There are 978 users online
You can register for a user account here.
Login
Military Photos
Main Menu
Online
Past Articles
Military Quotes
The most difficult thing about planning against the Americans, is that they do not read their own doctrine, and they would feel no particular obligtion to follow it if they did. -- Admiral Sergei I. Gorshkov |
A siege tower is a specialized siege engine, constructed to protect assailants and ladders whilst approaching the defensive walls of a fortification. The tower was often rectangular with four wheels and a height roughly equal to that of the wall or sometimes higher to allow archers to stand on top of the tower and fire into the fortification.
Used throughout antiquity in both the Far East and Europe, siege towers were of unwieldy dimensions and therefore mostly constructed on site of the siege. The target of the siege would usually not see the siege tower approaching and would be caught off guard. Taking a lot of time to construct, siege towers were mainly constructed if the defense of the opposing fortification could not be overcome by ladder assault, by sapping or by breaking walls or gates. The siege tower sometimes housed knights, or crossbowmen who shot arrows at the defenders. Because of the size of the tower it would often be the first target of cannons or any other heavy projectiles, but it had its own projectiles to fight back with. Siege towers were sometimes used to enable millitary troops to enter enemy fortifications. When a siege tower was near a wall, it would drop a gangplank between it and the wall. Troops could then rush onto the walls and into the castle or city. |
Military History
Forum Posts
This Day in History
1775:
The American Revolution begins as fighting breaks out at Lexington, Massachusetts.
1861: Residents of Baltimore, Maryland, attack a Union regiment while the group makes its way to Washington. 1861: President Lincoln orders a blockade of Confederate ports. 1927: In China, Hankow communists declare war on Chiang Kai-shek. 1938: General Francisco Franco declares victory in the Spanish Civil War. 1943: Waffen SS attack Jewish resistance in the Warsaw ghetto putting down the uprising. 1951: I and IX Corps reached the Utah Line, south of the Iron Triangle. 1951: General MacArthur denounced the Truman Administration before a joint session of Congress for refusing to lift restrictions on the scope of the war. 1952: The U.N. delegation informed the communists that only 70,000 of 132,000 of the prisoners of war held by the United Nations Command were willing to return home. |