How did artillery work without modern technology?
How did people know where to bomb using artillery without modern technology? (Ex The American Civil War, WWI, maybe WWII)
The idea is to have a forward observer, maybe on a hill nearby. You take your best bet, fire a test salvo. The observer tells you where it lands, by flag signals, telegraph or telephone wires, heliograph etc, and you correct for it, up a bit. left a bit, sort of. Earlier artillery was mostly with ships, and the cannon balls were skimmed along the sea surface, at fairly close range, so they could hit the side of the ship, something like ten pin bowling.
Ummmm….. point the cannon/catapult/whatever at the enemy and fire. And knowing how to use them so you know what kind of trajectory they had.
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The idea is to have a forward observer, maybe on a hill nearby. You take your best bet, fire a test salvo. The observer tells you where it lands, by flag signals, telegraph or telephone wires, heliograph etc, and you correct for it, up a bit. left a bit, sort of. Earlier artillery was mostly with ships, and the cannon balls were skimmed along the sea surface, at fairly close range, so they could hit the side of the ship, something like ten pin bowling.
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mathematics were still quite good, but the best way was to know the weapon you were firing.
and as the person above me said, if you know where the first shell lands, you know how much you have to adjust.
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It all comes down to mathematical approximation.
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The same as today but they missed more.
They did caculations by hand.
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In the Northern War of Aggression (the Civil War) it worked very well. The terrorists were able to defeat a smaller army trying to defend their homeland by using massive canon support. It doesn’t take an Einstein to aim a cannonball into a crowd of people at close range. They found an experienced canon team could do a pretty good job.
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Simply, you fired your cannon in view of the enemy then adjusted your aim. Since radios weren’t available aiming directions could be passed by visual signals from observers to artillery crews firing from behind cover of a hill or fortification. Cannon and howitzers probably had an effective range of about 1000 yards at best, give or take.
Civil war cannon were also used like large shotguns against enemy personnel. One need to only look at the large variety of shot and shells available to see the various purpose Civil War artillery played on the battle field
References :
http://www.civilwarartillery.com/