Howitzer
Channel: 宇宙のすべての知識 プリンシピア
Date: 2019-02-18

Howitzer, by Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=14392 / CC BY SA 3.0

#Howitzers
Howitzer

A howitzer is a type of artillery piece characterized by a relatively short barrel and the use of comparatively small propellant charges to propel projectiles over relatively high trajectories, with a steep angle of descent.
In the taxonomies of artillery pieces used by European (and European-style) armies in the 17th to 20th centuries, the howitzer stood between the "gun" (characterized by a longer barrel, larger propelling charges, smaller shells, higher velocities, and flatter trajectories) and the "mortar" (which was meant to fire at even higher angles of ascent and descent). Howitzers, like other artillery equipment, are usually organized in groups called batteries.

The English word ""howitzer"" comes from the Czech word ""houfnice"", from "houf", "crowd", and "houf" is in turn a borrowing from the Middle High German word "Hūfe" or "Houfe" (modern German "Haufen"), meaning "heap". "Haufen", sometimes in the compound "Gewalthaufen", also designated a pike square formation in German.

In the Hussite Wars of the 1420s and 1430s, the Czechs used short barreled ""houfnice"" cannons to fire at short distances into crowds of infantry, or into charging heavy cavalry, to make horses shy away. The word was rendered into German as "aufeniz" in the earliest attested use in a document dating from 1440; later German renderings include "haussnitz" and, eventually "haubitze", from which derive the Scandinavian "haubits", Croatian, Polish and Serbian "haubica", Finnish "haupitsi", Russian and Bulgarian "gaubitsa (гаубица)", Italian "obice", Spanish "obús", Portuguese "obus", French "obusier" and the Dutch word "houwitser," which led to the English word "howitzer".

Since the First World War, the word ""howitzer"" has been increasingly used to describe artillery pieces that, strictly speaking, belong to the category of "gun-howitzers" – relatively long barrels and high muzzle v...