175mm cannon

[BLUEHAWK]

Any among us here ever been close by or actually pulled the string or crewed on firing a 175mm cannon?

Lordy, that's a large weapon...

How long and big around (in layman's terms, say, relative to a basketball) is the "bullet" ?

What is its size and effectiveness/explosive-destructive power compared with the Naval sixteen inchers?

How far will it travel (maximum)?

What purpose does it serve in an arsenal? i.e. what would be its most ideal function and how many of them would a battery need?

How it the world do ya haul it around, up mountainsides and sandbox dunes or whatnot?

[Bill Farnie]

Lost my hearing for a few days while at FSB Bastogne when I walked by a self-propelled 175 when it had a fire mission.

[82Rigger]

Mike,

I've never been around artillery except to rig it for air drop, but Col Murph or a couple of arty folks in here should be able to answer some of your questions.

In the meantime, your questions aroused my curiosity so I looked up some of the specs.
The following are my conversions from metric:

Diameter of HE round: 175mm or 6.9 inches (a dollar bill is 6 inches long)

Range of HE round: 30+ Km or 18.6 + miles

Weight of HE round: 66.6 Kg or 146.8 pounds

Muzzle velocity: 914 meters per second or 2998 feet per second.

Couldn't find any info on the length of the projectile, but in the last pic below it looks to be around 3 feet long.

Here is a picture of an M107 self propelled vehicle as used in Vietnam:

[82Rigger]

Here is a pic of an Israeli soldier humping a 175 HE round:

[BLUEHAWK]

Jeez Rigger!

No man could be sitting IN that vehicle when it fired could they possibly!!!

Also, it looks to have outriggers at the back to help with recoil?

[Tamaroa]

WOW!!!!

As a deck ape on the Tam, I served as the hotshell man of a 3"/50. Each shell (fixed ammo) weighed about 33 pounds and I'd guess it was about 30 inches long.

Blue I'm guessing that that thing was probably designed something like ours. the 3 inchers were recoiless rifles. In other words, when the shell was fired, the breech block dropped emitting a huge sheet of flame out the rear of the barrel off setting the explosive force that propelled the projectile. We had no springs, or hydraulics. We had nothing to stop a recoil. The gun was just bolted to the deck and the breech block dropping was enough to counteract the force, hence no recoil.

Somebody jump in here if i'm wrong, please.

Bill

[catman]

The thing you call an outrigger is known as a spade. Used to hold the piece in place. Even with the large springs, recoil is a bitch. Usually there are at least three people on the vehicle when it fires.

Never trained with the .175's they were all given to the middle eastern countries before I entered service. Have read much about them but can't remember now. Seems they packed a hell of a lot of propellant.

Pho127, Col Murph or some of those guys could tell you more.

Trav

[Desdichado]

Are they a cannon or a gun? Or is there a difference; I forget.

I heard a bunch of railway trains pass overhead one time. Turned out to be 16 inchers from offshore. Holy mother of God but I'm glad I wasn't on the other end of that - or the front end either! I wonder what the hearing loss rate is for Battleship men.

[catman]

The 175 is a gun. A gun shoots a flatter trajectory than a howitzer. Think of a gun in relation to a pitcher throwing a fast ball and a howitzer as throwing a pumpkin. Although a howitzer can fire "straight" for most missions the round goes almost as high as is does far. A tank is a gun (read rifle, flat shooting).

For you sports fans, think of taking a 3-point shot in basketball, sure you can hit the rim if you throw it hard, but you are much more accurate if you loft it.

This is not "scripture" but it is the basic idea of how artillery works.

Trav

[Desdichado]

Yeah, I know about guns and howitzers; I was just trying to remember where "cannon" fit in. I guess all artillery are cannon.

As for recoilless weapons, they're designed to direct the same amount of energy backwards through clever venting as forwards, thus eliminating recoil. Pretty clever unless you're standing behind it. Apparently the very first one was mounted on airplane and accomplished the same thing by firing a shell forwards and a shell backwards at the same time. How'd ya like to be HIS wingman? :ek: