[1][2]Men of USS Kearsarge firing a smoothbore Dahlgren gun during the Battle of Cherbourg in 1864.Naval artillery is artillery mounted on a warship, originally used only for naval warfare, later also for naval gunfire fire support against targets on land, and for anti-aircraft use. The term generally refers to tube-launched projectile-firing weapons and excludes self-propelled projectiles like torpedoes and rockets, and those simply dropped overboard like depth charges and naval mines.