The Big Picture TV Series playlist:
Tanks, Armor, Artillery playlist:
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‘History of firepower from cannon to atomic missile told on “THE BIG PICTURE” — The thing you remember about the Field Artillery is the tremendous noise that a fire mission creates. “King of Battle,” the newest release in the Army’s TV series THE BIG PICTURE, portrays dramatically the development of artillery in the Army from 1776 to 1957. Viewers will see the cannon that fought with Washington, a primitive weapon but good enough to pound the British at Bunker Hill, support the successful attack at Trenton, and aid in the defeat of Cornwallis at Yorktown. They will learn how artillery played a decisive part in winning the Battle of Gettysburg. Crammed into 28 minutes are stock shots of the allied Meuse-Argonne offensive that finally broke the back of the German Army in 1918; the Pacific campaign of World War II where artillery became the most effective weapon against the Banzai charge of the Japanese; and finally, Korea — where American commanders traded manpower for firepower and once again artillery came to dominate the battlefield. Since artillery can never rest on past performances, THE BIG PICTURE examines pictorially the new concept of today for American artillery — mobility. The camera lens follows a battery commander and his unit as they move from one position to another by means of helicopter, ready for action again 20 miles away in a matter of minutes..’
“The Big Picture” episode TV-356
Public domain film from the US National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
Artillery is a class of large military weapons built to fire munitions far beyond the range and power of infantry’s small arms. Early artillery development focused on the ability to breach fortifications, and led to heavy, fairly immobile siege engines. As technology improved, lighter, more mobile field artillery developed for battlefield use. This development continues today; modern self-propelled artillery vehicles are highly mobile weapons of great versatility providing the largest share of an army’s total firepower.
In its earliest sense, the word artillery referred to any group of soldiers primarily armed with some form of manufactured weapon or armour. Since the introduction of gunpowder and cannon, the word “artillery” has largely meant cannon, and in contemporary usage, it usually refers to shell-firing guns, howitzers, mortars, rockets and guided missiles. In common speech, the word artillery is often used to refer to individual devices, along with their accessories and fittings, although these assemblages are more properly called “equipments”. However, there is no generally recognised generic term for a gun, howitzer, mortar, and so forth: the United States uses “artillery piece”, but most English-speaking armies use “gun” and “mortar”. The projectiles fired are typically either “shot” (if solid) or “shell” (if not). “Shell” is a widely used generic term for a projectile, which is a component of munitions.
…In the 20th Century technology based target acquisition devices, such as radar, and systems, such as sound ranging and flash spotting, emerged to acquire targets, primarily for artillery. These are usually operated by one or more of the artillery arms. The widespread adoption of indirect fire in the early 20th century introduced the need for specialist data for field artillery, notably survey and meteorological, in some armies provision of these are the responsibility of the artillery arm.
…The early 20th Century saw the development of a new class of artillery for use against aircraft: anti-aircraft guns.
…The majority of combat deaths in the Napoleonic Wars, World War I, and World War II were caused by artillery. In 1944, Joseph Stalin said in a speech that artillery was “the God of War”…
…Until the introduction of gunpowder into western warfare, artillery depended upon mechanical energy to operate, and this severely limited the kinetic energy of the projectiles, while also requiring the construction of very large apparatus to store sufficient energy. For comparison, a Roman 1st-century BC catapult using stones of 6.55 kg fired with a kinetic energy of 16,000 joules, while a mid-19th-century 12-pounder gun firing projectiles of 4.1 kg fired the projectile with a kinetic energy of 240,000 joules…
