Last updated: September 23, 2022
Place
Turnbull's Battery F & K, 3rd US Artillery
LOC
Quick Facts
Location:
Gettysburg National Military Park
Significance:
Union Artillery position on Cemetery Ridge
Designation:
Civil War Monument
These guns represent the position of Lieutenant John G. Turnbull’s Battery F & K, 3rd U.S. Artillery late on the afternoon of July 3.
There were 655 artillery pieces used during the battle. The artillery in both armies was organized into batteries of four to six cannon each. There were two basic types of cannon used: smoothbore guns, such as the guns in Turnbull’s battery, and rifled guns. The tubes of smoothbore cannon are bronze and can be easily identified on the battlefield since the bronze has developed a green patina.
Rifled gun tubes are made of iron and painted black. The smoothbores of Turnbull’s battery could fire a shell approximately one mile, which means a gun located here could fire at a target along Seminary Ridge to the west. Rifled guns could fire nearly two miles.
Artillery was moved by wheeled vehicles called limbers. The limbers, which are pulled by a team of horses, can be seen in the photograph and you will see examples on the field later in the tour. The vehicles in the back right of the photograph are called caissons. These carried additional ammunition for each gun.
Before the Confederate infantry advanced during Pickett’s Charge on July 3, nearly 150 Confederate cannon bombarded Cemetery Ridge for almost two hours. Between 80 to 100 Union guns responded, and one of the greatest cannonades of the war ensued.
There were 655 artillery pieces used during the battle. The artillery in both armies was organized into batteries of four to six cannon each. There were two basic types of cannon used: smoothbore guns, such as the guns in Turnbull’s battery, and rifled guns. The tubes of smoothbore cannon are bronze and can be easily identified on the battlefield since the bronze has developed a green patina.
Rifled gun tubes are made of iron and painted black. The smoothbores of Turnbull’s battery could fire a shell approximately one mile, which means a gun located here could fire at a target along Seminary Ridge to the west. Rifled guns could fire nearly two miles.
Artillery was moved by wheeled vehicles called limbers. The limbers, which are pulled by a team of horses, can be seen in the photograph and you will see examples on the field later in the tour. The vehicles in the back right of the photograph are called caissons. These carried additional ammunition for each gun.
Before the Confederate infantry advanced during Pickett’s Charge on July 3, nearly 150 Confederate cannon bombarded Cemetery Ridge for almost two hours. Between 80 to 100 Union guns responded, and one of the greatest cannonades of the war ensued.
"Who can describe such a conflict as is raging around us!To say that it was like a summer storm, with the crash ofthunder, the glare of lightning, the shrieking of the wind,and the clatter of hailstones, would be weak. The thunderand lightning of these two hundred and fifty guns andtheir shells, whose smoke darkens the sky, are incessant, allpervading, in the air above our heads, on the ground at ourfeet – remote, near, deafening, ear piercing, astounding; andthese hailstones are massy iron charged with exploding fi re."- Lieutenant Frank Haskell, Army of the Potomac (U.S.)