240mm artillery very slow - bug?

[Lt Belenko]

There are a certain few who seem to feel driving Kettler from these forums is a worthwhile endeavour. However the majority of what he adds to these forums is actually of value and very few other people research as exhaustively. You of course, as with any posters contribution here, feel that somethings should be taken with a pinch of salt.*

So there you go. Enjoy the forums there is loads of info. And do not forget the search function for the archives as a lot of historic info was first discussed in the CMx1 forums.

* if you are non-native English "a pinch of salt" means evaluate as to true worth/treat with caution. It helps sometimes to know where people are from so you avoid the error of believing colloquial English will be understood. JonS is incidentally nowhere near Venus but actually in New Zealand.

+1.

And with regards to your salt comment: my diagnosis of high blood pressure puts me on a low sodium diet. :mad:

[Wicky]

... the majority of what he adds to these forums is actually of value and very few other people research as exhaustively....

Right

I checked with highly sensitive contacts, and there WAS a mini nuke used against Syria. The nuclear detonation WAS detected by our satellites, and U.S. Intelligence believes the 1000-2000 lb class penetrating munition contained two Davy Crockett warheads. ...

Regards,

John Kettler

[dieseltaylor]

Wicky - Do you know I never saw that post - perhaps I am pickier on what I read!

: )

[dieseltaylor]

It is a lengthy read on Google Books but I was pleasantly surprised to find something impressive about Patton, and something not so good about umpires:

Patton, promoted to major general in April 1941. was frustrated by the Air Corps* refusal to purchase off-the- shelf light aircraft as he had recommended. He bought his own light plane, a Stinson Voyager, and acquired his pilot’s license. He flew it in both the Tennessee and Louisiana maneuvers. The success of the 2d Armored Division in those maneuvers heightened the impact made by a very senior officer controlling an armored division from the air.

The tactical work by Morgan’s flight for the 1st Cavalry Division and later Third Army proved even more arresting. Officers in light planes directing fire for field artillery battalions and conducting reconnaissance missions for higher headquarters proved so beneficial to Third Army that midway through the Louisiana maneuvers the umpires barred Morgan’s pilots from flying such missions. Their presence, ruled the umpires, gave an unfair advantage to Third Army.

In the process the light planes solidified the support of senior officers like Generals Krueger and Patton and Krueger's new chief of staff, the recently promoted Colonel Eisenhower, and gained new adherents such as the commander of the 1st Cavalry Division, Maj. Gen. Innis P. Swift, and his chief of stall, Col. Joseph M. Swing. Swift added the appellation “grasshopper” to light-plane lore when he saw a J-3 with Wann at the controls bouncing to a halt after landing on a stretch of unprepared desert near Fort Bliss. Thereafter the demonstration flight of light planes became the “Grasshopper Squadron,” and grasshopper became a synonym for light aircraft during World War II.

[womble]

DT, that passage/series of events is a dire indictment of the "brass" commanding the Americans at whatever period that was. Surely the utility of aerial observation had been proven in the first world war, to the extent that great effort and treasure was expended in developing fighter forces from the original "armed scouts" to permit the observer planes of the superior side to fly unmolested. Or did the advent of effective A2G change the emphasis on the fighter so much that the observational use was forgotten?

[Wicky]

MIlitary aerial reccie was 'forgotten' between the wars though it continued through commercial use for mapping / resource surveying. It was picked up and developed by maverick Aussie Sidney Cotton in the early years of ww2 who saw that slow moving & low flying Blenheim/Lysander reccie/spotting aircraft were vulnerable and pushed for higher faster aircraft i.e spits & mossies equiped with better cameras before his units were gobbled up by the RAF and interservice interpretation organisation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Cotton

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Spies-Sky-Secret-Battle-Intelligence/dp/1408703629

Doesn't seem to be much use made early in the second world war of artillery spotting aircraft as there wasn't much to aim at ;-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylorcraft_Auster

[John Kettler]

Wicky,

Since you invoked Sidney Cotton, may I recommend, to anyone interested in aerial recon, Air Spy, by Constance Babington Smith? She found the V1 at Peenemunde.

