Posted on 06/12/2004 7:52:58 PM PDT by Cannoneer No. 4
Ceremonial artillery is a precise endeavor
I think that at every arrival and departure points of Ronald Reagan's remains during his funeral week there was a 21-gun salute fired by either Army or Marine gunners.
When I was a battery commander in 3d Armored Division in Germany, my battery was the division's salute battery. We did a number of salutes for V Corps Headquarters, so we might have been the salute battery for the whole corps, too.
My battalion was equipped with M109A3, self-propelled, 155mm howitzers.
Because salutes fire blank rounds (duh!) separate loading ammunition - the propellant and the projectile are separate - cannot be used. With no projectile, all firing bags of propellant in the M109-series guns would do is shoot a mass of flame out the muzzle. Not only is this dangerous to everyone around, it endangers the crew and wreaks havoc on the interior of the barrel.
Salute rounds are brass cannisters with a special charge inside designed to make a loud noise, a bright flash and produce lots of white smoke (tactical artillery ammunition is practically flashless and smokeless).
In Germany, my battery was assigned four 75mm pack howitzers to fire salutes. These date from 1927. Pack artillery, designed to be broken down and carried on muleback, was first used by the US Army in the 1830s. In WW II the 75mm pack was used by Army mountain and airborne units and Marines. It was towed by a jeep.
These guns haven't been manufactured in decades, so getting spare parts for them was always a challenge! My mechanics were very creative in keeping them ready.
Accurate counting is everything in firing salutes properly. Different persons being honored take different numbers of rounds fired. Heads of state get 21 rounds, lesser lights get fewer, according to a protocol worked out over about 200 years.
Of course, salute firing was an extra duty for my battery. We always had to perform our regular mission. Although my battery was the salute battery, manning the four pack howitzers required only a fraction of the soldiers under my command:
On each gun:
– a chief of section who was overall responsible for the gun and his gun's firing. [chief of the piece on a Napoleon]
– a gunner, whose job was the fire the cannon by pulling the lanyard, which released the firing pin to set off the round. This was his only duty once the salute began. [hey, that's MY job]
– a number one cannoneer, who job was to load each round into the cannon's breech. He also had no other duties when the firing began.
Other personnel:
– a chief of battery, a staff sergeant or a sergeant first class, who supervised the firing line and ensured the equipment and soldiers were ready for each salute. He also trained the whole team.
– an officer in charge (my XO, not me) who exercised actual command of the salute battery when performing ceremonies. (Although the artillery battery I commanded had salute battery duties, I assigned the salute sections to be commanded by my XO.)
– a smart NCO to count the rounds fired. For a 21-gun salute (which we never fired) the counter would signal the end is near by about-facing at round 19 and loudly announcing,"Nineteen!" to the chief of battery. On the next round the chief of battery faces about and announces, "Twenty!" This signals the XO to order one more round fired.
– a timer, equipped with a stopwatch, whose job was to ensure the correct interval between rounds was maintained - five seconds for funerals (we never did a funeral) and three seconds for all other occasions. After each round, the timer called, "One, two, three!" and on the word, "three," the XO signaled the next gun to fire.
We also took along several artillery and automotive mechanics who hopefully would have nothing to do. Alas, they were always employed.
Before the salute began, each chief ensured his gun and crew were ready, then faced the XO and raised his right hand straight up. When all guns signaled ready the XO raised his arm likewise. This signaled the ceremony commander (aka, "commander of troops", COT) that the battery was ready.
During the ceremony, the COT would present the ceremony's troops to the honoree by rendering a hand salute. When the XO saw the COT's hand approach his headgear, he would drop his arm at gun number one, which was the gun farthest to the XO's right. The section chief would drop his arm and the gunner would fire the gun. (In actuality, we just had the gunner fire when he saw the XO drop his arm.) Once the gun was reloaded and ready, the section chief would assume the raised-arm position, signaling the XO the gun was again ready.
With three-second intervals, each section had 12 seconds to reload, recock and assume the ready position that visually informed the XO gun in action. For a well-trained crew, 12 seconds is plenty of time to do that and for the section chief ensure all is proper. But when something on the gun broke during the firing sequence, which happened with distressing frequency, the pucker factor went up real fast. The section chief's race against the clock was relentless because the precision of the interval had to be kept!
If the chief decided the gun was out of action, he instantly would order all the crew, including himself, to kneel on one knee, facing the XO, and fold their arms across their chests. The chief of battery, who continually scanned the line, would notice and announce to the XO, "Gun One [or two, three, four] out of action!" the XO would know to skip it and proceed immediately to the next gun.
