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The M1841 12-pounder field howitzer was a bronze smoothbore muzzle-loading artillery piece that was adopted by the United States Army in 1841 and employed during the Mexican–American War and the American Civil War.
In the period before the Civil War, a U.S. Army light artillery battery was organized with four M1841 6-pounder field guns and two M1841 12-pounder howitzers. [1] The field gun fired solid iron cannon balls in a flat trajectory to smash its targets [2] while the howitzer was designed to lob hollow shells into massed formations or fortifications. [3]
The M1841 mountain howitzer was a mountain gun used by the United States Army during the mid-nineteenth century, from 1837 to about 1870. It saw service during the Mexican–American War of 1847–1848, the American Indian Wars, and during the American Civil War, 1861–1865 (primarily in the more rugged western theaters).
Field howitzer calibers used in the Civil War were 12-pounder (4.62 inch bore), 24-pounder (5.82 inch bore), and 32-pounder (6.41 inch bore). Most of the howitzers used in the war were bronze, with notable exceptions of some of Confederate manufacture.
Prior to the war, the U.S. Army had a variety of iron smoothbore siege guns (12-pounders, 18-pounders and 24-pounders) and howitzers (24-pounder and 8-inch) (Gibbon 1863, pp. 54–59). None of these pieces were used during the war as siege artillery. The advent of rifled artillery made them obsolete.
Canon obusier de 12, French 12-pounder cannon-howitzer of 1853. Known in the US as "12 pounder Napoleon" M1841 12-pounder howitzer, American howitzer having the same caliber (4.62 inches) as a 12-pounder field gun; One of the Dahlgren guns of the American Civil War; Ordnance BL 12 pounder 7 cwt, British field gun, 1885–1892
12-pounder Whitworth rifled cannon M1841 howitzer In the left of this picture U.S. Grant can be seen firing a mountain howitzer. The twelve-pound cannon is a cannon that fires twelve-pound projectiles from its barrel, as well as grapeshot, chain shot, shrapnel, and later shells and canister shot. [1]
Twenty-pounder rifle: an entirely bronze gun that was popular and was the only Dahlgren rifle (other than the 12-pounder boat howitzer) that continued in service after the American Civil War. Crew of six and a powder-boy, firing a 20 lb. shell in front of 2 lb. of powder it had a range of 1,960 yards at a 6.5° elevation.