Simply made, these weapons were no more than iron bowls reminiscent of the kitchen and apothecary mortars whence they drew their name.
The trajectory of the shell that hit the Parthenon, causing its explosion, is marked.Įarly mortars, such as the Pumhart von Steyr, were large and heavy and could not be easily transported. Engraving depicting the Venetian siege of the Acropolis of Athens, September 1687. The time of flight of these was apparently long enough that casualties could be avoided by posting observers to give warning of their trajectories. An Italian account of the 1456 siege of Belgrade by Giovanni da Tagliacozzo states that the Ottoman Turks used seven mortars that fired "stone shots one Italian mile high". The first use in siege warfare was at the 1453 siege of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror. In the Ming dynasty, general Qi Jiguang recorded the use of a mini cannon called the Hu dun pao that was similar to the mortar. The earliest version of the wan'gu dates back to 1407. The earliest mortars were used in Korea in a 1413 naval battle when Korean gunsmiths developed the wan'gu (gourd-shaped mortar) (완구, 碗口). Mortars have been used for hundreds of years. Mortars are typically used as indirect fire weapons for close fire support with a variety of ammunition. They launch explosive shells (technically called bombs) in high-arcing ballistic trajectories. A mortar is usually a simple, lightweight, man-portable, muzzle-loaded weapon, consisting of a smooth-bore (although some models use a rifled barrel) metal tube fixed to a base plate (to spread out the recoil) with a lightweight bipod mount and a sight.
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