page_title: War elephant
section_title: Modern era
hierarchical_section_title: War elephant / Modern era
caption_attribution_description: English: An elephant pulling a Supermarine Walrus aircraft into position at a Fleet Air Arm station in India, June 1944. An elephant pulling a Supermarine Walrus aircraft into position at a Fleet Air Arm station.
context_page_description: A war elephant was an elephant that was trained and guided by humans for combat. The war elephant's main use was to charge the enemy, breaking their ranks and instilling terror. Elephantry are military units with elephant-mounted troops.
  War elephants played a critical role in several key battles in antiquity, but their use declined with the spread of firearms in the early modern period. Military elephants were then restricted to non-combat engineering and labour roles, and some ceremonial uses. However, they continued to be used in combat in some parts of the world such as Thailand and Vietnam into the 19th century.
context_section_description: With the advent of gunpowder warfare in the late 15th century, the balance of advantage for war elephants on the battlefield began to change. While muskets had limited impact on elephants, which could withstand numerous volleys, cannon fire was a different matter entirely – an animal could easily be knocked down by a single shot. With elephants still being used to carry commanders on the battlefield, they became even more tempting targets for enemy artillery.
  Nonetheless, in south-east Asia the use of elephants on the battlefield continued up until the end of the 19th century. One of the major difficulties in the region was terrain, and elephants could cross difficult terrain in many cases more easily than horse cavalry. Burmese forces used war elephants to oppose British forces until the First Anglo-Burmese War March–April 1825 battle of Danubyu, where they were stopped by Congreve rocket fire. The Siamese Army continued utilising war elephants armed with jingals up until the Franco-Siamese War of 1893, while the Vietnamese used them in battle as late as 1885, during the Sino-French War.
  Into the 20th century, military elephants were used for non-combat purposes in World War II, particularly because the animals could perform tasks in regions that were problematic for motor vehicles. Sir William Slim, commander of the XIVth Army wrote about elephants in his introduction to Elephant Bill: "They built hundreds of bridges for us, they helped to build and launch more ships for us than Helen ever did for Greece. Without them our retreat from Burma would have been even more arduous and our advance to its liberation slower and more difficult." Military elephants were used as late as the Vietnam War.
  Elephants are now more valuable to many armies in failing states for their ivory than as transport, and many thousands of elephants have died during civil conflicts due to poaching. They are classed as a pack animal in a U.S. Special Forces field manual issued as recently as 2004, but their use by U.S. personnel is discouraged because elephants are endangered.  The last recorded use of elephants in war occurred in 1987 when Iraq was alleged to have used them to transport heavy weaponry for use in Kirkuk.
caption: An elephant pulling a Supermarine Walrus aircraft, India, June 1944
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