The 'Dictator' was the largest known CW mortar to belch fire, smoke and shell in anger. Being a Black Powder shooter, i find this thing fascinating:
Some facts:
Cast at= US Casting Foundry, Fort Pitt, Pittsburg, PA. in 1862
Designed for= Coastal fortifications
Weight=17,000+ pounds
Projectile= 13", 218 pound shell capable of throwing it 2.5+ miles
Charge= 20 pounds Black Powder
Action= Seige of Petersburg. Placed on a fortified railway car
Gunnery crew= Co. G, first Conneticut Heavy Artillery
Current whereabouts= unknown
Here's my colorized PhotoShop'd version with a twist...if only the Rebs had it!:dry:
Last edited by ironsight on Mon Dec 15, 2008 11:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
That thing weighed over eight tons? Damn! I'll bet loading it was fun!
Not to mention the fact it's on a wooden platform!
I read in Porter Alexanders book how the Confederates would mount a cannon on a skid, angle it upward, and used them as morters.
The other thing I want to comment on: The colored photo, I love it! ironsight, have you done any others?
It puts me in mind of that series the History Channel ran called, The Color of War. Where they showed colored film from WWII. I'm sure most of us have seen it. With the color film, it made the war seem.......not so long ago.
Thanks for the comments Ephrum!
Colorizing and correcting some of those old CW photos sort of brings them to life for me anyhow.
The 'Color of War' series is one of my favorites too as it also brings to life those old WWII B&W footages. If only the movie camera was invented in time for the CW! To my knowledge there are no still photos of actual CW battles.
Back to the Dictator and CW mortars.
The shear weight of that mortar is something else. It was designed to deploy at coastal fortifications but was jury rigged for field use at Petersburg. The rail car was heavily re-enforced with closely placed probably I-beams with the wooden planks placed on top. Not only did that platform have to support the dead weight of that monster mortar but also its recoil forces when fired.
"The power of this weapon (Dictator) was enough to shatter most field magazines and bomb-proofs, and it is credited with causing the Confederate gunners to withdraw their attempts at enfilade fire along the right of the Union line."
"Mortar batteries alternated with tubed guns all along the front. Some artillery even acquired nicknames: one seven-gun siege battery just south of Fort Morton was called the Seven Sisters, while Union soldiers referred to several different artillery pieces as The Petersburg Express, most notably the thirteen-inch heavy mortar that was also know as the Dictator. This gun, the only one of its size at Petersburg, went into action on July 9, and remained active until September, firing 218 times, from various positions. 'It made the ground quake," one infantryman swore."
"Soldiers on both sides hated the mortars. 'These mortar shells were the most disgusting, low-lived things imaginable,' declared W. W. Blackford, a Confederate engineer. 'There was not a particle of the sense of honor about them; they would go rolling about and prying into the most private places in a sneaking sort of way.' 'Mortar shells fly into the works occasionally,' a Maine soldier confirmed, "at which times we get out in double-quick time.' Added a Georgia infantryman, 'Old veterans can never forget the noise those missiles made as they went up and came down like an excited bird, their shrieks becoming shriller and shriller, as the time to explode approached."
"A soldier in the 35th Massachusetts described a mortar attack: 'In the daytime the burst of smoke from the Confederate mortars could be seen; a black speck would dart into the sky, [and] hang a moment, increasing in size, rolling over and over lazily, and the revolving fuze [would begin] to whisper audibly, as it darted towards us, at first, softly, "I'm a-coming, I'm a-coming"; then louder and more angrily, "I'm coming! I'm coming!;" and, at last, with an explosion to crack the drum of the ear, "I'm HERE!"
"A soldier in the 35th Massachusetts described a mortar attack: 'In the daytime the burst of smoke from the Confederate mortars could be seen; a black speck would dart into the sky, [and] hang a moment, increasing in size, rolling over and over lazily, and the revolving fuze [would begin] to whisper audibly, as it darted towards us, at first, softly, "I'm a-coming, I'm a-coming"; then louder and more angrily, "I'm coming! I'm coming!;" and, at last, with an explosion to crack the drum of the ear, "I'm HERE!"
