Note Back to Main Text — Chapter XXV

Meantime, steps were taken to improve the artillery equipment of the army in South Africa. Prior to the war it had been ascertained by the Intelligence department that the Boers had in their possession several 150 m/m Creusots and a battery of 120 m/m howitzers, but the cumbersome carriages on which the former weapons were mounted had led to the belief that they were intended solely for use in the forts and positions near Pretoria and Johannesburg. The howitzers had been classified in the intelligence reports as field artillery armament, because in the year before the war the French, Austrian, and German armies had added howitzers to their field equipment. The enterprise of the Boers in bringing 150 m/m (6-in.) guns into the field at the outset of the campaign formed in a sense a new departure in modern warfare, although in 1870 fortress guns had been taken from Belfort and used in the fighting on the Lisaine. On the receipt of Sir George White's report that one of these guns had been employed against the troops at Dundee, telegraphic orders, at the suggestion of Major-General Sir John Ardagh, were sent out by the War Office to Cape Colony to insure the immediate despatch to Natal of two 6·3-in. R.M.L. howitzers, lying at King William's Town, the property of the Cape Government.[304] The arrangements made by the Naval Commander-in-Chief for the despatch to the front of Naval contingents, placed at the disposal of the military authorities, both in the western and eastern theatres of war, a number of long-range guns which, in the skilled hands of the officers and men of the Royal Navy and Marines who accompanied them, rendered valuable service. The War Office also took immediate action to reinforce the arm. On the 9th of December a battery of four 4·7-in. Q.F. guns, manned by a company of R.G.A., was despatched from England to South Africa, together with eight 6-in. B.L. howitzers, which formed part of the approved siege train of the army. On the 22nd two companies with eight 5-in. B.L. followed. On the 22nd January two more companies with eight 4·7-in. Q.F., mounted on 6-in. howitzer carriages, were embarked for the Cape, and supplemented on the 28th by six additional guns of the same type, intended to replace any naval guns which might be showing signs of deterioration. On the 3rd of February another batch of eight 5-in. B.L. guns, accompanied by two companies R.G.A., left Southampton in order to relieve some of the naval contingents; on the previous day a battery of four 9·45-in. B.L. howitzers had been embarked with the necessary personnel. The only further additions made during the war to the heavy armament were four 6-in. howitzers sent out at Lord Roberts' request on 27th April, 1900, and two 5-in. B.L. guns despatched at the end of the same year to replace two which had become unserviceable. With the exception of the howitzers the whole of these guns were taken from forts. Carriages for them were improvised by the Ordnance department. The use by the Boers of the 37 m/m Vickers-Maxim Q.F. guns,[305] nick-named "pom-poms" by the men, was met by the despatch of forty-nine of these weapons from England. Another important change was the introduction of a longer time-fuse for use with field guns. The regulation time-fuse at the outbreak of the war burnt in flight for twelve seconds only, suited to a range of 4,100 yards for the 15-pr. B.L. guns and 3,700 yards for the 12-pr. B.L. Experiments had been already made by the Ordnance Committee to obtain a satisfactory time-fuse effective for longer ranges, and on receipt of reports of the extreme distance at which the Boers were using their field artillery, these were rapidly pushed on, with the result that by the middle of January fuses capable of burning twenty-one seconds, corresponding to a range of 6,400 yards, were sent to South Africa.