Civil War Artillery

[cyberia]

I'll open this thread with a famous piece...

The Dictator

This 13-inch Model 1861 seacoast mortar was perhaps the most famous mortar used during the war. The Dictator was mounted on a specially reinforced railroad car designed to accommodate its impressive 17,000 pounds.
The gun was served by Company G of the 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery for three months during the siege of Petersburg, Virginia in 1864.
The Dictator was capable of lobbing a 200-pound explosive shell approximately 2 ½ miles into the city from its firing position on a curved section of the Petersburg & City Point Railroad track.

[cyberia]

The 12-pounder Napoleon smoothbore was the most popular cannon of the American Civil War and used by both the North and South. Named after Napoleon III of France, it was favored for its safety, reliability, and killing power, especially at close range and has the distinction of being the last cast bronze gun used by an American army.

Union Napoleon

The Federal version of the Napoleon can be recognized by the flared front end of the barrel, called the muzzle swell.

Confederate Napoleon

Southern Napoleons were produced in at least six variations with most featuring straight muzzles, but at least eight of the 133 surviving guns have muzzle swells.
In addition, 125 Confederate Napoleons were cast in iron by Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond.

[cyberia]

Griffen 3-inch Ordnance Rifle

The 3-inch ordnance rifle was the most widely used rifled gun during the war. Rifled heavy guns were a new weapon in the American Civil War where spiral grooves along the inside of the gun barrel spun the shell or shot and enacting gyroscopic force that increased the accuracy of the gun by preventing the shell from rotating along axes other than the axis parallel to the gun barrel.

Invented by John Griffen, the 3-inch ordnance rifle was extremely durable with a wrought iron barrel primarily produced by the Phoenix Iron Company of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. The gun was also revered for its exceptional accuracy. During the Battle of Atlanta, a Confederate gunner was quoted as saying: "The Yankee three-inch rifle was a dead shot at any distance under a mile. They could hit the end of a flour barrel more often than miss, unless the gunner got rattled."


Like most of the rifled guns in the Civil War, the 3-inch ordnance rifle was muzzle-loaded.

[Jim O]

Another view of the Dictator.

[cyberia]

Federal six-pounder and cassion

[cyberia]

A line of 13-inch seacoast mortars of Battery No. 4, 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery-York, Virginia

[cyberia]

Gun and caisson of the 3rd Massachusetts Heavy Artillery at Fort Totten

[cyberia]

A Confederate soldier guarding a group of brass mountain howitzers

[cyberia]

Federal 24-pounder on a wooden barbette carriage at Fort Corcoran

[cyberia]

A 15 inch gun and mounting near Washington, D.C.