While Lee was melting down his 6-pounders for Napoleons in 1863, the Western Theater kept mixed batteries longer. Confederate and Federal artillery in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Georgia fielded 12-pounder howitzers through Stones River, Chickamauga, Atlanta, and Franklin. The terrain helped — the West was more broken and more wooded than the open Virginia battlegrounds, and the howitzer's high-angle fire dropped explosive shell behind cover where flat-shooting Napoleons couldn't reach. The Bormann fuse, a flat brass disk with a graduated powder train rotated by the No.2 gunner to set burst time, made it possible to time an air-burst over an enemy formation with reasonable accuracy.

The model is the gun and its sponge-and-rammer staff — a 1/30 scale M1841 12-pounder howitzer with bronze barrel in the shorter, thicker profile that distinguished it from the slimmer 12-pdr Napoleon gun, olive-painted oak carriage, iron-rimmed wheels. Set it as the left piece of a battery diorama alongside the M1841 6 Pound Bronze Field Gun with a Confederate crew at work in the 'Load!' Confederate Artillery with 12 Pound Howitzer set, or build a Federal battery scene with the Union Artillery Crewman running fuses at the breech.

W. Britain 31480 12 Pound Howitzer. 1/30 scale (approximately 60mm crew compatible), matte-painted metal. Two-piece set: bronze 12-pdr howitzer barrel and trunnion assembly on olive-painted oak carriage with iron-rimmed wheels, plus rammer-and-sponge staff. No figures included. Boxed.