That would make me feel like the proverbial, "fish in a barrel.":ohmy:
Ephurm Wrote:That would make me feel like the proverbial, "fish in a barrel
The closest i came to feeling like a fish in a barrel is one 4th of July, i had a big bottle rocket do a U-turn and head right straight at me!:woohoo:
Fastest i ever ran!:laugh:
Ephurm Wrote:That would make me feel like the proverbial, "fish in a barrel
The closest i came to feeling like a fish in a barrel is one 4th of July, i had a big bottle rocket do a U-turn and head right straight at me!:woohoo:
Fastest i ever ran!:laugh:
When I was a kid growing up in South Carolina, my friends and I used to have bottle rocket wars. Seriously! We would shoot those things at each other. Using Coke bottles to launch them. You could shove a whole dozen of them into the bottle, run a zippo lighter under the fuses, and aim. We called that a bottle rocket machine gun. Chasing each other all over the neighborhood, and raising hell. Sometimes with our older brothers, and on one or two occasions, a few Dads would join in. After an hour of that, our hands and arms would be black from firing so many rockets. And amazingly, no one ever got hurt.
When I think about it now, I shudder at the thought of how stupid we were, and the kind of injuries anyone of us could have gotten.
Last edited by Ephrum on Wed Dec 17, 2008 3:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Ephrum, yep them good ol days! No seatbelt laws, no padded dashboards, no prohibitive fireworks laws, no big brother lookin after us, etc. etc.
Yah, we had bottle rocket wars and also BB gun 'wars' too! :ohmy:
But that there bottle rocket i mentioned in my last post of mine was a BIG one, otherwise i wouldn't of even flinched!
And...this is only 1% of some of the crazy goofy sometimes 'slightly' illegal stuff i've pulled off during my current existence on this planet! :huh:
Sometimes, i'm damned surprized i'm sitll alive and functioning!:woohoo:
Last edited by ironsight on Wed Dec 17, 2008 8:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Ephrum, yep them good ol days! No seatbelt laws, no padded dashboards, no prohibitive fireworks laws, no big brother lookin after us, etc. etc.
Yah, we had bottle rocket wars and also BB gun 'wars' too! :ohmy:
But that there bottle rocket i mentioned in my last post of mine was a BIG one, otherwise i wouldn't of even flinched!
And...this is only 1% of some of the crazy goofy sometimes 'slightly' illegal stuff i've pulled off during my current existence on this planet! :huh:
Sometimes, i'm damned surprized i'm sitll alive and functioning!:woohoo:
And Tonka trucks made of metal!
The big bottle rockets scared me too!! They were very, very fast, with a big BOOM!
Porter Alexander wrote of the heaviest guns the Confederates ever brought to bear on a battlefield. It was at Fredricksburg. They had two 30 pound Parrot rifles. Both of which exploded by mid-day. One on the 37th shot, and the other on the 42nd shot. One of them exploded near Gen. Lee and Gen. Longstreet. (A scene from Gods and Generals.)
He wrote this about one of them;
"A long cut of an unfinished railroad ran obliquely across the open ground they had to cross. They were evidently receiving some long range infantry fire & also a few shells, & as they came up to this railroad cut, say ten feet deep, the whole brigade of them swarmed into it. They had hardly done so when one of the 30 pound Parrot guns, right by me, roared out, & I saw the bloodiest shot I ever saw in all my life. The gun exactly enfiladed the cut & and it sent its shell right into the heart of the blue mass of men where it exploded. I think it could not have failed to kill or wound as many as 20 men."
Again, like fish in a barrel!
Last edited by Ephrum on Thu Dec 18, 2008 11:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
