Slitherine

Hi

If a battery is on top of a hill are they able to fire over friendly troops at the base of the hill?

Regards

I can't remember where this is, but the answer is no.
There is no overhead firing allowed.
I actually quite like it - no fiddling about with relative distances between firer, target and intervening troops, and how high the hill is.
Of course for a particular scenario you can do what you like.
I will check in the rules and post when I find the relevant rule.

Saxonian wrote:I can't remember where this is, but the answer is no.
There is no overhead firing allowed.
I actually quite like it - no fiddling about with relative distances between firer, target and intervening troops, and how high the hill is.
Of course for a particular scenario you can do what you like.
I will check in the rules and post when I find the relevant rule.

Correct

The main reason we do not allow it is to do with the practice at the time which was not to fire over the heads of friendly troops from behind them . From the side possibly on occasion but the artillery still needed a clear field of fire.( There was of course no indirect fire at all other than siege guns firing over the walls of a besieged town but with little capability of correcting the fall of shot in real time.)

There were technical reasons firstly: it is Impossible for canister for obvious reasons and secondly: virtually so for ball which could not fire on a sufficiently steep parabolic curve ( because of the limitations on barrel elevation ) which also depended partly on bounce and ricochet and its effect is only felt obviously within limited height range.

Technically shell and shrapnel could be fired this way especially from howitzers but basically troops did not like it at all and the fuzes were not totally reliable.