Гаубица: Тарихы мен түрлері

Type of artillery piece

The howitzer ('/h//aʊ//.//ɪ//t//s//ər/) is an artillery weapon that falls between a cannon (or field gun) and a mortar. It is generally aimed lower than a mortar but higher than a cannon. With their long range capabilities, howitzers can be used to great effect in a battery formation with other artillery pieces, such as long barreled guns, mortars, and rocket artillery.

The English word howitzer comes from the Czech word houfnice, from houf, 'crowd', and houf is in turn a borrowing from the Middle High German word Hūfe or Houfe (modern German Haufen), meaning 'crowd, throng', plus the Czech nominal suffix nice. Haufen, sometimes in the compound Gewalthaufen, also designated a pike square formation in German. In the Hussite Wars of the 1420s and 1430s, the Hussites used short barreled houfnice cannons to fire at short distances into crowds of infantry, or into charging heavy cavalry, to make horses shy away. The word was rendered into German as aufeniz in the earliest attested use in a document dating from 1440; later German renderings include haussnitz and, eventually haubitze, from which derive the Scandinavian haubits, Polish and Croatian haubica, Estonian haubits, Finnish haupitsi, Russian gaubitsa (гаубица), Serbian haubica (xаубицa), Ukrainian haubytsіa (гаубиця), Italian obice, Spanish obús, Portuguese obus, French obusier, Romanian obuzier and the Dutch word houwitser, which led to the English word howitzer. Since World War I, the word howitzer has been changing to describe artillery pieces that previously would have belonged to the category of gun howitzers – relatively long barrels and high muzzle velocities combined with multiple propelling charges and high maximum elevations. This is particularly true in the armed forces of the United States, where gun howitzers have been officially described as howitzers since World War II. Because of this practice, the word howitzer is used in some armies as a generic term for any kind of artillery piece that is designed to attack targets using indirect fire. Thus, artillery pieces that bear little resemblance to howitzers of earlier eras are now described as howitzers, although the British call them guns. The British had a further method of nomenclature. In the 18th century, they adopted projectile weight for guns replacing an older naming system (such as culverin, saker, etc.) that had developed in the late 15th century. Mortars had been categorized by calibre in inches in the 17th century, and this was duplicated with howitzers. U. S. military doctrine defines howitzers as any cannon artillery capable of both high angle fire (45° to 90° elevation) and low angle fire (0° to 45° elevation); guns are defined as being only capable of low angle fire (0° to 45° elevation); and mortars are defined as being only capable of high angle fire (45° to 90° elevation).

The first artillery identified as howitzers developed in the late 16th century as a medium trajectory weapon between that of the flat trajectory (direct fire) of cannon and the high trajectory (indirect fire) of mortars. Originally intended for use in siege warfare, they were particularly useful for delivering cast iron shells filled with gunpowder or incendiary materials into the interior of fortifications. In contrast to contemporaneous mortars, which were fired at a fixed angle and were entirely dependent on adjustments to the size of propellant charges to vary range, howitzers could be fired at a wide variety of angles. Thus, while howitzer gunnery was more complicated than the technique of employing mortars, the howitzer was an inherently more flexible weapon that could fire its projectiles along a wide range of trajectories. In the middle of the 18th century, a number of European armies began to introduce howitzers that were mobile enough to accompany armies in the field. Though usually fired at the relatively high angles of fire used by contemporary siege howitzers, these field howitzers were rarely defined by this capability. Rather, as the field guns of the day were usually restricted to inert projectiles (which relied entirely on momentum for their destructive effects), the field howitzers of the 18th century were chiefly valued for their ability to fire explosive shells. Many, for the sake of simplicity and rapidity of fire, dispensed with adjustable propellant charges. The Abus gun was an early form of howitzer in the Ottoman Empire. In 1758, the Russian Empire introduced a specific type of howitzer (or rather gun howitzer), with a conical chamber, called a licorne, which remained in service for the next 100 years. In the mid 19th century, some armies attempted to simplify their artillery parks by introducing smoothbore artillery pieces that were designed to fire both explosive projectiles and cannonballs, thereby replacing both field howitzers and field guns. The most famous of these "gun howitzers" was the Napoleon 12 pounder, a weapon of French design that was extensively used in the American Civil War. In 1859, the armies of Europe (including those that had recently adopted gun howitzers) began to rearm field batteries with rifled field guns. These field pieces used cylindrical projectiles that, while smaller in caliber than the spherical shells of smoothbore field howitzers, could carry a comparable charge of gunpowder. Moreover, their greater range let them create many of the same effects (such as firing over low walls) that previously required the sharply curved trajectories of smoothbore field howitzers. Because of this, military authorities saw no point in obtaining rifled field howitzers to replace their smoothbore counterparts but instead used rifled field guns to replace both guns and howitzers. In siege warfare, the introduction of rifling had the opposite effect. In the 1860s, artillery officers discovered that rifled siege howitzers (substantially larger than field howitzers) were a more efficient means of destroying walls (particularly walls protected by certain kinds of intervening obstacles) than smoothbore siege guns or siege mortars. Thus, at the same time armies were taking howitzers of one sort out of their field batteries, they were introducing howitzers of another sort into their siege trains and fortresses. The lightest of these weapons (later known as "light siege howitzers") had calibers around 150 mm and fired shells that weighed between 40 and 50 kilograms. The heaviest (later called "medium siege howitzers") had calibers between 200 mm and 220 mm and fired shells that weighed about 100 kilograms (220 pounds). During the 1880s, a third type of siege howitzer was added to inventories of a number of European armies. With calibers that ranged between 240 mm and 270 mm and shells that weighed more than 150 kilograms, these soon came to be known as "heavy siege howitzers". A good example of a weapon of this class is provided by the 9.45 inch (240 mm) weapon that the British Army purchased from the Skoda works in 1899.

A self propelled howitzer is mounted on a tracked or wheeled motor vehicle. In many cases, it is protected by some sort of armor so that it superficially resembles a tank. This armor is designed primarily to protect the crew from shrapnel and small arms fire, not anti armor weapons. A pack howitzer is a relatively light howitzer that is designed to be easily broken down into several pieces, each of which is small enough to be carried by mule or pack horse. A mountain howitzer is a relatively light howitzer designed for use in mountainous terrain. Most, but not all, mountain howitzers are also pack howitzers. A siege howitzer is a howitzer that is designed to be fired from a mounting on a fixed platform of some sort. A field howitzer is a howitzer that is mobile enough to accompany a field army on campaign. It is invariably provided with a wheeled carriage of some sort.