World War II
Since about the start of World War II, the term has been applied to long-range artillery pieces that fire at a relatively low angle, as opposed to howitzers which can fire at higher angles. By the later stages of World War II the majority of artillery in use was either in the form of howitzers of 105 mm to 155 mm, or in form of hybrid anti-tank/field guns that had high enough muzzle velocity to be used in both roles. The most common field guns of the era were the British 5.5 inch, the US 155 mm Long Tom (a development of a French World War I weapon) and Soviet BS-3 - an artillery piece adopted from a Naval gun and designed to double up as an anti-tank weapon.
Read more about this topic: Field Gun
Famous quotes containing the words world war, world and/or war:
“If the Third World War is fought with nuclear weapons, the fourth will be fought with bows and arrows.”
—Louis, 1st Earl Mountbatten Of Burma Mountbatten (1900–1979)
“One story recounts that a Tennessean, after a single day in the then almost impenetrable tangle of cypress, briars, and canebreaks, pestered by myriads of mosquitoes, and bogged in the heavy gumbo mud, declared: “Arkansas is not part of the world for which Jesus Christ died—I want none of it.””
—Administration in the State of Arka, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The great war that broke so suddenly upon the world two years ago, and which has swept up within its flame so great a part of the civilized world, has affected us very profoundly.... With its causes and its objects we are not concerned. The obscure fountains from which its stupendous flood has burst we are not interested to search for or explore.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)