battery prime weapons
Below you will find some of the weapons used by the battery at different noted periods of time. If you have information contrary to what is published here please contact our webmaster so that the truth may be negotiated and published for all to see. Our intent is to be factual.
1866 |
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Smooth-bore Napoleon 6-pounder (M1841) field gun. The battery reportedly had two issued. A gun and limber were normally pulled by a team of 4 horses but, as the battery had no horses of their own, most of the time the men moved and trained with the cannon using their own muscle-power. The Oregon Military Museum (Camp Withycombe, Oregon) claims to have one of the original cannons on display in their Artillery Barn. A great many newspaper articles of the time identified the cannon as 12-pounders, but official military inspections and the actual archive in the Military Museum both identify the cannons as 6-pounders (3.6-inch bore, 60-inch barrel length, and weighing approximately 875 pounds). The 12-pounder cannon looked quite similar but had a 4.6-inch bore, a 66-inch length barrel, weighed roughly 1370 pounds, and were most often deployed (at least in the Mexican and Civil Wars) with a "heavy" artillery battery. |
1897 |
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Assorted pictures and notes show the addition of two carriage-mounted Gatling guns to the battery arsenal sometime in 1897. These were configured to be horse-drawn and came with a limber for the driver and gunner to ride upon. Again, most of the time these were used without the aid of any horses and the men hustled them about from place to place by their own sweat. |
1899 |
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3.2" breech-loaders replaced the Napoleon cannons. Prime-movers were still horses, of which the battery still had none of their own. It wasn't until sometime in 1905 that horses were bought and trained strictly for the battery's use. (One newspaper story suggests that the only reason the battery was getting any horses was that the Military Department was getting a real good deal on horses the Portland Police Department were releasing because of their purchase of the new-fangled automobile patrol cars.) The horses were kept in stables in Camp Withycombe; the guns, however, were still in the Armory in Portland. |
1930s |
Schneider 155mm howitzers were issued along with new caterpillar cats (a small tracked vehicle) as prime-movers. | |
1950s |
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105mm M101A1s issued with the 1953-era M211 duece & a halfs as prime movers. |
1972? |
New multi-fueled M35 duece & a halfs issued as prime movers. | |
1995 |
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105mm M119A1 issued with the M1097 Hummer as the prime-mover. Two Hummers per gun section. |
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