the molecules in a conventional explosive.

Bibliography

• Hughes, B. P., Open Fire: Artillery Tactics in the Era from Marlborough to Wellington (Chichester, 1983).
• Terraine, John, White Heat (London, 1982)

— Christopher Bellamy

Artillery has played a critical role in providing close support to the infantry, bombarding fortifications, defending coasts, and, in the twentieth century, attacking tanks and aircraft. Beginning with the initial settlements, English colonists in North America, like Europeans, employed smoothbore, muzzle‐loading, black powder, cast‐bronze cannons and howitzers. Cannons, also called guns by the nineteenth century, had powerful, flat trajectories to batter down fortification walls or to shatter troop formations, while howitzers had curved trajectories for lobbing projectiles over fortification walls or into troop formations. Colonial artillery fired several types of projectiles, among them: solid shot, an exploding shell that was detonated by a fuse; canister, which was a can filled with musket balls; and grapeshot, a cluster of iron balls grouped around a wooden spindle and covered by a heavy cloth netting.

English colonists gave their artillery colorful names, such as falcon, saker, demiculverin, and culverin, to name a few. A falcon shot a 2‐ to 3‐pound projectile; a culverin fired a 15‐ to 22‐pound projectile. During the seventeenth century, however, Europeans and Americans started designating their artillery by the size of the projectile that they threw. For example, a cannon that shot a 4‐pound projectile was known as a 4‐pounder. Besides classifying their howitzers by the size of the projectile that it shot, Europeans and Americans also labeled them by the size of the bore, such as a 5.5‐inch howitzer.

Meanwhile, most European armies began to classify their artillery as field, siege, garrison, and coast artillery. Light pieces, usually 3‐ to 12‐pounders, served as field artillery to support the infantry and cavalry, while heavier and less maneuverable pieces were employed as siege, garrison, and coast artillery where mobility was not critical.

Unlike the Europeans, colonists had little use for arranging their artillery functionally by size. First, the rugged North American terrain limited artillery to siege operations along coasts or to the defense of a fortification because even the lightest pieces were too heavy to drag across the roadless terrain. Second, Native American warfare was too mobile for artillery of any size.

Although the colonists did not employ artillery extensively or standardize it, they had a diverse assortment composed primarily of French and British pieces. At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War in 1775, the colonists had thirteen different calibers of artillery, ranging from 3‐ to 24‐pounder cannons and 5.5‐ to 8‐inch howitzers. Cut off from their sources of artillery at the beginning of the war, the Americans started casting their own iron and bronze artillery in foundries in Philadelphia by 1775. Under the guidance of Henry Knox, who commanded the Continental army's artillery throughout most of the Revolution, they developed a system of field, garrison, siege, and coast artillery of 3‐ to 32‐pounders. Colonial field artillery could hit targets at between 500 and 1,000 yards, while garrison, siege, and coast artillery had ranges of 2,000–3,000 yards.

After the Revolution, the Americans retained their categories of artillery. For coast artillery, which also doubled as siege artillery and garrison artillery, the Americans used 18‐, 24‐, and 32‐pounder cannons. Bronze and cast‐iron field artillery armed frontier forts but seldom saw action during the Native American wars. Later, in the 1840s, the Americans adopted rockets with explosive and incendiary warheads for use against personnel and fortifications at ranges of around 3,000 yards. Although rockets provided greater firepower than cannon artillery, developments with more accurate rifled artillery in the 1840s and 1850s caused rocket artillery to fall out of favor.

American smoothbore bronze artillery experienced its apogee in the middle of the nineteenth century. Designed by Maj. Alfred Mordecai of the army during the 1840s, the field artillery system had 6‐ and 12‐pounder guns to support the infantry and cavalry, and 12‐, 24‐, and 32‐pounder howitzers to bombard temporary field and permanent fortifications. For coastal defense, the army employed Columbiad cannons of 10 to 15 inches designed by Col. George Bomford.

