Coastal artillery
[citation needed] Land-based guns also benefited in most cases from the additional protection of walls or earth mounds.
The Martello tower is an excellent example of a widely used coastal fort that mounted defensive artillery, in this case, muzzle-loading cannon.
During the 19th century China also built hundreds of coastal fortresses in an attempt to counter Western naval threats.
With the rise of the submarine threat at the beginning of the 20th century, anti-submarine nets were used extensively, usually added to boom defences, with major warships often being equipped with them (to allow rapid deployment once the ship was anchored or moored) through early World War I.
Masonry forts were determined to be obsolete following the American Civil War, and a postwar program of earthwork defenses was poorly funded.
The Japanese were attacking the city and the Russian ships were trapped in the harbor due to mines, making this one of the few cases of coastal guns being employed in an offensive action.
Stung by the fact that the Russian Pacific Fleet had been sunk by the army and not by the Imperial Japanese Navy, and with a direct order from Tokyo that the Sevastopol was not to be allowed to escape, Admiral Togo sent in wave after wave of destroyers in six separate attacks on the sole remaining Russian battleship.
After a 15-minute exchange of fire, Leberecht Maass was hit in the gun mask, with several wounded sailors (this fact was reported by both the commander of the Laskowski battery, Captain Zbigniew Przybyszewski, and the German Rear Admiral Lütjens).
[12][11] On 19 September, the battery of the Heliodor Laskowski fired at a group of units trawling and shelling the defenses on Kępa Oksywska: M 3, "Nettelbeck", "Fuchs", S.V.K.
The remaining two undamaged guns of the coastal battery fire continuously, obtaining cover for the German battleship SMS Schlesien, which is laying a smoke screen.
The two damaged guns of the Laskowski battery were soon put into operation, and the wounded commander was replaced by Captain Bohdan Mańkowski.
On September 28, Captain Przybyszewski leaves the hospital against the doctors' prohibition and returns with his hand in a sling to command the battery.
The Blücher had entered the narrow waters of the Oslofjord, carrying 1,000 soldiers and leading a German invasion fleet.
The first salvo from the Norwegian defenders, fired from Oscarsborg Fortress about 950 meters distance, disabled the center propeller turbine and set her afire.
AP shells were designed to penetrate the hulls of heavily armoured warships and were mostly ineffective against infantry targets.
[13][14] Military analysts later estimated that if the guns had been well supplied with HE shells the Japanese attackers would have suffered heavy casualties, but the invasion would not have been prevented by this means alone.
[16] However, the lack of HE shells rendered Singapore vulnerable to a land based attack from Malaya via the Johore straits.
Beyond tying up besieging Japanese forces (who suffered severe supply shortages due to the inability to use Manila as a port), the forts allowed interception of radio traffic later decisive at Midway.
The (equally old) battleship Texas was used to suppress the battery at Pointe du Hoc, but the guns there had been moved to an inland position, unbeknownst to the Allies.
Twenty-four Landing Craft Tank carried Priest self-propelled 105mm howitzers which also fired while they were on the run-in to the beach.
In constricted waters, mobile coastal artillery armed with surface-to-surface missiles still can be used to deny the use of sea lanes.
