Riverine artillery refers to

artillery Artillery is a class of heavy military ranged weapons that launch munitions far beyond the range and power of infantry firearms. Early artillery development focused on the ability to breach defensive walls and fortifications during siege ...

employment on a river, generally on floating barges. Transport of field artillery is difficult through the moist ground and

riparian forest A riparian forest or riparian woodland is a forested or wooded area of land adjacent to a body of water such as a river, stream, pond, lake, marshland, estuary, canal Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered chann ...

adjacent to low-gradient rivers. Traditional

naval artillery Naval artillery is artillery mounted on a warship, originally used only for naval warfare and then subsequently used for shore bombardment and anti-aircraft roles. The term generally refers to tube-launched projectile-firing weapons and exclude ...

is mounted on deep-draft vessels unsuited for operations in shallow rivers.

Vietnam War

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

developed the ''

Dinassaut The Dinassaut (, ''Division Navale d'Assaut'', "Naval Assault Division") was a type of riverine military unit employed by the French Navy during the first Indochina War. It's an example of Riverine artillery. The 'Dinassaut' were created by Ge ...

'' (assault river division) concept early in their effort to fight communist guerrillas in

French Indochina French Indochina (previously spelled as French Indo-China),; vi, Đông Dương thuộc Pháp, , lit. 'East Ocean under French Control; km, ឥណ្ឌូចិនបារាំង, ; th, อินโดจีนฝรั่งเศส, ...

. The value of artillery was demonstrated by French ships when coastal Mon Cay became the only French garrison along the Chinese border to survive a 1950

Viet Minh The Việt Minh (; abbreviated from , chữ Nôm and Hán tự: ; french: Ligue pour l'indépendance du Viêt Nam, ) was a national independence coalition formed at Pác Bó by Hồ Chí Minh on 19 May 1941. Also known as the Việt Minh Fro ...

offensive. During the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam a ...

, the United States employed riverine artillery due to the difficulty of transporting and emplacing artillery pieces in marshy areas. The formation of a riverine task force (composed of 2d Brigade of the 9th Infantry Division and the U.S. Navy River Assault Flotilla 1) increased the importance of artillery support in riverine areas, and fixed locations near river areas proved unsatisfactory. In December 1966, 1st Battalion, 7th Artillery positioned M101A1 105mm howitzers aboard

LCM-6 The landing craft mechanized (LCM) is a landing craft designed for carrying vehicles. They came to prominence during the Second World War when they were used to land troops or tanks during Allied amphibious assaults. Variants There was no ...

landing craft, with the intent that the craft be towed to a supported area and moored to a riverbank. Later, it was established that the LCM-6 was too small to serve effectively, and howitzers were positioned on Navy AMMI pontoon barges. When these proved to difficult to move and to have too deep of a

draft Draft, The Draft, or Draught may refer to: Watercraft dimensions * Draft (hull), the distance from waterline to keel of a vessel * Draft (sail), degree of curvature in a sail * Air draft, distance from waterline to the highest point on a vesse ...

, barges formed of Navy P-1 pontoons were the workable solution. M101A1, and later

M102 howitzer The M102 is a light, towable 105 mm howitzer used by the United States Army in the Vietnam War, the First Gulf War, and the Iraq War. Overview The M102 105 mm howitzer is used in air mobile (helicopter), attack plane, and light infantry ...

s were mounted onto a baseplate welded to the barge deck, allowing the howitzer to be traversed 360 degrees. A complete battery of riverine 105mm artillery consisted of three howitzer barges, and five LCM-8s for support staff such as the

Fire Direction Center In the US system for land-based field artillery, the field artillery team is organized to direct and control indirect artillery fire on the battlefield. Since World War I, to conduct indirect artillery fire, three distinct components have evolv ...

Romanian riverine artillery

In November 1920, the ''Regimentul Artileriei Fluviale'' (Riverine Artillery Regiment) was formed as part of the

Romanian Naval Forces The Romanian Navy ( ro, Forțele Navale Române) is the navy branch of the Romanian Armed Forces; it operates in the Black Sea and on the Danube. It traces its history back to 1860. History The Romanian Navy was founded in 1860 as a river flot ...

. The Regiment had 14 armed barges: 8 armed each with a single 152 mm Canet gun (Russian guns captured in 1918 along with the barges they were mounted on), 4 armed each with four 120 mm guns Canet and 2 armed with two 102 mm guns Obuchov M1910 each. By early 1941, the Regiment had two sections of 152 mm guns, one section of 47 mm Škoda guns and one section of

40 mm Bofors Bofors 40 mm gun is a name or designation given to two models of 40 mm calibre anti-aircraft guns designed and developed by the Swedish company Bofors: *Bofors 40 mm L/60 gun - developed in the 1930s, widely used in World War II and into the 1990s ...

AA guns (each section had two guns).Scurt istoric al artileriei de coastă PDF, p. 14 (in Romanian)
/ref> The Romanian riverine artillery took part in the 1924 suppression of the

Tatarbunary Uprising The Tatarbunary Uprising ( ro, Răscoala de la Tatarbunar) was a Bolshevik-inspired and Soviet-backed peasant revolt that took place on 15–18 September 1924, in and around the town of Tatarbunary (''Tatar-Bunar'' or ''Tatarbunar'') in Budjak ...

and also saw action during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, sinking 1 Soviet armored boat during Operation Munchen.

Notes

References

* *Major General David Ewing Ott. FIELD ARTILLERY, 1954-1973. DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY, WASHINGTON, D.C., 1975

* * * {{cite book , title=The History of the Vietnam War , author=Welsh, Douglas , publisher=Galahad Books , year=1981 , isbn=0-88365-579-9 , url-access=registration , url=https://archive.org/details/historyofvietnam0000wels Artillery by type Riverine warfare Ship types