Improved metallurgy and advancements in machining permitted significant breakthroughs with rifled muzzle‐loading and breech‐loading artillery. In the 1840s, the Italian Army produced the first workable rifled fieldpiece. Ranges of rifled artillery were twice that of smoothbore artillery—sometimes up to 4,000 yards.

Although rifled artillery promised to make smoothbore artillery obsolete, Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War of 1861–65 did not abandon their muzzle‐loading smoothbores for rifled breechloaders or muzzleloaders. Prominent siege pieces included 10‐, 20‐, 30‐, 60‐, 100‐, 200‐, and 300‐pounder rifled artillery produced by Robert P. Parrott of the United States. Other important siege and coast artillery pieces were smoothbores developed by Capt. Thomas J. Rodman of the army. Some of the most popular rifled fieldpieces were the muzzle‐loading, wrought‐iron M1861 3‐inch rifle and muzzle‐loading 3‐ to 10‐inch rifled guns. The latter, again manufactured by Robert P. Parrott, were of cast iron, with a wrought‐iron hoop around the breech to prevent the weapon from bursting upon being fired. Like their smoothbore counterparts, rifled artillery fired solid shot, exploding shell, canister, and occasionally grapeshot, and used black powder as a propelling and bursting charge. However, smoothbore fieldpieces, especially the M1857 12‐pounder Napoleon, remained the favorite because direct fire (also called line‐of‐sight fire direction) and the difficult terrain of Civil War battlefields prevented gun crews from engaging targets beyond human eyesight of about one mile and forced them to fire at targets at relatively short ranges.

A surplus of Civil War artillery and engagement in wars with Native Americans stalled new ordnance developments between 1865 and 1900. Early in the 1900s, Americans adopted breech‐loading, rifled steel field artillery with recoil systems that allowed the gun tube to recoil on the carriage and return into battery without moving the carriage. At the same time the Americans started using high‐explosive powder as a propelling and a bursting charge for steel shell and shrapnel, a projectile that was filled with iron balls. These high‐explosive powders increased ranges and diminished the amount of smoke produced when the cannon was fired; the M1903 3‐inch field gun, for example, had a range of almost 7,000 yards. For coastal defense, Americans introduced steel, rifled artillery mounted on disappearing carriages. Upon being fired, the gun moved back for some distance before swinging down behind the parapet to permit the gun crew to load the weapon out of sight of enemy guns.

Coupled with these advancements, Americans adopted indirect fire for their field artillery early in the twentieth century. This arching fire permitted concealing the field gun behind cover to protect it from counterbattery fire and small‐arms fire, and engaging targets beyond human eyesight. By World War I, all combatants were using indirect fire, locating their guns several miles behind the infantry line; they acquired targets by using forward observers, who relayed target information back to the batteries by telegraphy, telephone, and even human runners.

Even though the Americans went into World War I with distinct classifications of field, siege, and coast artillery, the war obscured the differences. Requiring heavy guns to batter down elaborate German earthworks and concrete fortifications along the western front, the U.S. Army frequently employed heavy coast and siege artillery pieces; some were mounted on railroad tracks in a field artillery role to help 75mm guns, 105mm howitzers, 155mm guns and howitzers, and 240mm, 8‐inch and 9.2‐inch howitzers shatter enemy positions. The army also introduced antiaircraft artillery, assigning it to the Coast Artillery branch.

During World War II, multiple rocket launchers mounted on trucks were used to lay down heavy concentrations of fire rapidly. The army even employed a recoilless rifle designed to fire the same size of projectile as light fieldpieces to engage tanks, enemy bunkers, and lightly armored vehicles. Ninety mm antiaircraft guns and shells with proximity fuses were employed to shoot down aircraft detected by radar or the human eye. The main U.S. artillery pieces in World War II were the 105mm howitzer, with a range of 12,500 yards; the 155mm howitzer, with a range of 16,350 yards; and the 155mm gun, with a range of 25,500 yards. All were later utilized in the Korean War.