Re purported nuclear strike, suggest you Google "nuclear strike on syria." I didn't break the story, but I did independently confirm it happened and provided highly detailed military-technical specifics not reported anywhere else.

dieseltaylor,

That was no joke on my part, nor was it some fabrication or lie. Israel is, in fact, associated with multiple nuclear material/nuclear weapon disappearances, not just the U.S., either.

https://sites.google.com/site/davidchasetaylorasylum/the-nuclear-bible/the-9-stolen-nukes

Israel's theft of several hundred pounds of weapons-grade uranium from the U.S.

http://original.antiwar.com/smith-grant/2010/05/09/declassified-gao-report

From the Wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Israel

"The CIA believed that Israel's first bombs may have been made with highly enriched uranium stolen in the mid-1960s from the U.S. Navy nuclear fuel plant operated by the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation, where sloppy material accounting would have masked the theft.[58][59]"

My contacts informed me that Israel managed to steal ~100 Davy Crockett nuclear warheads at some point after the weapon was removed from service in 1971. Further, Israel was detected testing no less than three amped yield (raised from 200 tons to 5-8 KT) in the Negev. I got this information after the item below was published.

http://jhaines6.wordpress.com/2013/01/06/presstv-us-israel-alliance-and-nuclear-follies-important-info-i-hope-you-will-inform-yourselves-j/

Author Gordon Duff is ex-Army Intel himself and is senior editor at VeteransToday, originally started as an online hangout for spooks and special operators.

(Fair Use)

"In 1978, US Army teams visiting Israel were shown American built “Davey Crockett” shoulder fired nuclear weapons. These weapons had been taken out of service by NATO and “disappeared.”

(Fair Use)

The story's a little off in that the Davy Crockett can't be shoulder fired. Too heavy. It's fired from a jeep or tripod.

VO

"We now return to our interrupted M1 240mm Howitzer discussion."

So, other than various highly OT swipes taken against me, do we have a definitive answer on which numbers are right for the 100% zone for the 240? I'd really like to know. If anyone can find a usable account of the use of the 240 against fortified positions, with real shoot details instead of generalities, I'd love to see them.

(leaves for a bit, then returns)

History of the first unit (697th FA Battalion) to employ the M1 240mm Howitzer in combat. Pity it's not on scribd! IWM has the book (for a fee) online.

http://www.merriam-press.com/aninformalhistoryofthe697thfieldartillerybattalion.aspx

An M1 240mm Howitzer of Battry B, 697th FA in Mignano, Italy.

http://pinterest.com/pin/66991113177754742/

Period newspaper confirming the "first to fire" claim and that specifically mentions the use of (Piper) Cub spotter planes! Second article from top left.

http://fultonhistory.com/Newspaper%2017/Dobbs%20Ferry%20NY%20%20Register/Dobbs%20Ferry%20NY%20%20Register%201944-1945/Dobbs%20Ferry%20NY%20%20Register%201944-1945%20-%200258.pdf

Regards,

John Kettler

[JonS]

*wheeee* down the rabbit hole we go!

I wonder when Kettler was in Syria, and how much time he spent there, in order to "independently confirm.".

[Wicky]

Author Gordon Duff is ex-Army Intel himself and is senior editor at VeteransToday, originally started as an online hangout for spooks and special operators.

It's a crackpot anti-Semitic conspiracy and holocaust denial site as you know well.

[sburke]

It's a crackpot anti-Semitic conspiracy and holocaust denial site as you know well.

And you are surprised? Or just confirming.

Geez I keep telling myself not to go anywhere near these threads when he's on a roll....

and what the f**k is that "fair use"? Is that some expected auto protection because it is stated? Like a children's game where you cry timeout or "on base" so you are temporarily removed from accountability?

[John Kettler]

Wicky,

Clearly, you know nothing about all-source analysis. Poring over (in the past) or electronically searching (now) information from newspapers, bulletins, periodicals and more is routinely used as part of the intelligence process. Something as simple as a name change on a military newspaper article can indicate a fundamental power shift in a nation's military.

The information's the thing, and the more diverse the sources (geographically, ethnically, politically, religiously, organizationally), the better the odds of learning the truth. If you want to know what's really going on here, look to the foreign press, not ours. RT routinely covers stories that our media are terrified to mention, never mind cover. During Whitewater, the European press coverage was on the legal issues, the coverups, the murders, the narcotrafficking, not Clinton's cigar and what he did with it.

