Heavy Field Howitzers 1914-1915 (Part III)

Armies of the First World War

Horses

In an age when most artillery pieces were pulled by teams of horses, the weight of an artillery piece placed powerful limits on the mobility of guns and howitzers.  Under normal conditions, a standard team of six ordinary draft horses could reliably handle a load, with a total weight of no more than 2.5 metric tons, that consisted of an artillery piece, a limber stocked with ammunition, and as many as four passengers.  When serving with an army on campaign, such a combination of horses, vehicles, and men could easily march as far, and as fast, as infantry units of the day.  On the battlefield, it could move quickly (“at a trot”) for short periods of time, whether to take up firing positions or to change them.¹

Pulling a load that exceeded 2.5 metric tons required much more in the way of horsepower than a team of six ordinary draft horses could provide.²  This could be achieved by using additional horses, horses of exceptional strength, or, best of all, a team composed of eight particularly strong horses.  The burden on these horses, moreover, could be reduced by making the limber as light as possible, often by removing the ammunition chests that were customarily loaded onto the limbers used with light field pieces.

Artillery pieces that were light enough to be pulled by teams of horses, whether on the march or in battle, qualified as “field guns” or “field howitzers.”  With a standard team of six ordinary artillery horses, this meant that, to qualify as a “field piece,” an artillery piece and its limber could weigh no more than three metric tons.  With larger teams (especially those composed of exceptionally powerful horses), the limit could be increased to four metric tons.³  Pieces that exceeded this limit, such as the 60-pounder (127mm) gun adopted by the British Army in 1904, could still accompany armies on the march.  They were greatly handicapped, however, by the lack of a comfortable margin for error.⁴

                       Weight Behind Team of German 105mm Artillery Pieces

The following page provides links to all of the articles in this series:

Heavy Field Howitzers

1. For short descriptions of the use of six-horse teams to pull light field guns, see, among many others, Henry A. Bethel, Modern Artillery in the Field (London:  MacMillan, 1911), pp. 98-100 and Alexander B. Dyer, Handbook for Light Artillery (New York:  J. Wyley and Sons, 1900), pp. 194-195. 

2. Technical data for the two German 105mm pieces come from Hans Linnenkohl, Vom Einzelschuß zur Feuerwalze, Der Wettlauf Zwischen Technik und Taktik im Ersten Weltkrieg, (Koblenz: Bernhard und Graefe, 1990), pp. 80 and 86. The figure for “weight of passengers” assumes that each man weighs, on average, 75 kilograms.

3. For a brief description of the trade-offs between weight of metal and mobility, see K.K. Knapp, “To What Extent May Guns and Howitzers of Greater Calibre than Those of Our Field Artillery Cooperate Usefully in Field Operations, and What Rules Should Govern Their Tactical Employment,” Journal of the Royal Artillery, Volume 24, Number 7 (October 1907), pages 273-274. For descriptions of the sort of distances that horse-drawn artillery units might cover, see Archibald F. Becke, The Royal Regiment of Artillery at Le Cateau, (Woolwich: Royal Artillery Institution, 1919.)

4. For a brief mention of an incident in which a 60-pounder heavy gun had to be abandoned because the available horse teams could not pull it out of a ditch, see Becke, The Royal Regiment of Artillery at Le Cateau, p. 82