The advent of nuclear cannon artillery, rockets, and guided missiles during the 1950s and 1960s transformed the field artillery. First fired in May 1953 at Frenchman's Flat, Nevada, the 280mm cannon, known as “Atomic Annie,” shot a 200‐pound nuclear projectile up to 20 miles. Later, the army also developed nuclear warheads for 8‐inch and 155mm artillery pieces. In the 1950s, it introduced the “Honest John,” a first‐generation free flight rocket with a range of about 24 miles, to carry either a conventional or a nuclear warhead; and the medium‐range Redstone, Corporal, and Sergeant guided missiles, with nuclear and conventional warheads and ranges between 75 and 200 miles.

Aircraft and high‐velocity naval guns made concrete coastal fortifications vulnerable and obsolete; the Coast Artillery branch was abolished in 1950, and succeeded in 1968 by the Air Defense artillery. Antiaircraft missile artillery included large, immobile surface‐to‐air missiles such as the radar‐guided Nike Ajax with a range of 100 miles; they defended American cities. The Nike Hawk, with a range of 25 miles, was a mobile antiaircraft missile. The Redeye, with a range of 3,300 yards, was a lightweight, man‐portable antiaircraft missile.

Also beginning in the 1960s, the U.S. Army introduced new field artillery for the tactical nuclear battlefield to replace World War II pieces. These new weapons included the M102 105mm howitzer, with a range of 16,500 yards; the M109 155mm self‐propelled artillery with a range of 19,700 yards; and the M110 8‐inch artillery, with a range of 18,400 yards. Although intended for the European battlefield, these field guns saw service in Vietnam.

From the mid‐1970s onward, high technology improved U.S. artillery. Field and air defense artillery employed computers for fire direction and adopted precision‐guided munitions (PGMs). The highly sophisticated Patriot air defense missile with a range of 65 miles replaced the Nike Hercules and Nike Hawk missiles, while the Redeye was replaced by the shoulder‐fired Stinger, with a range of 3 miles homed in on heat emitted from the aircraft target. The army fielded the nuclear Pershing II missile with a range of 1,000 miles in Europe in the mid‐1980s and the Multiple‐Launch Rocket System with a range of 15 miles in the field artillery and simultaneously improved the M109 self‐propelled 155mm howitzer. Both the howitzer and the rocket system were employed by some NATO armies in the 1970s and 1980s.

In the 1990s, the U.S. Army started laying the foundations to introduce leap‐ahead artillery technology. It would include digital command, control, and communication systems; fire‐and‐forget munitions; and new propellants to give unprecedented ranges.

Although artillery technology had changed greatly since the colonial era, the basic role of artillery on the battlefield remained constant. Field artillery still provided close support of infantry and now armor (replacing cavalry). Coastal artillery had become obsolete due to high‐velocity naval ordnance and especially aircraft and missiles. Yet air defense artillery had emerged to take on a defensive mission against the new skyborne weapons.

[See also Army Combat Branches: Artillery; Nuclear Weapons; Weaponry, Army.]

Bibliography

• Albert Manucy, Artillery Through the Ages: A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America, 1949.
• Fairfax Downey, Sound of the Guns: The Story of American Artillery, 1956.
• Kenneth P. Werrell, Archie, Flak, AAA, and Sam, 1988.
• Boyd L. Dastrup, King of Battle: A Branch History of the U.S. Army's Field Artillery, 1992.
• Bruce I. Gudmundson, On Artillery, 1993.
• Boyd L. Dastrup, Modernizing the King of Battle: 1973–1991, 1994

n. pl. -ies 1. large-caliber guns used in warfare on land: tanks and heavy artillery | artillery shells.

