volley
A volley is understood to mean the simultaneous firing of several artillery pieces or rifles or the release of a scattering fiery ring from a fully automatic handgun .
The volley was created in military ceremonies in the 16th century as an honorary greeting through the shooting of a salute . From this practice, the tactical handling of a volley developed as a military technique.
history
Although firearms appeared in Europe as early as around 1300 , it took a long time for proper volleys to be fired on the European battlefields. This was because the early guns and rifles were imprecise, heavy and also complicated to use. It was quite common for these early firearms to explode, increasing the already great distrust of this type of weapon.
But when fully developed cannons and powerful muskets were developed in the 16th century , the spread of firearms accelerated rapidly. At the beginning of the Thirty Years' War the ratio of musketeers to the number of spiked bearers on the battlefield was usually 1: 1, at the end of the war it was 2: 1. While every musketeer was allowed to choose his own target at the beginning of the war, during the war it had apparently proven useful for all musketeers to fire straight ahead at the same time - the hit rate just seemed too low. In addition, by then muskets had emerged that no longer had to be supported on a fork, which meant that even more shots could be fired at the same time by kneeling the first row of rifles. This was only practiced with flintlock shotguns at the time of line tactics in the 18th century.
If a volley was fired, a so-called death zone was created at a certain distance from the line of riflemen firing the volley, in which every living being that was there was most likely killed. In the course of time this death zone became larger as a result of better and better rifles and artillery, which increased the demands on the soldiers' discipline .
Up into the 19th century, volleys were fired from ranks of riflemen in armed conflicts, most recently, because of the increased combat distances of infantry weapons, by specifying a breakpoint in the area as an auxiliary target, as this was the only way to achieve an effective impact density even over greater distances. With the development of automatic weapons, especially the machine gun , the tactics of war changed so that the firing of rifle volleys became even rarer, as a distinction was commonly made between the element of fire support (MG) and the moving part.
Nevertheless, the shooting of volley fire, in a targeted single shot, is still practiced, because in this way, in addition to the high hit density, a surprise of the enemy and a disguise of one's own strength is possible. With the artillery , however, volley fire retained its importance. Thanks to modern fire control computers , it is now possible, by varying the propellant charge and the tube elevation, to fire a gun in such a way that the projectiles fired one after the other reach the target at the same time ( MRSI ).
See also
literature
- Alexander Lüdeke : Weapons Technology in the Second World War. Infantry weapons, unarmored vehicles, armored vehicles, artillery, special weapons, aircraft, ships. Parragon Books, Bath 2007, ISBN 978-1-4054-8584-5 .
