The Napoleon

No, not the short little Corcisan who helped reinforce the concept that invading Russia is a bad idea. We are talking the cannon:

This is the next article on artillery evolution I am undertaking. Before diving into the "42" (aka the French 75mm), I feel it necessary to hit on some background. This is a recap of a short field trip I take my LTs on at Fort Sill to get them into the idea of innovation and how the army/military adapts to change and transformation. Before we talk French 75mm, we must talk Napoleons.

The Napoleon is a 12 pound cannon capable of shooting both round shot (aka cannonballs) and actual shells that can be set for timed explosions or point detonation (i.e. they hit the ground and go BOOM!). It is a smoothbore (no rifling) cast out of bronze (which is why it doesn't have rifling, bronze won't take the pressure a rifled shot would generate). This weapon system is horse drawn (usually 6 to 8), and has a cassion which carries its internal ammo supply of mixed types (ball, shell, grape and cannister, think shotguns). It had a crude system of elevating the tube and aiming. It had no internal recoil absorber so when it fired the gun rolled back and you had to manually reposition and aim it. Crew of 6, usually 6 guns per battery. Range varies: max with cannonball was out to 3000 yards (rarely used), usually used at 2000 yards or less. If you were less than 500 yards out you used cannister or grape. It could be fired using an open flame (if you were ghetto) or a percussion cap. It was a muzzle-loader, which meant you rammed the powder and projectile in from the front.

This gun was the high water mark for the black powder cannons, the pinnacle of black powder cannon technology for field artillery. This may be argued by some other cannon enthusiasts, but I am using a certain range for determination. It was as mobile as these systems ever got, it had decent range, reasonable reloading time (under a minute if you were quick), if was a flexible system that could shoot a variety of munitions and it was fairly dependable. It was a great example of "the box".

This is "the box". The first recorded used of black/gunpowder was in China around 800 AD. The first record of a type of firearm was dated in the 1100s. This was a type of hand cannon: metal tube, open on one end, apply flame at other, projectile blows out the other end. The point I made to my LTs is a simple one. A early user of the hand cannon could have figured out how to use a Naploeon cannon with little trouble. Boiled down, there was no massive difference in how either system worked just the overall size and range (even the most powerful black powder field artillery was still a direct fire weapon that was only used on enemies you could see). This leads to a "box" when it comes to thinking about how this type of weapon can be used. A box that was 700 years old. How do you think outside a box that is 700 years old? That is a hell of a box to try and disregard.

I bring this point up to set the stage for the arrival of what we recognize as modern artillery. The development of the French 75mm and its brethren destroyed a 700 year old box of military thought. Literally overnight, everything everyone thought they knew about how artillery worked no longer applied.

Welcome to Challenge 101.

Next post in this series will detail the French 75mm, its capabilities, and why it was different enough to literally change existance as it was know for every artilleryman on the planet (and why some of them didn't realize it).

And how everyone reacted to this.

Happy Memorial Day

Greetings All. More blogging later on this weekend but not so much right now. Recovering from a summer cold and a new boss. Just needed to say have a great Memorial Day Weekend and please take a moment to remember those who we are supposed to remember on this day. The ones who didn't make it back to enjoy the weekends and those that did but have now moved on.

And please take a moment for those who are in harms way now and face the chance that one day their name will be on that list of those departed sooner rather than later.

We cannot live the lives they wanted to live, we can only live ours and be thankful to them for their sacrifice that made that possible.

And its Game Over

Well, if you are a typical American you probably missed this. But the world's longest running insurgency has finally been crushed. The commander, founder and singular reason it ran so long of the Tamil Tigers was killed by Sri Lankan Army forces this morning (our time anyway) and the last 300 meters of Tamil Tiger controlled ground was taken. For the first time in nearly 30 years the Sri Lankan government controls all of its territory.

This is awesome. The TT were a bunch of rat bastards. By that I mean that they were mean, motivated and tough as hell. And also, they were just nasty people, especially towards the end when they were herding the people they were supposed to be "protecting" into zone to use as human shields while they had Tamil Immigrant groups in Europe protesting to have the EU stop the government advance.

Several observations. One, time length was LONG. Folks, this is insurgency. Long, unpleasant and nasty. Also expensive. If you are a typical yank and you want a nice clean and quick solution to these problems, do us all a favor and leave the pool as it is adult swim time. Two, the British have again proven how far they have fallen. The end of the world's longest insurgency and Britain's first statement was about "disturbing" reports of human rights violations by the army and "possibly" by the TTs. Yeah, this is why no one really listens to England much anymore. The SL government then sat back and let a mob nearly overrun the British embassy and when they complained the response was "Sorry, celebrations got out of hand. It happens when you WIN."

