The Ordnance BL 5-inch howitzer was initially introduced to provide the

Royal Field Artillery The Royal Field Artillery (RFA) of the British Army provided close artillery support for the infantry. It came into being when created as a distinct arm of the Royal Regiment of Artillery on 1 July 1899, serving alongside the other two arms of ...

with continuing explosive shell capability following the decision to concentrate on

shrapnel Shrapnel may refer to: Military * Shrapnel shell, explosive artillery munitions, generally for anti-personnel use * Shrapnel (fragment), a hard loose material Popular culture * ''Shrapnel'' (Radical Comics) * ''Shrapnel'', a game by Adam C ...

for field guns in the 1890s.

Combat service

Sudan Campaign

The weapon was used by the

and served successfully at the

Battle of Omdurman The Battle of Omdurman was fought during the Anglo-Egyptian conquest of Sudan between a British–Egyptian expeditionary force commanded by British Commander-in-Chief ( sirdar) major general Horatio Herbert Kitchener and a Sudanese army of the ...

in 1898. During that campaign they gained the distinction of being the first British guns to fire the new Lyddite shells in action.

Second Boer War

Major D Hall states that in the

Second Boer War The Second Boer War ( af, Tweede Vryheidsoorlog, , 11 October 189931 May 1902), also known as the Boer War, the Anglo–Boer War, or the South African War, was a conflict fought between the British Empire and the two Boer Republics (the South ...

the Lyddite shells often failed to detonate; the gun was too heavy to be used as a field howitzer, and for siege use its range was too short and shell too light. However, it achieved some success in

Natal NATAL or Natal may refer to: Places * Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, a city in Brazil * Natal, South Africa (disambiguation), a region in South Africa ** Natalia Republic, a former country (1839–1843) ** Colony of Natal, a former British colony ( ...

when able to get close enough to bombard

Boer Boers ( ; af, Boere ()) are the descendants of the Dutch-speaking Free Burghers of the eastern Cape frontier in Southern Africa during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. From 1652 to 1795, the Dutch East India Company controlled this are ...

s in

trenches A trench is a type of excavation or in the ground that is generally deeper than it is wide (as opposed to a wider gully, or ditch), and narrow compared with its length (as opposed to a simple hole or pit). In geology, trenches result from erosi ...

World War I

By 1908 it was obsolete and replaced in British Regular Army brigades by the modern

QF 4.5-inch howitzer The Ordnance QF 4.5-inch howitzer was the standard British Empire field (or ‘light’) howitzer of the First World War era. It replaced the BL 5-inch howitzer and equipped some 25% of the field artillery. It entered service in 1910 and remai ...

Territorial Force The Territorial Force was a part-time volunteer component of the British Army, created in 1908 to augment British land forces without resorting to conscription. The new organisation consolidated the 19th-century Volunteer Force and yeomanry ...

brigades, however, continued to use the howitzer in

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

into 1916, including notably at the ANZAC and Suvla beachheads, Gallipoli, and in the East African campaign. A lighter 40-pound (18.14 kg) shell with Amatol filling replaced the original 50-pound (22.68 kg) Lyddite shell early in

Together with an increase in cordite propellant from 11 oz 7 drams to 14 oz 5 drams, this increased the maximum range from 4,800 to . Administrative error led to the new 40-pound shells being sent to Gallipoli without

range table A range table was a list of angles of elevation a particular artillery gun barrel needed to be set to, to strike a target at a particular distance with a projectile of a particular weight using a propellant cartridge of a particular weight. They wer ...

s or fuze keys for the new pattern fuzes, rendering them useless.Simpson-Baikie 1920

Gallery

File:BL 5 inch Howitzer US Field Artillery Journal 1915.jpeg, A rear view of the BL 5-inch Howitzer. File:BL 5 inch Howitzer Second Boer War LOC LC-USZ62-48652.jpg, Approaching Maddox Hill, Northern Cape, January 1900. File:5inchHowitzerFiringGallipoli1915.jpeg, In action on Gallipoli, 1915. File:Chargement d'un obusier et groupe d'artilleurs - Médiathèque de l'architecture et du patrimoine - AP62T122974.jpg, A BL 5-inch Howitzer in Romanian service during World War I. Romania received 28 howitzers in 1917.

Ammunition

Notes and references

Bibliography

Text Book of Gunnery, 1902. LONDON : PRINTED FOR HIS MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE, BY HARRISON AND SONS, ST. MARTIN'S LANE
*Dale Clarke
British Artillery 1914-1919. Field Army Artillery. Osprey Publishing, Oxford UK, 2004
* Major Darrell D. Hall

* I.V. Hogg & L.F. Thurston, British Artillery Weapons & Ammunition 1914-1918. London: Ian Allan, 1972 * Brigadier-General Sir Hugh Simpson-Baikie, Ex-Commander of the British artillery at Cape Helles. Appendix I STATEMENT ON ARTILLERY in

* Hogg, Ian. ''Twentieth-Century Artillery.'' New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2000. Pg.46 * ''România în războiul mondial 1916-1919, Documente, Anexe'', Volumul 1, Monitorul Oficial și Imprimeriile Statului, București. Pg. 42

Surviving examples

* At Karak Castle, Jordan *National Military Museum,

Bucharest Bucharest ( , ; ro, București ) is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than north of ...

, Romania

External links

Handbook for the 5-inch B.L. howitzer 1905
Hosted online by State Library of Victoria, Australia
Field service manual Field artillery howitzer brigade 5-inch B.L. 1908
Hosted online by State Library of Victoria, Australia
Handbook for the 5-inch B.L. howitzer, 1909
Hosted online by State Library of Victoria, Australia
Handbook and equipment details for the 5-inch B.L. howitzer Mark I field batteries 1896,1901
Hosted online by State Library of Victoria, Australia
5 inch B.L. howitzer gun drill 1915
Hosted online by State Library of Victoria, Australia

*

Bennet Burleigh Bennet Graham Burley (1840 – June 17, 1914) was a Scottish-born pirate, Confederate spy and journalist. Later in life, he changed his surname to Burleigh and became a celebrated war correspondent for London's ''The Daily Telegraph''. Bo ...

, ttp://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25504 Khartoum Campaign, 1898Describes 5-inch howitzer use in the campaign {{DEFAULTSORT:BL 05 inch howitzer Field artillery Victorian-era weapons of the United Kingdom World War I howitzers World War I artillery of the United Kingdom 127 mm artillery