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To: CatoRenasci
Ouch!
Atomic Annie still sits in her 'berth' at the on post museum last I knew.
I was on pass for a few hours and went out to wander the grounds of the museum.
I looked over my shoulders and saw no-one arund, so I stepped over the plastic chain and ran my hand down the carraige.
After drooling for a few seconds, I heard a chuckle behind me.
Two brass collars were standing there eyeballing me.
They asked me what it was like to be that close to the old howitzer.

I gave them my "MMMm Power!" statement.

My home unit had a problem with out of safe shots one fine day, FDC kept giving us data, and couldn't figure out why the heck we were out.
Seems the Range FO was reading the wrong data off to us.
(We weren't getting data from our FO's, they were out doing 'real' training that day. Figures.)

Once we got back in the groove, we had a bunch of rounds turn dud on us.
Bad fuzes, all made in 1950's or so.
So we had to stop, count fuzes, find lot numbers, and then switch them out.
Meanwhile, my guncrew and I are asking the section chief, "Chief, we goin' to jail yet?"

He told us of horror stories from a range in connecticut. Seems the round hit a bridge right after the post CO drove over the bridge.
I always chalked that story as a soldier story.
'Course, there was one guy I know who got his right kneee in the way of the breech of the M119A1 while it was firing. He went flying for about 10 or more feet outside the trails.

I also remember them having us load and fire a Do Not Load mission.
I'm surprised that we didn't get ushered into the basement suite at Leavenworth.
That was 1998, and our new Cap was having us do 24 hour continuous operations without sleep for three days straight. And, that was the last time we did 24 hour ops.

But, NOTHING beats what you mentioned.
Landing something in Lawton at the corner of Sheridan and Gore is impressive.
Just not in the way anyone wants to be impressive at!

I was glad quite a few times that I wasn't in charge of anything like that.
809 posted on 07/22/2003 12:25:59 PM PDT by Darksheare ("I didn't say it wouldn't burn, I said it wouldn't hurt.")
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Live CentCom briefing NOW!!! Uday's and Qusay's deaths ARE CONFIRMED!!!!!!!!
816 posted on 07/22/2003 12:36:24 PM PDT by steveegg (Uday and Qusay are now reunited with their daddy; confirmation that Saddam is also there pending)
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To: Darksheare
Strange you would have more than one round out of safe. At Sill, when you go out on a shoot (at least back in the '60s and '70s), the safety officer computes the safety diagram, where you can shoot and where you can't. That's in the FDC, and when coordinates come in that are out of safe, you can't fire them. Moreover, you would also have parameters for your sights, deflection and elevation out of which you could not shoot. One round out of safe, and that part of the range shuts down until the situation is dealt with. We had a number of out of safe incidents when I was at Sill, the worst was a NG battalion that was over on the East Range. They fired a battalion two (supposedly surveyed in, no adjusting fire) 3200 mils out of safe (yeah, 180 degrees). Thank God the rounds landed in the West Range after overflying the Post. The battalion commander was relieved, as were at least half a dozen other officers, including the shoot safety officer and the East Range safety officer for the day.
829 posted on 07/22/2003 12:53:27 PM PDT by CatoRenasci (Ceterum Censeo [Gallia][Germania][Arabia] Esse Delendam --- Select One or More as needed)
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