A field gun is an artillery piece. Originally the term referred to smaller guns that could accompany a field army on the march and when in combat could be moved about the battlefield in response to changing circumstances (field artillery), as to opposed guns installed in a fort (garrison artillery/coastal artillery), or to siege cannon or mortars which were too large to be moved quickly, and would be used only in a prolonged siege.
Perhaps the most famous use of the field gun in terms of advanced tactics was Napoleon's use of very large wheels on the guns that allowed them to be moved quickly even during a battle. By moving the guns from point to point during the battle, enemy formations could be broken up to be handled by the infantry wherever they were massing, dramatically increasing the overall effectiveness of the infantry.
Read more about Field Gun: World War I, World War II, The 1960s, Modern Times
Famous quotes containing the words field and/or gun:
“Is not the tremendous strength in men of the impulse to creative work in every field precisely due to their feeling of playing a relatively small part in the creation of living beings, which constantly impels them to an overcompensation in achievement?”
—Karen Horney (1885–1952)
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”
—Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969)