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A Coehorn ˈkəʊhɔrn (also spelled cohorn) is a lightweight mortar originally designed by Dutch military engineer Menno van Coehoorn. Van Coehoorn came to prominence during the 1688–97 Nine Years War, whose tactics have been summarised by historian John Childs: "The majority of infantrymen never fired their muskets in anger;....armies were consciously geared towards the dominant forms of warfare; manoeuvre and the siege." This emphasis on siege warfare saw many developments in the use and design of artillery. Fortifications were vulnerable to vertical trajectory or plunging fire, and the concept of mortars was well understood, but large scale mortars were commonly used initially to provide close support for infantry assaults on fortified positions. Van Coehoorn demonstrated them in May 1701 to William III of England, and they were first used in action at the siege of Kaiserswerth in 1702. The original was light enough to be moved by as few as two men, although a four-man crew was more practical for rapid movement. It proved immediately popular; the 74 used at Kaiserswerth were increased to over 300 at Bonn six months later. Fortifications of the period were primarily designed to resist horizontal fire, making the vertical trajectory and plunging fire of the Coehorn highly effective at short range. It used a powder-filled, time-fused shell, the range being adjusted by changing the size of the charge. The slow muzzle velocity meant the shell's high, arching flight could be easily observed from ground level but was not necessarily a problem since their original purpose was to provide cover rather than inflict casualties. While generally employed in siege warfare, they were also used by British troops at the Battle of Glen Shiel in June 1719. At the siege of Vicksburg in 1863, the Union forces had so little artillery that "wooden [coehorns] were made by taking logs of the toughest wood that could be found, boring them out for six or twelve pound shells and binding them with strong iron bands" though overall the Federal siege artillery units in the 1861–1865 U.

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Related concepts (2)

Coehorn

Trench warfare

Trench warfare is the type of land warfare using occupied lines largely comprising military trenches, in which troops are well-protected from the enemy's small arms fire and are substantially sheltered from artillery. It became archetypically associated with World War I (1914–1918), when the Race to the Sea rapidly expanded trench use on the Western Front starting in September 1914. Trench warfare proliferated when a revolution in firepower was not matched by similar advances in mobility, resulting in a grueling form of warfare in which the defender held the advantage.