Posted on 04/05/2007 7:52:30 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
In speaking of artillery (as opposed to small arms) ‘caliber’ has a different meaning than the ‘bore diameter’: it is the number of times the gun tube (past the chamber) is the length of the bore. To put it in simple terms, think of a 6” (155mm) gun or howitzer (guns are typically longer tubes than howitzers and fire a flatter trajectory to a longer range and tend to have fairly small deflection probable errors and large range probable errors - howitzers fire a higher trajectory a shorter distance (good for going over obstacles) and tend to have greater deflection probable errors, but smaller range probable errors, but back to our 6” gun/howitzer...) A 6” howizter with a 25 caliber tube will have a tube that is 12.5 feet long, a 6” gun with a 52 caliber tube will have a 26 foot long tube.
155mmx52calibers=8060mm [8m] barrel length
M110A2 8” SP ping! I was in the 7/9 FA for 5 yrs, a reserve unit headquartered in Pompano Bch, FL, now deactivated. Our gunners and FDCs were as good as anybody’s on active duty. We shot every other month, about 5 times a year, with 2 weeks at Camp Blanding every summer.
Our Bde, the 227 FA Bde, had 5 bns; 2 of Puerto Rico NG 105s, 2 bns of FLANG 155 SP (the Gator Guns, 1/116 and 2/116, good ole boys almost to a man) and us, 7/9 FA.
A kid coming off active duty in ‘86 told me he thought the Guard and Reserves shot more often than the Regulars. We had lots of money for training and ammo then too, the Reagan years and all, plus we were a nuke capable unit. I knew two captains in that unit that that both went on to make general over the years.
I always loved to watch a Bde TOT mission, specially at night, pop, pop, pop from the 105s, boom, boom, boom from the 155s and WHAM, WHAM, WHAM from the 8”s, better’n fireworks any day!
Dang!
I thought this post was going to be about the Kasmir border shooting competiton that ignites from time to time!
They most certainly do. And one of the best wheeled APC platforms.
Semper Fi.
Google 152mm artillery, would you like to know more? :)
IIRC, that's old technology.
From the 1970s.
Not that it wasn't offered, and proven, to the US DoD at the time.
By that crazy Canadian physics genius that the Mossad eventually allegedly offed for helping Saddam build a "super" gun.
I believe the name of his long defunct company was "Space Industries". Probably because the super gun idea was originally intended to launch satellites. Artillery was an off shoot of that.
I believe the South Africans came up with a cooler burning propellant that lengthens barrel life, ie can take more firings until rebore.
Nothing like an 8" howitzer. When I was in R&D at Sill, working on the cannon launched guided projectile (copperhead) and the designators for it, the motivating idea was said originally to have been combine the accuracy of a well-registered 8" howitzer with a moving target.... I have actually seen demonstration batteries put an 8" inert round in a 1 m by 1 m window at 10k (admittedly with a fresh met, 1st order survey, absolutely accurate powder lot information and temperature and a fresh registration, but still....). An old brownshoe guy told me that in the '40s they put them into the blockhouse on Signal Mtn.
Cooler burning = less energy. That’s what they had to use in Long Bertha in 1918 and still burned the 150+ caliber barrels like candles. There is only so much playing with the propellant grain shape one can do, while maintaining ballistic uniformity.
“The Denel system, which is actually bi-modular, won hands down although bi-modular was less than ideal. The reason for this is a very clever design that puts cooler burning propellant gas against the barrel wall with hotter inside it, in consequence barrel life went thru the roof, for ever in arty terms, so they didn’t need to buy so many barrels.”
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