Let them cheer, they have earned it. And England can shut its gob on this, SL deserves its moment of triumph. They won without any help so let them cheer.

I have been following this fight since I was in high school. It, along with Angolia and UNITA, were some of the first real-politic situations I ever studied. I honestly never thought it would end like this with such a absolute victory.

My growing interest in WWI

This doesn't deal with Ukraine. This deals with some military history and a topic that I am finding myself more drawn into recently: World War I (aka "The War to End all Wars" and the "War that would Never Happen").

Now, why would this war interest anyone? Well, major shaper (if not the defining shaper) of the 20th century aside, it is the massive changes in technology and how the various countries dealt with them that has completely captured my interest. What is lost on so many people due to the huge bloodletting and the completely jacked up ending (I have started to call this the war no one won thanks to the peace treaty that promised a rematch or our money back), is the absolutely perfect example of military transformation and impacts of technology on how militaries do business.

In a short period of time (20 or so years), every aspect of how a first class world military did business was changed. Infantry got machine guns and bolt-action rifles. Artillery got the rapid firing, recoil-less, long ranged cannon, aircraft were invented, the cavalry had motor vehicles/armored vehicles (Armored Cars to start, tanks came in the war), transportation had trains and motor vehicles and so on. And this was the first war which the medical science really started to be effective.

A very common word in the recent decade in the US Army has been "Transformation". We are talking about how the army/military is transforming due to new developments. This started as cyber/technology focused impacts, but after 9-11 it has included all kinds of asymetric threats and has started overlapping into all other areas (a good thing too, id Wilson had been smarter than he thought he was and had tied the military and polical parts together maybe WWI woudl have had a different ending).

I am not so big on the political aspects of this stuff. I will never be a general, so I am not trying to pry into that part. For me, the big one is the impact of new ideas or technology. Or the ideas that come from the new gear or the gear that comes from an idea or any other combo. And WWI (or the time leading up to it) provides a wealth of this stuff. Especially artillery which will be the center peice of this thread.

My thesis was actually on the impact of new artillery systems on doctrine in the US Army prior to WWI and how well did the US Army crack the code on the new rules. Or rather, its failure to do so even with 3 years of sitting on the sidelines while Europe provided examples on "how to NOT do things". But I realized something while studying this, this question is so complex and has so many factors influencing it that the answer wasn't that everyone got wrong. The problem was that everyone hadn't figured out what the exact question was.

Yes, to use a Hitchikers Guide reference, everyone got 42 and didn't have the question.

This discussion is way to long for one post, so we are going to do it in chunks. Next time I will discuss the "42" of this problem: the French 75mm.

For Russ and the little voice inside all of us that secretly wants to smash something with a mace...

Pictures from the Armaments Museum in Lviv (or Lvov if you are a Yankee). This part of Europe has been fought over for a LONG time. Lviv itself is over 800 years old and while the old city is cool as all get out, a great portion of that time has been fighting. Mongols, Cossacks, Turks, Tarters, Poles, Hungarians, Rumanians, Russians, and Germans have all marched through here and many marches were not nice. I have made comments about Russians not being very popular (and they are not in this part of Ukraine), but how about Poles? To some even less than Russians. I thought that was weird at first, but once you figure out some of the history it makes sense. This area is truely where Europe ends and where Russia (as in big, endless, steppe and snow Russia) begins. Like Poland, this area doesn't have a place where you can draw a line and go "here is where x ends and y begins". Germany and France have the Rhine, Italy has the Alps, UK is an island. Once you come down out of the mountains it is a big open area where control goes back and forth over time.

And alas, this leads to lots of warfare. But now for the pictures.

Mail coat and sword. Found in the river that flows through the city center. Found along with the original owner about 10 years ago. The Lviv soldier fell in the river during a siege and drowned.

Crossbow. Not exactly fast loading, but you are not getting up anytime soon if hit.

Stupidity should hurt...

Polearms. Lots of them. A rather big collection in this museum for some reason, couldn't find out exactly why. Something to do with the original collector's taste.

Me and my patron saint. Well, that would be St. Barbara. This is St. Michael, warrior saint. Also Lviv's city saint if I understand correctly. They also had a big church dedicated to him in Lviv. The most common church names were for St. Michael and St. George (the saint of knights and heros) in Ukraine.

Here is more my speed. Lviv was a major cannon maker for the area. It was this coupled with other gunpowder weapons that finally stopped the nomad invasions of Eastern Europe. I screwed up and didn't get a full picture of the tapestry you can see in the background which depicted the Battle of Halych that saw the Ukraine/Orthodox Church defeat invaders in the 1200s (urm, we think as Tamara doesn't remember exact dates). Who were the invaders? The Tutonic Knights (aka the Germans) and the Catholic Church. This battle is considered one that saved the Orthodox Church in the Ukraine and stopped the eastward expansion of the Tutonic Order. Ukraine became recognized as a distinct area/country after this.

