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Howitzer   /hˈaʊətsər/   Listen
Howitzer

noun
1.
A muzzle-loading high-angle gun with a short barrel that fires shells at high elevations for a short range.  Synonyms: mortar, trench mortar.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Howitzer" Quotes from Famous Books



... stationed at Cairo and had immediate charge and supervision of sending reinforcements and supplies to the armies in Halleck's department, not finding rifled thirty-twos, obtained three twenty-four-pounders and one eight-inch howitzer. Colonel Bissell, of the engineer regiment, who was in Cairo waiting for them, received these four pieces on March 11th. They were shipped across the river to Bird's Point, and sent by rail to Sikeston. At Sikeston a detachment from the company of regular ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force

... Macedonian firing a salvo in their honor as they took their departure. On arriving on board the flagship, they were first conducted through the different departments of the steamer, and examined with minute interest the guns and the machinery. A boat was lowered, with a howitzer in its bows, and this was repeatedly discharged, much to their amusement, for they evidently had a great fondness for martial exercise and display. The engines were next put in motion, and they ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... occupational specialties that might be offered black recruits. It also outlined in considerable detail a proposal for converting several organizations to black units, including a field artillery (155-mm. howitzer) battalion, a tank company, a chemical mortar company, and an ordnance heavy automotive maintenance company. These units would be considered experimental in the sense that the men would be specially selected ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... turn, the enemy endeavored to make use of his immense cavalry corps; but the incessant volleys of musketry, the blasting canister, the terrible bayonets, stopped short the charge. Murat was manoeuvring on the flank with two light-battery guns and a howitzer, which dealt death ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere

... what an hour it was! There was loose shooting on our flank, but nothing to trouble us, though the gun team of some Austrian howitzer, struggling madly at a bridge, gave us a bit of a tussle. Everything flitted past me like smoke, or like the mad finale of a dream just before waking. I knew the living movement under me, and the companionship of men, but all dimly, for at heart I was alone, grappling with the realization ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... already started, when a messenger brought word that approach to the island was blocked by the American expedition. The winding of the river placed her present anchorage within gunshot of the lake; but as she could not be seen through the brush, Sinclair borrowed from the army a howitzer, with which, mounted in the open beyond, he succeeded in firing both the "Nancy" and the blockhouse defending the position. The British were thus deprived of their last resource for transportation in bulk upon the lake. What this meant to Mackinac may be inferred from the fact that flour there ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... require all the force I possess," he said doubtfully. "It seems impossible to dislodge those rascals back yonder. What we need is a field howitzer." ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish

... trees and hedges with a series of bounds, which could only be likened to those that might be made by an india-rubber kangaroo. Ben Zoof was sure that his own powers of propelling must equal those of a howitzer, for his stone, after a lengthened flight through the air, fell to the ground full five hundred paces the other side ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne

... testimonial. There was a superb silver cocoa-nut tree, whereof the leaves were dexterously arranged for holding candle and pickles; under the cocoa-nut was an Indian prince on a camel, giving his hand to a cavalry officer on horseback—a howitzer, a plough, a loom, a bale of cotton, on which were the East India Company's arms, a Brahmin, Britannia, and Commerce with a cornucopia were grouped round the principal figures: and if you would see a noble account of this chaste and elegant specimen ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... line over a stranded vessel a howitzer is used; and in this way a communication is secured to the shore. The cork life-belts worn by the men, are of the plan first designed by ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler

... with Hall's carbines, which with a brass twelve-pound howitzer, had been furnished to me from the United States arsenal at St. Louis, agreeably to the orders of Colonel S.W. Kearney, commanding the third military division. Three men were especially detailed for the management of this piece, under the charge of Louis Zindel, a native of Germany, who ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont

... see men who tell us that they despair of democracy; that at any rate, whatever its advantages, democracy can never be "efficient." Efficient for what? Efficiency is a relative quality, not absolute. A big German howitzer would be about as inefficient a tool as could be imagined, for serving an apple-pie. Beside, democracy is a goal; we have not reached it yet; we shall never reach it if we decide that it is undesirable. ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick

... time when aircraft entered the realms of warfare very little was known concerning the altitudes to which projectiles could be hurled deliberately. Certain conclusive information upon this point was available in connection with heavy howitzer fire, based on calculations of the respective angles at which the projectile rose into the air and fell to the ground, and of the time the missile took to complete its flight from the gun to the objective. But howitzer fire against aircraft was a sheer impossibility: it was like using a six-inch ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... there is a man living who, when first interviewing an 11-inch howitzer shell, is not pink with funk. After the first ten, one gets quite used to them, but really, they are terrible! They hit a house. You can see the great shell—a black streak—just before it strikes, then, before you hear the explosion, the whole house simply ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times

