Still Hits Minute-Of-City, Da?

 

Word to your mother: Video Guy nails it out of the park.

Back in the day, I owned (on behalf of the Bn CO) not one, but two howitzers.

A 155mm M198 (the far heavier Army p.o.s hand-me-down, and exact predecessor of the much lighter and handier M777), and a literally ancient 105mm M101A1. Minted in 1940. (The Marines never throw anything away. They still have Civil War bayonets and Spanish-American War mess kits in pallet boxes at MCLB Barstow, to a metaphysical certainty, because "This stuff might come in handy some day!" I Sh*t Thee Not, my first issued helmet - in the Fleet -was a WWII steel pot with VN-era camo leaf pattern cover, my flak vest was a Korean War-era turtle-plate hand-me-down, and I carried an M-16A1. In 1984. Yes, really.)

Which light howitzer two - yes two - guys could pick up, and run down the road with like a Chinaman's rickshaw, place wherever it was needed, and send such packets of pure hatred as beehive AP rounds, which its bigger brothers could not do.

More to the point, it could be picked up by anything in the air wing helo inventory, including a decent UH-1, as long as it wasn't at 120°F. and 8,000 ft. altitude, etc.

It was also less manpower intensive, needing just 5-6 guys, instead of 10-11, and could be pulled around by anything down to and including the venerable M151 Jeep.

It could also shoot shorter ranges, unlike the M198, which was literally useless on the Grenada Adventure by the 22nd MAU, so they left them on the ships, and turned Hotel Battery 3/10 into Provisional Rifle Company Hotel for that invasion.

"Domine, Domine!: You are now grunts again. Get out of your racks and grab your packs." - H 3/10 1st sergeant.

And my personal bucket list fave, I got to use mine to play Special Percussion for a July 3rd concert including full orchestra, in a performance of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, and then use it the next day for the 21-gun salute to the nation at noon the following day.

So I liked my little toy a lot more than the bigger one.

But I digress.

What that has to do with howitzer barrel life is this:

Up on Ye Solid Steel Breechblock of said nifty little howitzer, between the brass leveling points for the gunner's quadrant, were the manufacturing marks, serial number, and the dates my particular toy, the one I signed for ownership and responsibility of, had been rebarrelled.

In the case of mine, it was, IIRC, November of 1943, January of 1951, and October of 1969.

Which means my predecessors had shot the barrel of it out first on Guadalcanal, then again at the Frozen Chosin, and yet again during Tet '68 in Vietnam, before it was pulled out of storage and re-issued to me in the early 1980s, now and still sporting barrel #4. 

Because as Good Marines, they had dutifully sent it back for depot maintenance and rebarrelling at their earliest convenience. (And yes, I would have killed to see the logbooks and unit diaries of the military actions to which that old warhorse had been invited. Alas, I never did. But clearly, it didn't get shot out in practice at 29 Palms.)

Point being, howitzer barrels have a service life, like anything else in the military.

So is the video guy correct? Beyond all doubt.

Does that matter for Russia?

Probably not so much. (Somebody re-read those last two lines - slowly, he's not very bright -to The Canuskistani Never-Served Except As A Busboy World's Foremost Expert, who always misses that stuff, because he can't read, and he'll probably just make something up. Again.) They're already only shooting minute of city anyways, so it's academic if they even give a flying f**k, but it may become problematic for a few privates if they ever need something like real accuracy in a danger-close mission near their own troops. But if this means Vlad's monkeys won't hit what they're aiming at, but might own-goal grease a few more Ivans from sloppiness, I say, let 'em go at it.

Maybe, with any luck, they'll skip the barrel stress-test inspections too, and do some destructive testing, to include a few Russian gun bunnies who'll suddenly become pink mist when a breech blows out during a fire mission.

It would matter to the Ukes, and make the sting of their fire missions all the harsher, as they keep achieving one-hit kills on APCs and tanks with GPS- and laser-guided munitions, while Vlad's guys will have trouble hitting the right city block, even after expending an entire day's basic load.

Which is why that 10:1 disparity in who's shooting what matters less in reality than it does to certain keyboard commandos.

War is all Hell.