"Artillery deployed in woods?" Topic

Just wondering about the feasibility of allowing artillery batteries to deploy in and fight from woods. Not the tangled jungle-like mess featured at Chancellorsville or Grant's Overland campaign, those are obvious No-Go's, but average run-of-the-mill woods like that likely to be found on any given ACW battlefield. Light Woods, for lack of a better term.

I use home-brewed rules and design my own scenarios, and have been allowing batteries to deploy in and fight from Light Woods. However, something just feels off about that, so I thought I'd seek some advice from the TMP faithful.

So yay or nay to artillery in the woods? Thanks in advance for any input.

Yes, happened all the time. Moreso with open woods like most (but not all of) Chickamauga. Culps Hill at Gettysburg was in the woods and they moved guns up there. Same with just about anywhere in the Atlanta Campaign in areas like New Hope Church or the Lost Mountain-Brushy Mountain line.

Depends on the woods but there were a number of places as noted by Cleburne 1863 where the woods were open enough to allow passage of guns

link

Like in the above painting? All of the time. You could find a gun any where it had room to deploy.

If you can't deploy guns in open woods in the ACW, there really isn't anywhere for them to go!

Hopefully, your rules (like mine) penalize artillery movement thru woods. A few turns ago, I moved a battery to a wooded hilltop position. The movement cost kept the battery out of action for a considerable period of time.

Would think the underbrush being present or not is the tell. Trees far enough apart is easy, or farm paths through. Find a woods and think could you get a truck with a trailer through that.

In the edge of the woods, ok. Otherwise, no clear field of fire.

Well, in my rules I just classify woods as Light and Heavy, the former artillery can operate in and the latter it can't. The main difference as I envision it is that Heavy woods has the Chancellorsville-like underbrush and the Light woods do not. Never really thought much about the spacing of the trees, but I guess that's a major consideration. There are, of course, movement penalties for everyone operating in woods.

So I guess I will continue to consider Heavy woods to be the Chancellorsville-like mess, which precludes artillery and start thinking of Light woods as having more widely spaced trees in addition to an absence of significant undergrowth, which will allow guns to operate within. Totally changes my mental image when I visualize things. Yep, that'll work.

Thanks so much for the input. You all seem to be pretty much in lockstep on this making me realize my misgivings were mispaced.

Blackhorse, yet the Confederates deployed several batteries in the woods north of Saunders Field in the Wilderness…

Even relatively heavy woods may have clearings or at least less densely forested areas. If you are defending in woods, then I can't see why you wouldn't deploy artillery if there is room. Cannister can still do the job.

Other considerations are that there has to be room for the guns to recoil when firing, and enough room for the caissons to be deployed.

and enough room for the caissons to be deployed.

Preferred, but not always. Smith's 4th NY deployed 4 of it's six guns by hand hauling them through the Devils Den to a position on Houck's Ridge. There was not even room for the limber teams, let alone the caisson's, and the ammunition had to hand hauled to the guns.

Boulders and broken ground can be as big an obstacle as woods to find a good location to position artillery. Persistence could sometimes override practicality. Even at the Battle of the Wilderness both sides were able to position a section or two of guns astride the Orange Plank Road running through the densest woods ever fought in.

Kim

They can always find somewhere to put a gun, KRY, but without the caissons and ability to concentrate the battery fire then they won't be as effective.

Though the effect on the troops who found four enemy guns overlooking Devil's Den probably made up for that.

Thinking, and did it in a game once, had a artillery unit back into woods, bit it would be no escape