h/t (and apologies) to CW at Daily Timewaster
For the 100th time, CW runs a great photoblog over at Daily Timewaster. As anyone who's ever visited already knows. The pictures he finds God Alone Knows Where, and what he decides to post is a constant source of "Wow!", at least 99 times out of 100, if not more like 9999 times out of 10,000.
The above post, entitled One Big Old Cannon was no different. And the comments never fail to highlight the wide range of actual knowledge from most of the commentariat.
As this one did. Having some wee familiarity with the topic, courtesy of Uncle Sam, I also chimed in, as I've seen me do a time or three around the 'net.
SurlyNovember 14, 2023 at 6:44 AM
I think it is a M114 155 mm howitzer.
So far, so good. No harm, no foul.
Is that an oil slick under the left tire? Did it have an oil lube system?
ReplyIt's likely water from swabbing out the breech with a big wet sponge after each round was fired, so the next powder charge didn't hit a flaming ember and detonate prematurely.
When you spin the gun to lay on a new azimuth, as they're doing here, the breech rotates too, and the puddle is now on one side or the other, rather than its former location dead center behind the gun.
Still doing just fine.
Enter Anonymous Problem Child.
AnonymousNovember 14, 2023 at 9:25 AMDat's a 155, 100# shell came on pallet of 8 thats one of them on the ground could lob the round 25miles supposed to have crew of 7 , I never had more than 4 we were air mobile under the belly of a chinock until they decided too many came back down and we had to wait for the jolly green. Ah 20yrs old, all the ammo you could shoot warm beer free marlboros and $89 a month with another $25 thrown in for combat.
Natzsofast, Guido.
Um, not so much.
Max range on The Pig was 16K yards, or a shade over 9 miles.
The only way you could fire a shell from one and have it go 25 miles would be as the belly gun on the Space Shuttle.
The gun also weighs over 12,000 pounds, even stripped for combat, and the max payload on the Jolly Green was 6000 pounds, and the max takeoff weight was only 9000 pounds above the empty weight, and that's before we talk about air density 10° above the equator, worse at altitude, so no Jolly Green was picking up Pigs anywhere in 'Nam, ever.
The Sh*thook A and B models could only pull 10,000 pounds stripped, which is more than the Jolly Green, not less, and they could only lift 7,000-8,000 pounds in-country, so no one was lifting Pigs in 'Nam with those either.
They couldn't even try it until the D model was introduced, which didn't happen until '79. Which is 6 years after we pulled out of Vietnam, and 4 years before it went all-commie from the Delta to the Chinese border.
If you yanked a lanyard in 'Nam, you should know the difference between an 105mm M-101, and a 155mm M-144.
Starting with the fact that the little 105mm howitzers, unlike their big brothers, only weigh about 5,000 pounds, and are the only guns any helicopter could pick up from 1965-1973. Let alone carrying another 1000 pounds of cannon-cockers inside the bird.
Some of us have done this for real, and in places other than Call Of Duty.
I'm not saying you didn't, but if you did, it's time for a check-up.
Your memory is shot.
But then, you'd be in your 70s now, so that's par for the course, and something we all have to look forward to.
Butthurt Alert! Now it's on like Donkey Kong. I insulted Doofus, and apparently also his Daddy Doofus, and shat upon someone's cherished childhood memories.
AnonymousNovember 19, 2023 at 6:48 AMAesop. My WW II father was in artillery, 155s was all his battalion had, besides the 50's to protect them. Decorated by Patton twice, DeGaulle, Eisenhower, and Bradley. He said they could lay'em in at 25 miles all day and all night. Just like he did at Mannheim and many other places. He said they just added an small booster powder charge that provided the extra distance. Call him a liar if you want,,, be glad you don't know him if you do,,, Mr authority on all that is.
Have it your way, Mr. Butthurt. CW decided to wipe my last reply out today. I'm not surprised. His house, his rules.
My house, my rules. So here's the reply, and with pictures instead of just hot links:
Anonymous Fairytaler:
Your father might possibly have been referring to the M1 155mm "Long Tom" guns,
not the 155mm howitzers,
which latter is the one in the picture heading this post, the details on which I was intimately trained, as we didn't retire that relic until after my military service ended.
And that bigger weapon (the WW2/Korea M1 gun) weighed 30,000 pounds, never was deployed in Vietnam, and had a maximum range of 14 miles (23km), giving 6 more miles of range from three times the howitzer's muzzle velocity, which is why the tubes only lasted about 1500 rounds.
He'd still come up 11 miles short.
We also had the M1 8-inch (203mm) gun in WW2, which could fire out to 35,635yds, which at 20.2 miles, while the longest range on any US artillery in WW2, is still well short of "25 miles" range.
For anything farther than that, you'd need the 16" guns of an Iowa-class battleship:
For the record, those guns were actually used in WW2 and Vietnam, but no one ever delivered a battleship by helicopter anywhere either.
So, in order:
1) The US never deployed any field artillery of 155mm size that could crank rounds out to 25 miles range, at least not any time prior to 2010;
2) none of the artillery of that size were ever able to be lifted by any helicopter in existence before 1979, long after Vietnam was a distant memory;
3) no such weapon with that range capability existed, in WWII, Vietnam, or frankly, probably ever, anywhere, in any army that ever existed, prior to the improvements in ammunition (which require literal rocket propulsion) of only the last 15 years or so.
I'm sorry if your recollections and/or your father's tales are factually and demonstrably impossible, but that's how reality works. If your recollections of your father's tales are accurate, then yes, he lied to you. You were there, and I wasn't, so I can't say for certain which it is. I suspect he was merely pulling your leg.
But no one ever got an 180% increase in howitzer range by dropping in any "small booster charge". The powder charge to get to 9 miles on the M114 is over 2' long.
So you'd need another two charges to get that increase, which
a) wouldn't fit inside the breech to begin with, and
b) would blow the piece to hell on the first try, probably maiming or killing anyone on the gun.
That's actually a bigger whopper than anyone lifting M114s with a helicopter before the 1980s.
Maybe these were Magic Booster Charges. Maybe the laws of physics didn't apply on your father's artillery piece.
And maybe your bluff and bluster in light of actual realities are simply pointless, sad, and unseemly in public, despite the fervency of your familial bonds.
If you have any actual link to the type and specifications of the imaginary artillery in question, kindly post it, and prove your contentions.
Failing that, kindly spare me your ire and gas after spouting fish stories that never happened, and inarguably never could have.
This is CW's blog. We're guests here. I simply corrected a factual error from an anonymous poster. Instead of taking this so personally, I ask you to kindly just let it drop, rather than getting me so invested in this I make you the topic on mine. (Too late!)
P.S.: I hope someone else already clued you in about the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. It's not my job to stomp on all the balloons from your childhood.
_______________________________
IOW, Butthurt Bullshitter, don't get so invested in your own line of b.s. that you end up naked, on the internet, in front of the whole planet, trying to explain exactly how your shit doesn't stink.
It won't work, and you look and sound ridiculous. No wonder you post Anonymously.
But the original offer stands, BB. Post a link to your Magical Unicorn 155mm artillery piece. Put up, or shut up.
And BTW, if anyone thinks I shouldn't be kicking retarded kids this hard, someone should stop dropping them in the road right in front of me. On a kicking tee.
Because I can drop 'em on target 25 miles out, all day long.
Just saying.
- Authority On All That Is
Definitely appears to be.
Quite so.
"The Pig".
Klunky, heavy, solid, reliable, ugly-as-sin p.o.s., but it got the job done.