This is a cannon in the shape of a fish and my wife in the shape of a tourist. The church commissioned this piece to fight the Ottomans.

Cavalry/Hussar armor (this and the following picture were taken for Russ Mitchell).

Not a bad museum if you are really into the old school stuff. I thought the cannons were interesting, you could definately see these were city guns and not really the mobile pieces. I did notice that this area was much more into swords and lighter weapons for a much longer period than Western Europe. Which makes sense given the terrain. Mobility here meant horses, horses meant less emphasis on gunpowder weapons until they became small enough and reliable enough to use. Cannons were great for city defense, so plenty of them. Matchlocks and later flintlocks not so much. Most gunpowder stuff I saw here was from Central Europe (Hungary, German states, Poland) until we get into the mid 1700s. I hate to say it, but since this wasn't my area of expertise I probably missed some great photos of great stuff just for simple lack of knowledge.

Ukraine Trip

Hi folks, we are back from Ukraine. We had a great time. I got to meet Tamara's family still over there (uncles, aunts, nephew, freinds, grandmother). We stayed in her family's house in Bohorodchany and we visited numerous places were she lived (she moved once while in grade school) and also her parent's hometown. Very much like one of the Eason guided trip of North Bend, except it was over a much larger area.

Several items:

One. Area we were in. Western Ukraine near the Carpathians. And I mean near. We were literally in the foothills of Carpathians, go one hour west and you were up in them. We stayed at a small house/hotel overnight and spent 2 days in the actual mountains. We hiked up one (1.2 kms in height, 14 km round trip) and also visited a Vail grade ski resort (which transformed a Deliverance style backwater into a Ukrainian Aspen in about 5 years). Go east and you get the steppes and a whole lot of Nebraska style open. Imagine the Platte River Valley but flatter and wider.

Two. May 9th. WWII Victory Day. Its a BIG deal in Ukraine. Every town had a major memorial (big honking Soviet style thing) in the center of town which listed every person who died fighting in WWII. It reminded me of older towns back east in the US that had Civil War memorials in the town cemetary, or France with WWI monuments. Parades, banks closed, whole thing.

Three. Ukrainian Nationalism. Next to every WWII monument was a new one which featured more names, a Trident, and two flags. These monuments were for the Ukrainian Liberation Army/National Army who fought and lost to the Soviets in the 5 year insurgency after WWII. The Trident is the symbol of Ukraine, the flags were the Ukrainian National Flag and the Liberation Army Flag (Black over Red). These monuments were VERY well kept up and always had flowers on them. In contrast, many WWII monuments were run down, not defaced though. I am going to do a separate post on this one as there was some interesting history worthy of a separate line. It was also interesting to note that some WWII monuments had been modified recently with some words obviously removed or sanded off.

Four. Livestock. Okay, I am a farm boy, but being in a city of 40K and being woken up by chickens crowing and seeing cows wandering around was a bit of a shock. And the cows literally walked themselves out to pasture and back again for milking. Bizzare in a way. And there are a bunch of crows in Ukraine too. Please note that this particular cow was actually a country cow we hiked past in the mountain. I only have video of the city cows.

Five. Water. Odd one to point out, but every house there had its own well. Even if they had indoor plumbing (and unless you were in small towns you did), you had a well. I rather liked that and the water was good. Again, this is a country well, but the design is the same. Again I only have video of city wells.

Six. Communist Stuff. NADA. And I do mean NONE. Every statue of Lenin had been torn down (in some cases rather violently I was told), and the one picture of Brezhnev I saw had the glasses, horns, beard, and a punk hairdo painted on by the locals with the words "Bite it commie" under it (in three languages, one being English). Russians are not so popular in Ukraine, but they will take their money. And as an interesting side note, Pres Obama is not really popular either. Not that he is unpopular, but the Ukrainians want into NATO and are not so sure O won't sell them out to Russia. This isn't my words, I heard this from many folks over there.

Um, no pictures. I have a cool video of a hole in the ground where Lenin's statue was, but it lasted about 10 seconds after Ukraine went independent.

Seven. My family. I now have family in Ukraine and they are a great bunch. Top to bottom, a Ukrainian Colonel, Commandant of a local military school. He is an Uncle in Law (great guy), Tamara and her Grandmother (Babushka) and her great aunt. Me and uncle Yuri and aunt Oksana. Last is Tamara and her nephew Andrew.

More stuff to follow as we go along.

We're Back

Hi folks. Tamara and I have just returned from our trip to Ukraine to visit her home and family. We had a great time and I saw some neat stuff. I will post more on this later on, right now its time to hit the sack.