So each section knew he didn't really have 12 seconds to get ready to fire, they really had only nine. So the crews were very busy. There was one salute we fired with four guns beginning and two guns ending! It was, shall we say, exciting!
Occasionally the gunner would pull the lanyard and the round would not fire. Rare, but it did happen. (The ammo was as old as the guns.) When that happened we told the gunner, who would realize the misfire first, instantly to announce loudly, "Misfire!" The gunner of the next gun would hear and immediately fire with no further command. Three seconds between rounds was all we had!
A misfire always put a gun out of action because misfire procedures required 10 minutes to elapse before the breech could be opened to minimize the chance of a "cookoff" in which the propellant might be burning but not yet exploded. Extracting a misfired round was always very dicey but fortunately they were rare and caused no injuries.
I was especially proud of my salute crews because not one of them was an artilleryman. I assigned mechanics, cooks, supply clerks and other support soldiers to salute-gun duties. They performed magnificently, and at ceremonies the commander of troops and the honoree were always amazed that the salute was not fired by real artillerymen! The only actual artillerymen there were the XO, the chief of battery and the counter.
Not long before my command tour was over, the division-artillery commander reassigned salute duties to another unit on his own kaserne in Hanau. Since we were stationed near Giessen, 55 kilometers away from division headquarters in Frankfurt, the move made a lot of sense, and frankly, we shed no tears to give the salute duties away.
(Excerpt) Read more at donaldsensing.com ...
You heard correct. If you get RC, you're lucky. Last year, we buried my uncle, an ADA orangeleg from WW2, and the honor guard was VFW members almost as old as he was. Taped Taps, rounds from Garands with blank adapters. Still brought tears to my eyes.
Our battery had the morning salute detail for one summer camp. A 75mm pack howitzer on a grassy hill overlooking camp HQ.
We knew our gunbunnies were getting lazy, so some unknown individual stuffed a couple of pillows about halfway up the tube. I didn't see it happen, but it looked like a small snowfall on the side of the hill. After that, not pounding the tube as the first action risked an Article 15.
When I am not available, one of the members uses the digital trumpet. As he says, the commander orders the bugler to "sound Taps", not "play Taps". The other day for Memorial Day we went round to a dozen cemeteries and town halls. The commander wanted me to play "echo" trumpet to the digital trumpet. Talk about pressure. There I was through out the day playing behind a computerized recording of probably the best rendition of Taps the designers could find. But it worked out okay.
And what did the police say?
RedLeg Bump
Dang, I wish I knew that. I would have zoomed up to the army barracks here in Hawaii.
Big noes, little ones...they're all amazing. After dinosaurs...Muttly became fixated on howitzers...and never looked back.
Glad about it, too !
ones. but their noes are cute too.
BTTT
Bump!
I was closely watching several of the 21 gun salutes to Pres. Reagan and I noticed that the 3rd Gun in line was not firing by the ripples, were they holding one gun in reserve or what was the deal?
Only on Free republic.
BTW do you how many cranks it takes for a Gatling gun to keep a complete rotation of its barrels?
You are correct about the smoke (Chief of Smoke (Platoon SGT)) announcing "Gun X stand by fire" He was announcing what we in the proffesion refer to as fire commands.
All 50 States.
Subsequently, the four six-pounders of the Letcher Battery (guns which served throughout the Late Unpleasantness and have been at the Institute since the 1870s) were brought back to firing condition and now they are sometimes used to render salutes, although the timing is different. It takes close to a minute for a very well trained crew to reload a muzzle-loading six-pounder, even under optimal conditions.
Fascinating thread. Thanks for the info, Cannoneer No. 4.
Some in the media have been questioning whether we still need these kinds of tributes. I think that this is what keeps our military from being a conquering army -- it's willingness to subordinate itself to the people instead of the people being ruled by our military.
It is the precision and training put into honorary duties for civilian authorities that distinguishes our military from conquering armies. The pomp and circumstance that we just saw last week is proof of that (or am I reading too much into it?).
-PJ
Is one permanently assigned to bands or is a band a routine assignment interspersed between other duty assignments? Are members constantly being rotated in and out of bands or is the membership fairly stable over a period of time?
I have the same type of question related to the choral groups.
All of the military participation in the funeral activities was just magnificent ... the bands and choral groups, the honor guards, and all, up to and including the young man who held the umbrella for Mrs. Reagan on Friday ... and Major General Jackman, who escorted Mrs. Reagan was just wonderful.
Btw, in reference to your tag line, I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that it will NEVER again be safe to vote Democrat.
This is slightly off topic, but not worth a separate post.
When the flag was presented to Mrs. Reagan was the officer's
address to her scripted? Is it the same for all military funerals, or did he address her personally? (If its scripted what does the officer say?)
Bump!
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