Field ArTillery - US Army Center Of Military History

The civil war
late that year. It recommended that at
least 50 percent of the guns at forts and
arsenals be converted into rifles. The
recommenda tion was approved, but
this attempt to obtain rifled pieces by
converting guns already on hand never
proved entirely satisfactory because the
older bronze guns, once grooved, could
not withstand the strain of firing. 14
Parrott guns, rifled pieces made
of cast iron, appeared in the winter of
1860–61. Manufac tured in a variety of
calibers, the 10-pounder Parrott was the
most popular for field use. Capt. Robert
Parker Parrott of the 3d Regiment of
Artillery had developed the muzzleloading
cannon with a reinforcing hoop on
its breech, the point of greatest strain.
The 10-pounder Parrott, originally 2.9
inches in diameter, was later manufactured
with a 3-inch bore to take the same
ammunition as the 3-inch Ordnance
Department rifle. The 3-inch rifles
became standard ordnance after their
introduction in 1861. 15
The ten field pieces listed in Table
6 were all in service by the end of 1861
Napoleon gun from Capt. Alonzo H.
Cushing’s Battery A, 4th Regiment of
Artillery, at Antietam, Maryland
and accounted for more than 90 percent of the rounds fired in the Civil War. 16 The
mountain howitzer used in the Mexican War and against the Indians saw little action
in the Civil War. Light batteries were authorized four 6-pounder guns and two
12-pounder howitzers, but 6-pounders were rarely employed after the first couple of
years of the war, and two different calibers were seldom used together in a battery.
Heavy field batteries were each authorized four 12-pounder guns and two 24- or
32-pounder howitzers. 17
14 Benét, Collection of Annual Reports, 2:364, 668, 679, 690; Birkhimer, Historical Sketch, pp.
264–67; Manucy, Artillery, p. 17; L. VanLoan Naisawald, Grape and Canister (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1960), p. 36; Phillip H. Stevens, Artillery Through the Ages (New York: Franklin Watts,
1965), p. 62.
15 Weller, “Field Artillery,” pt. 1, p. 34. The weight of the elongated projectiles used in rifled artillery
varied with the length of the shell, and the term pounder was eventually superseded by the bore measurement
as a means of designating the size of rifled artillery.
16 Weller, “Field Artillery,” pt. 1, p. 65.
17 Gibbon, Artillerist’s Manual, p. 341; The Ordnance Manual . . . United States Army (Philadelphia:
J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1861), p. 362. The heavy batteries used the 24-pounder more often than the 32pounder
in the field.
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