CATAPULT TO CANNON.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 17, 21 January 1933, Page 8 (Supplement)

CATAPULT TO CANNON.

ARTILLERY THROUGH THE

AGES.

MAN'S ENGINES OF OFFENCE.

BATTERIES, THEN AND NOW.

So long as arnlies fought their battles out in the open, such weapons as the war club, javelin, sword, and bow and arrow were adequate. When men began fighting from behind and from the tops of stout walls it became necessary for attacking forccs to devise stronger and heavier weapons. The battering ram for pounding and picking strong walls to pieces was introduced as early as 1300 8.C., when King Tiglathi-Nin, the Assyrian, besieged Babylon. At the siege of Troy, twelve centuries before Christ, the Greeks used the testudo, or roof of shields, to protect soldiers assuiting the walls with scaling ladders. At the siege of Tyre, by Alexander, walking towers armoured with bull hide were employed. In the fourth century before Christ various sorts of engines of war - made their appearance. There was the catapult, which shot heavy arrows and which was made on the principle of the bow. Its propulsive power was generated by tightly-twisted skeins of rope, hair, or sinew, with an elasticity the secret of which was lost hundreds of years ago. The catapults were the guns of their days, while heavier catapults known as ballistae were the howitzers. Some of Scipio's ballistae at the siege of Carthage hurled stones weighing 901b. The essential parts of the catapult and ballista were the frame, propelling gear, trough, and pedestal. In the wars of the ancients there was a weapon known as the scorpion, which later was called the onager, or wild ass. It threw heavy balls of stone, baked clay, or metal from a bucket attached to a long arm. Later developments of the stone-throwing weapons were the mangonel and the trebuchet, the last-named a huge engine for hurling rocks, cpnstructed on the principle 'of a giant sling, the power being produced by a heavy weight.

In the third century 8.C., Dionysius of Alexandria invented the first recorded machine gun, called a polybotos, or repeater thrower. It fired a succession of arrows from a magazine. At about the same time Ctesibius, ail Alexandrian engineer, geared to catapult arms a pair of pistons which worked in cylinders. The First Cannon. When cannons first made their appearance in warfare they were thought to be quite inferior to such weapon? as the ballista and onager. Tho date of the first appearance of cannon is quite uncertain, though they are believed to have been used at the siege of Metz in 1324. They are known to have been employed at the 6iego of Cividale, in Italy, in 1331. The Turks used monster cannon at Constantinople in 1453, guns which threw stone halls weighing 7001b. Some of those guns the Turks saved and used against a British fleet in 1807. It was Gustavus Adolphus who first gave artillery an important position in an army. His batteries rendered important service at Breitenfcld in 1C33. For 300 years after the introduction of the cannon the cannoneers of the armies were civilians. The bores of cannon were grooved- or rifled first in .1846, some of the rifled pieces being employed in the American Civil War. Rifled cannon - were more generally used in the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. At first the cannon fired either round shot or grape (a charge of small bullets), but later time shrapnel and the explosive shell came into use. Modern Development. Gradual development of artillery brought heavier and more powerful guns and howitzers, the first-named being the weapons with extremely long ranges and the last-named the squat, short-barrelled engines of destruction intended for the reduction of trenches and fortifications. When the World War got under way the Germans employed huge howitzers of 42 centimeter bore, made in Austria, for hammering the forts of Antwerp. The peak of German artillery development was the famous long-range gun used in shelling Paris. That gun had an extreme range of 76 miles. It fired shells weighing 2651b, which attained an altitude of 24 miles at the greatest height of their trajectories.

Many improvements have been made in guns since the World War. The great 16in rifles and howitzers produced in the United States are said to be the most destructive ever developed. Some of these giant weapons are built upon railroad trucks so they can be moved from one spot to another; others are stationary and are designed for the defence of harbours and coastal areas. Some of the big mobile howitzers are transported by means of caterpillar trucks. Designers have gone in strongly for specialisation. There are guns for each purpose—light field pieces for use in battle, heavier guns and howitzers for laying barrages, still heavier pieces for shelling army bases, forts, and cities, and specially-constructed weapons for anti-aircraft service.