bombardier

French bombarde and Italian bombarda named the early cannon of the 14th and 15th centuries — a large stone-hurling siege weapon whose boom suggested its name, possibly from Latin bombus (a loud humming or buzzing sound). The operator of the bombarde was the bombardier: the specialist who loaded, aimed, and fired the weapon, and who understood the temperamental art of early artillery.

Bombards were the decisive weapons of the Hundred Years' War's later phases. Jean Bureau, Master of Artillery under Charles VII of France, used bombards to reduce English-held fortresses at a rate that had been impossible before — taking in one campaign of 1449-50 what had taken English armies decades to build up. Bureau's artillery train recovered Normandy for France. The bombardier was no longer a curiosity; he was the key to siege warfare.

As artillery technology developed through the 16th and 17th centuries, the bombardier became a specialized artillerist within increasingly technical organizations. By the 18th century, European armies had Bombardier corps as distinct from infantry — men trained in mathematics, trajectory calculation, powder management, and the mechanics of various cannon types. The Duke of Marlborough's bombardiers at the siege of Lille in 1708 deployed 80 artillery pieces over a campaign that became a model of siege technique.

Today bombardier describes both the aircraft crew member who aims and releases bombs and a military rank in several artillery regiments. The word also names the Canadian aerospace company Bombardier, founded in 1942, whose snowmobiles and aircraft carry the legacy of the projectile-specialist far into peacetime industry.