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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.
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 ).
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]
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.
The introduction of the M1857 12-pounder Napoleon represented a significant development as the gun-howitzer could replace several of the outdated pieces at once. The Napoleon, along with the 10-pounder Parrott rifle , the 20-pounder Parrott rifle , and the 3-inch ordnance rifle , came to constitute the vast majority of Union field artillery ...
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
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.
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.