Atlas Trail
Guns That Move the Fight: Artillery from the 25-Pounder to the CAESAR
This path follows artillery from the Second World War field gun and rocket launcher through the self-propelled howitzers that now keep pace with armored forces. Each stop shows a different answer to the same problem: how to put a heavy shell or rocket on a distant target, and how mobile the gun must be to do it.
Stop 1 of 8.
Weapons Systems
The British 25-pounder combined a high rate of fire with both flat direct fire against tanks and high-angle howitzer fire. Each British infantry division fielded 72 of them, and more than twelve thousand were built in Britain, Canada and Australia, so this is where the path starts: the standard towed field gun.
Stop 2 of 8.
Weapons Systems
The Nebelwerfer took a different route to the same end. A rocket needs no heavy barrel or recoil carriage, so its walls could be thinner and its payload of explosive, smoke or other fillings larger than a conventional shell of the same weight. Rockets of 15 to 32 centimeters were fired, and the first, the 15 cm Nebelwerfer 41, reached the troops in 1940.
Stop 3 of 8.
Weapons Systems
Schwerer Gustav shows the opposite extreme of size. This 80-centimeter German railway gun was developed by Krupp in the late 1930s to breach French fortifications, missed the Battle of France, and first fired in combat at the Siege of Sevastopol in 1942. At 80 centimeters its caliber is several times that of the other guns on this path, and it stayed in service into the war's final years.
Stop 4 of 8.
Weapons Systems
The M109 answered the mobility problem. It mounts a 155 millimeter howitzer in a fully rotating armored turret on a tracked chassis, introduced in the early 1960s to replace the earlier M44 and M52, so the gun can move and fire alongside the tanks it supports instead of trailing behind as a towed gun would.
Stop 5 of 8.
Weapons Systems
The Soviet and later Russian 2S19 Msta-S entered service in 1989 as the successor to the 2S3 Akatsiya. It pairs a 152.4 mm gun with the running gear of the T-80 tank and the diesel engine of the T-72, firing 6 to 8 rounds a minute to a standard range of about 24.7 kilometers.
Stop 6 of 8.
Weapons Systems
The German PzH 2000 entered service in 1998 with an automated ammunition-handling system. It can fire up to ten rounds a minute in sustained fire, or a burst fired at different trajectories timed to land on the same target together, with range stretching from about 30 kilometers to more than 50 with rocket-assisted shells.
Stop 7 of 8.
Weapons Systems
South Korea's K9 Thunder entered service in 1999 and works alongside the K10 ammunition resupply vehicle. By 2022 the K9 series held a 52 percent share of the global self-propelled howitzer market for systems delivered since 2000, and it is operated by countries including Turkey, Poland, Finland, India and Australia.
Stop 8 of 8.
Weapons Systems
The French CAESAR ends the path by trading the tracked hull for a 6x6 or 8x8 truck chassis. Its 155 mm, 52-calibre gun, inertial navigation and ballistic computer reach beyond 40 kilometers with standard ammunition and over 55 with rocket-assisted rounds. It entered French service in 2008 and has been used in Afghanistan, Mali, Iraq, Syria and Ukraine.
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