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The Artillery.

British Heavy Howitzer

The “Pom-Pom”

As far as artillery was concerned the British army should not have been playing catch-up to any other country in the world. During the American Civil War British made breech- loading cannon had been in use, but never in great numbers.[1] However by 1870, both Britain’s home army, and her army in India were fully equipped with breech-loading cannon, and although not perfect, owing to gas leakages around the breech, they were nevertheless a great improvement on the old muzzle-loading cannon of the past. Because of the poor performance of some of the breech-loading guns during active service in desert conditions, The New Ordnance Department, which had replaced the old Board of Ordnance in 1855, in its infinite wisdom, decided to rearm the whole of the Royal Artillery with muzzle-loading cannons in 1871.[2] Not even the outstanding successes of the Krupp breech-loading guns used during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 persuaded the British army from retuning to a weapon already rejected by every other modern army. By 1880 there were only two breech-loading batteries left, and those were in the Army in India, and by 1890 even those had gone.[3]

None of this took into account the development of new propellants, which gave a greater range and also enabled larger and larger shells to be fired. The barrels of artillery pieces had to be lengthened and tapered to fit and adjust to each change in modification, and before there was time to complete the whole change, along would come yet another improvement making these changes obsolete.[4] What finally brought the army back to its senses were the problems pondered upon when considering an invasion of the British mainland. Here it was found that as battleship firepower had increased so the Garrison Artillery had to respond in like fashion in order to keep pace. As guns became larger so the difficulty of using muzzle-loaders became ever more apparent especially when gun crews had to climb up to swab out a massive casemate-installed cannon each time it was fired, and then reload at the muzzle.[5] This was the deciding factor that made the British army once again revert to breech-loading cannon, but even with the outbreak of the Boer War in 1899 there were still one or two field batteries that had not been converted, like the Natal Field Artillery, which still used 7 ponder rifled muzzle-loaders.[6]

The problems of facing the technological changes in armament was one thing, but how to use these new developments to better effect on the battlefield was quite another matter for the muddle-headed thinkers of the British high command. No testing had been carried out prior to the outbreak of war to compare the capabilities of the German made Krupp field gun with that of the “much improved” British 15-pounder howitzer, and it was only after the first disastrous battles with the Boer’s that it was realized that the Krupp cannon outranged the British artillery, in itself a damning indictment of the way the army went to war.[7] Not only this but the Boers had a weapon which the Ordnance Department had rejected as an unnecessary refinement in 1898, at that was the Krupp “Pom-Pom”, a weapon that the British soldier came to dread on the battlefields of South Africa.[8]On more than one occasion it had taken-out entire gun crews and groups of infantry with its rapid firing bursts of twenty or so one-pound shells.[9] It took the British Navy to come up with the answer, and that was in the form of rapidly improvised ships cannon mounted on a reinforced gun carriage, in itself a cumbersome weapon for use in mobile warfare.[10] But even with this type of improvement the British Artillery still clung on to obsolete methods of deployment on the battlefield.

The artillery training hammered into commanders at Woolwich and Larkhill was still as archaic as those employed during the Crimean War, and even more disastrous, owing to the old dictum that ‘One gun is no gun.’ Thus when the British artillery went into action their field batteries were formed in neatly aligned rows of six guns, with their limbers and caissons arranged to the rear making them perfect targets for the Boer artillery. This in itself was bad enough but, even when smokeless powder had been introduced, the atmosphere and heat on the South African plains allowed for a haze to be set-up over each gun. This would not have been so bad for single cannon as this haze was not so discernable from a single gun, but when six or more were aligned and firing together, the Boer spotters soon homed-in on the heat-haze above the British batteries which developed after only a few minutes.[11] While the British tried to “comb” the Boer position at random, the single, well-sighted Boer cannons could pinpoint the British artillery positions and bring down devastatingly accurate fire.

The Dublin Fusiliers Attempt to ford the Tugela River at the Battle of Colenso (René Bull and Enoch Ward)

Another outdated tactic used by the British artillery commanders was to push their batteries too far forward. This praiseworthy, but ultimately suicidal mode of supporting an infantry attack is highlighted by the actions of Colonel C.J.Long at the Battle of Colenso (15^th December 1899). Here Long, who had seen action at Omdurman fighting the Dervishes, and who considered that artillery should be used at ‘decisive range’, brought his twelve 15 pounder guns forward and unlimbered them at 1,250 yards from the concealed Boer riflemen. True to their training the gunners formed up and aligned their cannon in parade ground fashion, which would have earned them high praise at Woolwich, and they even managed to allow the British infantry to reach the outskirts of Colenso village. This, of course, was just what the Boers had intended, and once the foot soldiers where trapped inside the bottleneck of Colenso they opened such a devastating fire that within a matter of minutes Long was wounded and most of his command either suffered the same fate as their chief or were dead. As if this were not bad enough, but the sight of Long’s deserted guns standing out in the open diverted the British Commander in Chief, Sir Redvers Buller’s attention away from the main battle. He now forgot all about crossing the Tugela River and concentrated on recovering the guns, which was a failure, and only resulted in still more casualties and only two guns being brought back.[12] In his cable to London sent for public consumption. Buller presented an air of Victorian calm. He described the heroism of the attempts to save the guns, but he did not mention the collapse of his infantry. The one reference he did make was concerning Long’s “serious reverse” using the artillery to support the infantry attack, ‘This was, however, censored by the War Office.’[13]

The last desperate attempt to save the guns of the 14^th and 66^th batteries
Battle of Colenso (Sidney Paget)

The strange thing about the use of artillery in the manner described above is that even with this glaring evidence before them the British army still continued to consider that close support was the most effective method of pinning down the enemy during an infantry attack. Colonel C.E. Callwell, in his book, ‘Small Wars, Their Principles and Practice’, although admitting that the Boer was an exceptional case, still maintained that, ‘the proper place for the guns is a little to the rear of the infantry firing line, whenever plunging fire is not required. The nearer they get to their work the better. If they are required to prepare the way for the infantry they should, as far as circumstances permit, be in action at the point where the infantry has come to a standstill, and this is the principle upon which, when the regular forces are acting on the offensive, the artillery usually does act if in efficient hands.’[14]

 

 

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