Cannon

Cannon (pronounced kan-uhn)

(1) In ordnance, heavy artillery: a mounted gun for firing heavy projectiles; a gun, howitzer, or mortar,

(2) In machinery, a heavy tube or drum, especially one that can rotate freely on the shaft by which it is supported (also known as a quill).

(3) In armor, a cylindrical or semi-cylindrical piece of plate armor for the upper arm or forearm; a vambrace or rerebrace (the avant-bras in French and sometimes known as lower cannons in the Middle Ages).

(4) In saddlery, as cannon bit or canon bit, the part of a bit in the horse's mouth.

(5) In the design of bells, the metal loop at the top of a bell, from which it is hung.

(6) In zoology, as the cannon bone or the part of the leg in which the cannon bone is located.

(7) In billiards, a British term for a carom (a shot in which the cue ball is caused to contact one object ball after another); the points scored by this; a rebound or bouncing back, as of a ball off a wall.

(8) In underworld slang, a pickpocket (archaic).

1375–1425: From the late Middle English canon, from the earlier Anglo-Latin and Anglo-French canon, from the Italian cannone (large-tube barrel), the construct being cann(a) (tube) + -one (the augmentative suffix).  The Ancient Greek κάννα (kánna) (reed) was from the Akkadian qanû (reed), from the Sumerian gi.na; a doublet of canyon.  The original meaning was an "artillery piece, mounted gun for throwing projectiles by force of gunpowder" the spelling canon in a variety of languages all from the Italian cannone, augmentative of the Latin canna but the use of the double -n- spelling didn’t emerge until circa 1800.  Cannon is a noun and the plural is cannons but, in military use, when speaking of cannons collectively (especially when assembled in a battery), cannon is often used.

The artillery piece revolutionised warfare, the famous walls which for centuries had protected Constantinople were breached soon after cannon were first deployed and the city fell.  The weapon also influenced language.  Cannon fodder, first noted in 1847, describes the infantry or cavalry deployed against cannon-fire and exists in German as kanonenfutter, echoing William Shakespeare's (1564–1616) “food for gun powder” speech in Henry IV, Part 1 (circa 1596), Act 4 Scene 2) where Falstaff dismisses concern for his soldiers by saying they’re “good enough to toss; food for powder, food for powder. They’ll fill a pit as well as better”.  Cannon-shot (distance a cannon will throw a ball) is from the 1570s and was an important measure in admiralty and (embryonic) international law, the old three-mile (and the later twelve-mile) maritime limits of national borders reflect the range of shore-based cannons at various times.  It was used also from the 1590s to describe the iron-ball fired from a weapon but this by the 1660s came to be replaced by cannon-ball.  A cannonade (a continued discharge of artillery) is from the 1650s as a noun and as a verb (attack with artillery), a decade later.  The contemporary French was cannonade and the Italian cannonata, the related forms being cannonaded and cannonading.  Cannonade was exclusively a army term which was later replace by barrage; the Admiralty always preferred broadside.

The figurative “loose cannon” seems to have be popularised from its appearance in Victor Hugo's (1802–1885) late Ninety Three (1874) to describe someone “wildly irresponsible, unpredictable or freed from usual restraint", based on the literal sense of dread sailors on old warships felt when a cannon already primed to fire became detached from its mounts and began rolling about the deck.  When a loose cannon discharges, bloody carnage can ensue. 

Naval Cannons

USS Iowa firing nine-gun broadside in an August 1984 test-firing during the sea-trials conducted after being recommissioned as part of the military build-up ordered during Ronald Reagan's (1911-2004, US president 1981-1989) first term.

The US Navy’s four Iowa-class battleships, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin & New Jersey (the commissioned Illinois and Kentucky were never launched because of the changing nature of naval warfare) were the last battleships used in US fleets, all other dreadnoughts & super-dreadnoughts decommissioned by 1947 and when finally retired, they had for three decades been the last battleships afloat.  Noted for their longevity, their service variously lasting (including periods in reserve) from 1943 until 1992, they’re among the best-remembered battleships but they were neither the biggest (and certainly not the widest, the beam at around 108 feet (33 m) dictated by the need to pass through the Panama Canal) nor the most heavily gunned.  The Iowas were built with nine 16 inch (406 mm) naval cannons in three 3-gun turrets and could fire both high explosive and armour-piercing shells around 23 nautical miles (27.6 miles; 44.5 km).  A novel later innovation was an adaptation of the W19 nuclear artillery shell was adapted to suit the 16-inch bore.  With a yield of 15 to 20 kilotons of TNT (roughly the same as the A-bomb used against Nagasaki), they remain the world's largest nuclear artillery although, because of the Pentagon’s policy of refusing to confirm or deny the presence of nuclear weaponry aboard its ships, it’s unknown if any of the shells were ever carried while the ships were in active service.  Like the US Marine Corps (USMC), the navy was never much enthused at the prospect of nuclear weapons being carried by the surface fleet, regarding the weapons as ideally suited to submarines.  The entire US nuclear artillery inventory was later decommissioned and (officially) dismantled.

Yamato, 1944.

The Imperial Japanese Navy’s Yamato-class battleships, Yamato and Musashi, in service between 1942-1945, were bigger and heavier than the Iowas and also used bigger cannons, each having nine 18.1 inch (460 mm) guns in three triple turrets with a shell-range of 26 miles (42 km).  The big guns had been considered for the Iowas during the design process but were sacrificed as part of the speed/range/armour/firepower compromise which naval architects have to apply to every warship.  Interestingly, for a variety of reasons, even the Iowa's never-built successors (the Montana-class), maintained the 16-inch armament, designed around twelve cannons arrayed in four 3-gun turrets.

German conceptual H-45 battleship.

Before reality bit hard, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) left physics to the engineers and wasn't too bothered by economics.  After being disappointed the proposals the successors to the Bismarck-class ships would have their main armament increased only from eight 15-inch (380 mm) to eight 16 inch cannons, he ordered OKM (Oberkommando der Marine; the Naval High Command) to design bigger ships.  That directive emerged as the ambitious Plan Z which would have demanded so much steel, essentially nothing else in the Reich could have been built.  Although not one vessel in Plan Z ever left the slipway (the facilities even to lay down the keels non-existent), such a fleet would have been impressive, the largest (the H-44) fitted with eight 20-inch (508 mm) cannons.  Even more to the Führer’s liking was the concept of the H-45, equipped with eight 31.5 inch (800 mm) Gustav siege guns.  However, although he never lost faith in the key to success on the battlefield being bigger and bigger tanks, the experience of surface warfare at sea convinced Hitler the days of the big ships were over and he would even try to persuade the navy to retire all their capital ships and devote more resources to the submarines which, as late as 1945, he hoped might still prolong the war.  Had he imposed such priorities in 1937-1938 so the German Navy could have entered World War II (1939-1945) with the ability permanently to have 100 submarines engaged in high-seas raiding rather than barely a dozen, the early course of the war might radically have been different.