Books about Artillery from Amazon.com

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The battle of Gettysburg in July 1863 marked the turning point of the American Civil War. The apex of the Confederacy's final major invasion of the North, the devastating defeat also marked the end of the South's offensive strategy against the North. From this battle until the end of the war, the Confederate armies largely remained defensive. The Artillery of Gettsyburg is a thoughtful look at the role of the artillery during the July 1-3, 1863 conflict.

By the time of the Gettysburg campaign, artillery had gained respect in both armies. Used defensively, it could break up attacking formations and change the outcomes of battle. On the offense, it could soften up enemy positions prior to attack. And even if the results were not immediately obvious, the psychological effects to strong artillery support could bolster the infantry and discourage the enemy. Ultimately, infantry and artillery branches became codependent, for the artillery needed infantry support lest it be decimated by enemy infantry or captured.

The Confederate Army of Northern Virginia had modified its codependent command system in February 1863. Prior to that, batteries were allocated to brigades, but now they were assigned to each infantry division, thus decentralizing its command structure and making it more difficult for Gen. Robert E. Lee and his artillery chief, Brig. Gen. William Pendleton, to control their deployment on the battlefield.

The Union Army of the Potomac had superior artillery capabilities in numerous ways. At Gettysburg, the Federal artillery had 372 cannons and the Confederates 283. To make matters worse, the Confederate artillery frequently was hindered by the quality of the fuses, which caused the shells to explode too early, too late, or not at all. When combined with a command structure that gave Union Brig. Gen. Henry Hunt more direct control than this Southern counterpart over his forces, the Federal army enjoyed a decided advantage in the countryside around Gettysburg.

Bradley M. Gottfried provides insight into how the two armies employed their artillery, how the different kinds of weapons functioned in battle, and the strategies for using each of them. He shows how artillery affected the ebb and flow of battle for both armies and thus provides a unique way of understanding the strategies of the Federal and Union commanders.

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Vietnam Firebases 1965-1973.
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The catapult (katapeltikon) was invented under the patronage of Dionysius I, tyrant of Syracuse, in the 4th century bc. At first only the arrow-firing variant was used, and it was not until the reign of Alexander the Great that stone-projecting catapults were introduced. The Romans adopted these weapons during the Punic Wars and further developed them, before introducing the new arrow-firing ballista and stone-throwing onager. This title traces the often controversial design, development and construction of these weapons throughout the history of the classical world..
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Strange sounds resembling the remote rumble of distant thunder were audible Everybody understood: it was the echo of the battle for Stalingrad . . . A heavy rain began falling

Stalingrad's outskirts provided Isaak Kobylyanskiy, a 19-year-old Jew from Ukraine, with his first exposure to combat and initiated his long odyssey in the Great Patriotic War against Germany. It would be more than three years before he was finally reunited with his family and his sweetheart, Vera, the schoolmate he had promised to marry.

Kobylyanskiy started the war as a 76-mm infantry support gun crew commander for the 300th Rifle Division (and its later incarnations) and celebrated V-E Day as a battery commander. His combat journey was a long process of exhausting marches punctuated by harrowing moments of intense combat. From the liberation of Sevastopol, through Lithuania's countryside, to the final storming of Königsberg's heavy fortifications, Kobylyanskiy's memoir sweeps across the great expanses of the Eastern Front. His narrative is packed with dramatic details and insights into the daily life of the Soviet army: the relentless marches to locate and engage the enemy, the prejudicial treatment of female soldiers, and the plight of Soviet civilians.

Kobylyanskiy also discusses the role of military political officers (and his own conflicted views on communism), clarifies the place of Jews in the Red Army and discusses how his reaction to anti-Semitic utterances added a sense of responsibility to his fighting, and frames his account with personal glimpses into the stifling repression of Stalinist society, including the brutal collectivization program and resulting famine in Ukraine. But he balances such memories with warm recollections of some of his comrades and especially with an affecting portrait of his courtship of Vera, and concludes with an emotional coda: their wedding ceremony in a war-ravaged but recovering Kiev.

By turns vivid, reflective, intense, and entertaining, Kobylyanskiy's narrative charts one warrior's epic journey and joins a select group of memoirs that deepen our understanding of what it was like for Russian soldiers on the Eastern Front.

This book is part of the Modern War Studies series..
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U.S. Field Artillery WWII.
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In the world of historical painting, Don Troiani stands alone, universally acclaimed for the accuracy, drama, and detail of his depictions of America's past. In Don Troiani's Regiments and Uniforms of the Civil War, first released in 2002, the artist turned his brush to the units and uniforms of the War between the States. Through Troiani's careful reconstructions and the accompanying text, the book offers one of the most comprehensive looks at Civil War uniforms ever undertaken. In addition to the full volume in hard cover, Stackpole Books now presents four handsome, individually bound paperbacks, each covering different branches of service and types of soldier. Both the cavalry and the artillery played critical roles in the Civil War. The uniforms of horsemen and cannoneers resembled those of the infantry but differed in key respects, such as the bright yellow trim that distinguished the cavalry and the crossed-cannon insignia of the artillery. The artwork in this volume gives a flavor of how these specialized troops were outfitted..
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The complex relationship between America and the Arab world goes back further than most Americans or Arabs realize. In Artillery of Heaven, Ussama Makdisi presents a foundational American encounter with the Arab world that occurred in the nineteenth century, shortly after the arrival of the first American Protestant missionaries in the Middle East. He tells the dramatic tale of the conversion and death of As'ad Shidyaq, the earliest Arab convert to American Protestantism. The struggle over this man's body and soul--and over how his story might be told--changed the actors and cultures on both sides.

In the unfamiliar, multireligious landscape of the Middle East, American missionaries at first conflated Arabs with Native Americans and American culture with an uncompromising evangelical Christianity. In turn, their Christian and Muslim opponents in the Ottoman Empire condemned the missionaries as malevolent intruders. Yet during the ensuing confrontation within and across cultures an unanticipated spirit of toleration was born that cannot be credited to either Americans or Arabs alone. Makdisi provides a genuinely transnational narrative for this new, liberal awakening in the Middle East, and the challenges that beset it.

By exploring missed opportunities for cultural understanding, by retrieving unused historical evidence, and by juxtaposing for the first time Arab perspectives and archives with American ones, this book counters a notion of an inevitable clash of civilizations and thus reshapes our view of the history of America in the Arab world..
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The US Army's development of the 37mm anti-tank gun began in response to needs identified during the Spanish Civil War. By the time it entered service in Tunisia in 1943, the gun was already obsolete, and the US began the licensed manufacture of the British 6-pdr in the hope of finding a quick solution to its artillery requirements. This in turn proved unequal to the demands of warfare in France in 1944, and further anti-tank measures were developed – rocket propelled grenades for infantry use, and weapons designed specifically for use by the Tank Destroyer Force..
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