[hankbrown]

I am so ignorant! What exactly is mortar fire? Guns, bombs, missiles?

[mhking]

I am so ignorant! What exactly is mortar fire? Guns, bombs, missiles?

Great big guns and bombs.

[Dog]

Mortars are tubes you drop a charge into and it flys to its target.....you shot it pretty much straight up and toward a chosen target.

[DCPatriot]

I think mortars are the very short wide barreled tube that the operators drop the charge down the "pipe" (about 2 ft long)and are limited by distance but can be adjusted to find the intended target.

[TADSLOS]

What exactly is mortar fire?

High Angle Hell.

Chinese version of an 82mm mortar.

[GO65]

The noun "mortar" has 3 senses in WordNet.

1. mortar, howitzer, trench mortar -- (a muzzle-loading high-angle gun with a short barrel that fires shells at high elevations for a short range)

2. mortar -- (used as a bond in masonry or for covering a wall)

3. mortar -- (a bowl-shaped vessel in which substances can be ground and mixed with a pestle)


I'd guess that definition #1 applies here.

[Prodigal Son]

What exactly is mortar fire?

Hah! You are lucky because an 11 Charlie lurks this thread. An 11 Charlie is a military occupation specialty that specifically concentrates on the employment of mortars. It is a subset within the infantry MOS.

A mortar is actually named the same as a pharmacist's mortar because the old mortars looked exactly like a pharmacist's mortar- a short squat tube. Today, the tubes are a bit longer but the principle is still the same.

The way a mortar works is you have a tube of some sort set up at an angle of say 45 degrees or greater- or 0800 mils or greater in mortar man speak. The tube has a firing pin in the bottom (but doesn't have to). The mortar round is like a big fat bullet- it has a primer at the bottom. You drop the mortar round down the tube where it lands on the firing pin, setting off the primer which sets of the propellent charge. The expanding gases from that charge force the round out of the tube at a high rate of speed.

Because the tube is set at such a high angle, the mortar is considered an indirect fire weapon. Mortar fire is commonly called High Angle Hell because of this. A mortar is a good anti-troop weapon and is good to suppress armor but not so much to destroy it. More to make them button up and leave than anything else. But repelling infantry or light vehicle attacks, illuminating an area (mortar illumination is the brightest on the battlefield), laying smoke screens, attacking bunkers etc- all standard missions for the mortar. They are also good at hitting the backsides of hillsides (which is more of a problem for artillery) because of the high angle of fire.

They come in various sizes- 60mm, 81mm, 107mm (or 4.2 inch commonly called Four Deuce) and the new 120mm. The larger mortars have an effective kill radius of about 35-40 meters and a range of around 7 kilometers. The two smaller ones can be carried on the backs of infantrymen, the two larger ones are two heavy for that and must therefore be carried on a truck or tracked vehicle.

Mortars are controlled by FOs (Forward Observers) who call in the fire missions to the mortar platoon and adjust the rounds thereafter. Even though it seems like lobbing a shell at a high angle is sort of willy nilly, mortars can be surprising accurate when employed skillfully.

Terrorists like mortars because they are simple to use and it keeps them far enough from the target that they can run afterwards. The IRA has reduced the home made mortar to a science.

Hope that helps.

[Real Cynic No More]

Mortar Fire is where a terrorist makes some bricks out of clay and straw, hence the name "mortar". They then take a blowtorch and heat the bricks extremely hot til the straw catches fire. Hence the word "fire". Then they take these burning bricks, load them into wheelbarrows, and dump them in a pile in front of a building they wish to burn down.