2. a military detachment or branch of the armed forces that uses such guns: two regiments of field artillery.

artillerist n. artilleryman n.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

For more information on artillery, visit Britannica.com.

Artillery in the U.S. Army dates from the American Revolution, when Massachusetts and Rhode Island units joined in the siege of Boston. The first Continental army artillery regiment was raised in January 1776; by 1777, four Continental regiments were in operation. Artillery men manned the country's first coast defenses in 1794, leading to a traditional classification of U.S. Army artillery into field, siege and garrison, and coast artillery.

A few units served as light artillery during the War of 1812, but most doubled as either infantry or manned coast defenses. In 1821 Congress authorized four artillery regiments of nine companies each. It increased the number of companies in each artillery regiment to twelve in 1847. Most artillery regiments in the Mexican-American War (1846–1848) fought as infantry, although a few performed well as light artillery. After the war, the batteries of artillery scattered all over the United States. By the end of the Civil War, the regular army had five artillery regiments, with a total of sixty batteries, mostly field artillery. In 1898, two additional regiments were organized, and in 1899 each regiment gained two heavy batteries, bringing the total number of batteries to ninety-eight. After a major reorganization of artillery in 1901, the coast and field artillery became full separate branches in 1907. The number of field artillery regiments greatly increased during World War I, and antiaircraft units swelled the size of coast artillery.

Increased demand in World War II for flexible, mobile, and more powerful units led to the reorganization of regiments into separate battalions, batteries, and groups of field, coast, and antiaircraft artillery. They remained separate until the advent of the Combat Arms Regimental System in 1957, which reorganized the three components as regiments. In 1968 the Air Defense Artillery became a separate branch, and the artillery branch dissolved when Field Artillery again became a separate branch in 1969.

Most American artillery has copied, improved on, or adapted the ordnance of other nations. Between 1840 and 1860, John A. Dahlgren and T. J. Rodman improved the range and weight of shot used in cast guns. During the Civil War, the Robert P. Parrott rifled muzzle-loading gun outranged its smoothbore contemporaries. From 1865 to the Spanish-American War, inventors paid a great deal of attention to fortress guns, with innovations in mounts and fire control. The proximity fuse (introduced just before World War II) carried a miniature radio set that sent a continuous impulse. As the shell approached the target, the impulse's echo duration became shorter, activating the firing mechanism at a predetermined interval. Initially most useful in antiaircraft guns, the fuse's adaptation to regular artillery had devastating effect.

American inventiveness concentrated on fire control and laying techniques. By the Spanish-American War the artillery had perfected the indirect laying method and developed overhead fire procedures. This led to the technique of using map data to fire on unseen targets, a method used widely in World War I. By World War II the United States fielded the most widely feared artillery of the combatants. One especially effective technique was the time-on-target (TOT), whereby any number and caliber of guns within range of a target could fire so that all their shells arrived at the same time.

During the nuclear arms race of the 1950s, American artillery units developed nuclear projectiles for use with conventional 203 mm howitzers. The Soviets developed a comparable system. Since then, however, developments in artillery technology have focused on conventional munitions. In the 1970s, projectiles were developed that could emit a number of submunitions, capable of destroying a variety of targets. Later, the army developed the guided projectile—the artillery version of the "smart bomb" that debuted with such fanfare during the Persian Gulf War—which forward personnel could illuminate by laser and guide to its target.

Bibliography

Downey, Fairfax Davis. The Sound of the Guns. New York: D. McKay, 1956.

Dupuy, R. Ernest. The Compact History of the United States Army. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1973.

Sawicki, James A., ed. Field Artillery Battalions of the U.S. Army. Dumfries, Va.: Centaur Publications, 1977.

U.S. Army Artillery School. U.S. Army Field Artillery School Guide. Fort Sill, Okla.: Author, 1983.

—Warner Stark/C. W.; A. R.

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Weapons for discharging missiles; a large-bore, crew-served mounted firearm, such as a howitzer; ordnance.