... 11 o'clock A.M., and the train was about two miles from the fort, and moving toward the timber. Almost immediately a few Indian pickets appeared on one or two of the surrounding heights, and a party of about twenty near the Big Piney, where the mountain road crossed the same, within howitzer range of the fort. Shells were thrown among them from the artillery in ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... Charles to effect a pacification of St Denis. On December 1, however, Colonel Gore once more set out from Sorel, and entered St Denis the same day. He found everything quiet. He recovered the howitzer and five of the wounded men he had left behind. In spite of the absence of opposition, his men took advantage of the occasion to wreak an unfair and un-British vengeance on the helpless victors of yesterday. Goaded to fury ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles

... the defence:—On the north, Major Vibart, of the 2nd Cavalry, assisted by Captain Jenkins, held the redan, which was an earthwork defending the whole of the northern side. At the north-east battery, Lieutenant Ashe, of the Oude Irregular Artillery, commanded one 24-pounder howitzer and two 9-pounders, assisted by Lieutenant Sotheby. Captain Kempland, 56th Native Infantry, was posted on the south side. Lieutenant Eckford, of the Artillery, had charge of the south-east battery with three 9-pounders, assisted by Lieutenant ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... that, Private Dutton had returned to the dangerous plateau, and, under a heavy fire, had secured a small field-piece which was about to fall into the hands of the enemy. Later in the day this little howitzer did eminent service. After touching on one or two other minor matters, the despatch remarked, incidentally, that Private James Dutton had had ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... looking up at the sky for all he was worth, a lot of fearful creatures came rushing up the mountain and said there was a war and that he was an alien enemy and that he was making signals and that his big telescope was a new sort of howitzer; and they pushed him down the mountain, and broke his telescope and all his lenses, and tore up his note-books, and shook their fists at him and used such language that he said for the first time in his life he was sorry he was such ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various

... determined to take signal revenge. They returned to the Fort that day, but next morning started off in a strong party, each man armed with his never-failing rifle and big bowie-knife, and taking with them a howitzer which the Captain had brought with him over the Rocky Mountains. The Indians must, however, have had information by their scouts of the expedition; for, when the party reached the rancheria, they found it deserted—not even a solitary squaw left among the huddled-up collection ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks

... caused a heavy toll in casualties to us; while our gunners were strictly limited to a few rounds a day, and cursed bitterly because they could not "answer back." In March of 1915 I saw the first fifteen-inch howitzer open fire. We called this monster "grandma," and there was a little group of generals on the Scherpenberg, near Kemmel, to see the effect of the first shell. Its target was on the lower slope of the Wytschaete Ridge, where some trenches were to be attacked for reasons only known by ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... and buried one of the British magazines which was filled with hand grenades and killed several British bomb throwers. At about the same moment another supply of British bombs was exploded when it was struck by a shell from a German howitzer. This occurred at a place on the line called Duck's Bill, and resulted in the British being without an adequate supply of hand grenades. The British troops in this action were the soldiers of a British division and a Canadian brigade. The latter included the First Ontario Regiment, the Second ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... morning and evening. There was a Venetian blind in the upper part of the door, which he threw up when inside so as to admit a little air. And there you would see him, with a green shade over his eyes, seated on a stool, and pounding his pestle in a great iron mortar that looked like a howitzer, mixing some jallapy compound. A smoky lamp shed a flickering, yellow-fever tinge upon his pallid face and the closely-packed regiments ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... swarming time. The pedestrians gradually break up into little companies, most of them going to Kronenberg and other model colonies founded by Frau Krupp—"Bertha," as she is affectionately called throughout Germany. The highest honour the Germans can bestow upon her is to name their 16-inch howitzer "Fat Bertha." Frau Bertha Krupp, it may be well to recall, was the heiress to the great Krupp fortune, and on her marriage in 1906 to Herr von Bohlen und Halbach, a diplomatist, he changed his name to Krupp von Bohlen ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin

... that danced in his eyes, as the sunbeams Dance on the waves of the sea, and vanish again in a moment. Alden laughed as he wrote, and still the Captain continued: 45 "Look! you can see from this window my brazen howitzer[13] planted High on the roof of the church,[14] a preacher who speaks to the purpose, Steady, straightforward, and strong, with irresistible logic, Orthodox, flashing conviction right into the hearts ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson

... hunting-ground. Whereas in the National Parks game is faithfully preserved, hunting is permitted in the forests. To this end, we took with us a complete arsenal. The naturalist carried a Colt's revolver; the Big Boy had a twelve-gauge hammerless, called a "howitzer." We had two twenty-four-gauge shotguns in case we met an elephant or anything similarly large and heavy, and the Little Boy proudly carried, strapped to his saddle, a twenty-two high-power rifle, shooting a ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... uneventfully. Now and again a regiment or a brigade, having finished its training, disappeared in a night, and the next day fresh troops arrived to fill its place. And this great, silent movement of men went on all over the country. Sometimes our hearts sank. A reserve Howitzer Territorial Brigade turned up in Wellings Park with dummy wooden guns. The officers told us that they had been expecting proper guns daily for the past two months. Marigold shook a sad head. But all things, even six-inch howitzers, come to him ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke



Words linked to "Howitzer" :   mortar, trench mortar, high-angle gun



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