Civil War Artillery

A detailed Summary of Civil War Artillery


The artillery crews of both armies of the Civil War worked with the first guns that would eventually come to be the long-range killing machines that are used by the modern armies of today. The Civil War saw the beginnings of rifled barrels and breech loading artillery, with limited service however these new concepts were not fully developed and perfected until the years after the war. On the battlefields of the Civil War the smoothbore guns reigned supreme.

There were three types of field ordinance that saw use during the Civil War. Guns, the heaviest of the field artillery, which fired shells at a long range over flat trajectories. Howitzers, a lighter version of the guns, that fired lighter shells on a high arching trajectory. Finally, mortars were employed to use their extremely steep firing trajectories to lob their projectiles over relatively close enemy fortifications. The most common piece used by both Union and Confederate armies was a hybrid gun-howitzer, the Model 1857.


All the guns of the Civil War, whether smoothbore or rifled, fired four basic types of ammunition: solid shot, shell, spherical case, and canister. The first, solid shot, is as simple to define as it was to make, solid shot was an iron ball which used its kinetic energy to damage fortifications, troops, or anything else that got in its way. An added bonus to this type of ammunition was that it stilled proved deadly even if it missed its mark. This added killing factored can be contributed to the round shape of the shot, which allowed it to bounce along the ground wreaking havoc as soldiers tried to jump out of its way. The second type of ammunition used by the cannons of the Civil War was the shell. Externally the shell ammunition piece resembled the solid shot, but internally where the solid shot was solid the shell was hollow. Several ounces of powder were loaded into the shell's hollow cavity and would detonate by way of a timed fuse spraying fragments of iron everywhere above t

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Approximate Word count = 669
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History

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