High-angle weapon
High-angle weapons are weapons such as grenade launchers or high-angle cannons , which are mainly used for indirect aiming and mostly against area targets .
When aiming a weapon directly, there is a line of sight between the sighting device of the weapon and the target to be shot at, which is reached by the projectiles in a relatively extended trajectory . Weapons that are optimized for this purpose are known as flat fire weapons.
In contrast, with indirect aiming, there is no line of sight between the sighting device and the target, and the projectiles are fired at a steep angle so that the flight path describes a pronounced arc. This makes it possible to overshoot obstacles, for example elevations in the landscape or, in earlier times, city walls.
The transition between high-angle and flat fire guns is fluid. In principle, every flat firearm can also be shot at steep fire, although this use is more of a theoretical nature and of virtually no practical relevance, since mostly neither the sighting devices nor the ammunition are adapted to the typical range of applications of high-angle weapons. Conversely, many high-angle firearms can also be used with good success in direct aiming and often also have sighting devices for direct aiming. An example of this are howitzers .
An exemplary high-angle firearm is the mortar , a cannon whose entire design is designed exclusively for high-angle fire.
While the target can be aimed directly from the weapon with shallow fire, this is not possible with steep fire. In the absence of a direct line of sight, the weapon operators must know the direction and distance to the target (or alternatively the coordinates of their own location and those of the target) so that the required lateral and elevation angle of the barrel can be set and, if necessary, the amount of propellant charge can be adjusted . In modern high-angle firearms, cartridges are usually not used, but the projectile and the portioned propellant charges are loaded separately.
Depending on the intended use, high-angle weapons often use high-explosive / fragmentation projectiles with ground clearance or impact fuses, but there are also a variety of other types of projectile that release landmines , bomblets or flares for battlefield lighting over the target area .
Since high-angle weapons are often not in direct line of sight to the target, there was a great advantage in earlier times that it was possible to shoot from out of sight, and so there was a certain protection from direct fire by the enemy. Thanks to modern technology, however, it is now possible to infer the location of enemy high-angle weapons from acoustic measurements of the firing bang or by radar from the trajectory of the projectiles and to take appropriate measures.
See also
literature
- Franz Korsa, Artillery in the 20th Century , Bernard & Graefe Verlag (Bonn), 2004
- Christopher F. Foss , David Miller: Modern combat weapons . Verlag Stocker Schmid, Dietikon, 1989, ISBN 3-7276-7092-4
- Brigadier i. R. Manfred Flödl, Tactics and Training - Use of Arms , Vienna 2002, ISBN 978-3-901183-39-3