Mountain guns are artillery pieces designed for use in mountain warfare and areas where usual wheeled transport is not possible. They are similar to infantry support guns, and are generally capable of being broken down into smaller loads (for transport by horse, human, mule, tractor, and/or truck).
Due to their ability to be broken down into smaller "packages", they are sometimes called pack guns or pack howitzers. During the U.S. Civil War these small portable guns were widely used and were called "mountain howitzers."
The first designs of modern breechloading mountain guns with recoil control and able to be easily broken down and reassembled into highly efficient units were made by two Greek army engineers, P. Lykoudis and Panagiotis Danglis (after whom the Schneider-Danglis gun was named) in the 1890s.
Mountain guns are largely outdated, their role being filled by mortars, multiple rocket launchers, recoilless rifles and wire-guided missiles. Most modern artillery is manufactured from light-weight materials and can be transported fully assembled by helicopters.
Famous quotes containing the words mountain and/or gun:
“I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy,
The sleepless soul that perished in his pride;
Of him who walked in glory and in joy
Following his plough, along the mountain side:
By our own spirits are we deified:
We poets in our youth begin in gladness;
But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“What cannot stand must fall; and the measure of our sincerity and therefore of the respect of men, is the amount of health and wealth we will hazard in the defence of our right. An old farmer, my neighbor across the fence, when I ask him if he is not going to town-meeting, says: “No, ‘t is no use balloting, for it will not stay; but what you do with the gun will stay so.””
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)