The mere fact someone's policies and beliefs are repellent to some, does not, ipso facto, invalidate the information itself, particularly when that information is independently confirmed, to one degree or another, by separate accounts. That's exactly what I did. If you wish to have a rational discussion on this matter, I'll happily resume the exchange of views on the GDF. I think you've tied up altogether too much thread space on your very OT campaign against me.

sburke,

I'm using small portions of copyrighted work, in this case noncommercially, for the purposes of commentary and scholarship, both of which are permitted under the Fair Use Doctrine. By doing so, I seek to keep both myself and BFC out of copyright breach trouble.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

Regards,

John Kettler

[JonS]

Ah. I see. He "independently confirmed" it by ... doing a Google search? My, that is quite the special access to elite sources

[sburke]

sburke,

I'm using small portions of copyrighted work, in this case noncommercially, for the purposes of commentary and scholarship, both of which are permitted under the Fair Use Doctrine. By doing so, I seek to keep both myself and BFC out of copyright breach trouble.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

Regards,

John Kettler

Umm and where does it say in there anywhere that stating "fair use" has any impact whatsoever on whether it is actually fair use? Whether or not it is fair use is a legal copyright issue. Stating "fair use" has absolutely no bearing on whether such use actually is legal. But you'd know that if you had actually read what you cited.

[Michael Emrys]

DT, that passage/series of events is a dire indictment of the "brass" commanding the Americans at whatever period that was.

Someone once quipped that a conservative is a person who fervently believes that nothing should ever be done for the first time.

Michael

[Rob Deans]

Rob,

Going back to your original figures, at 18,000 yards, 1 PE = 8 yds in deflection and 36 yds in range. Referring to your gunnery table excerpt, the figures given there show the errors (note plural) eD and eR at that range to be 8 PEd x 36 PEr. That gives 64 yds in deflection and 1296 in range. Thus 64 x 1296 = 82,944 square yards. That's the 100% zone for the gun. I think.

By contrast, in your # 28, you said

"Here is some data that I gained from a US manual...... at a range of 18000 yds the PE for a 240mm howitzer firing this particular ammo (HE...) is 36yds x8yds.....

What this means is that a single weapon firing a given (say 100 rounds for theory sake) mission that is perfectly laid will have a beaten zone that is 8 x 36 = 288yds deep and 8 x8yds = 64 Yds wide....."

Either I'm not properly interpreting the gunnery table, or your figures are off because you misinterpreted the table. Which is it?

Hi there,

The table reads Probable Error for range in the second column and Probable Error for Deflection in the third... This refers to the size of one "Probable Error" at that range, with that ammo. As you can see, different weapons have differing degrees of "consistancy" with the 8 inch howitzer MkI being the most "consistant". There are 64 "probable errors" (8 x8) in a "100% Zone"..... I don't know where you understood the math that indicated that the probbable error for range was mutiplied by itself to be..... (giving the figure of 1296yds)... 8 x 36 =288. If you refer to the diagram I posted, it shows what this looks like on the ground (apply the dimensions of 8 yds for deflection and 36 yds for range to each of these little rectangles. Each of those rectangles will have a certain number of rounds within, with the highest number being within those that are closest to the centre, according to this table

.. I do believe, that you are interpreting the table incorrectly.

Regards,

Rob

[hoolaman]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that show a 25% chance of rounds landing within the centre 4 boxes? Your original table said 11 rounds before a hit to target centre?

So it seems pretty reasonable if you'd gone to the trouble of wheeling up a 240mm howitzer to fire on a hard bunker, that you could spend maybe a day and 10-20 rounds to kill it.

Not precision fire, granted, but pretty plausible.

[JonS]

So it seems pretty reasonable if you'd gone to the trouble of wheeling up a 240mm howitzer to fire on a hard bunker, that you could spend maybe a day and 10-20 rounds to kill it.

Absolutely, but that's not really within the timeframe of a CM mission. It also points up the problem with personal stories - they tend to be along the lines of "so then we wheeled up the 240mm how, and after just 10-20 rounds the bunker was destroyed and the advance continued." What those stories often omit is that it took all day to get the How in position, for the FO to find a suitable OP, and to fire the rounds methodically to reduce the target by which time it was dusk, and so the advance only got underway again the next day. Instead what we're often left with is the impression that the whole thing was over in about 45 minutes.

[John Kettler]

Rob,

Thanks! I get the 64 PE (8 x 8), but could you please explain a) the horizontal and vertical exterior numbering, as well as why the decimal numeric values inside each PE box seem so low, relative to 100? Or do they in fact add up instead to 1?

sburke,

I picked up the practice somewhere along the line, and I deem it wise to clearly demarcate someone else's intellectual property, rather than simply use it without such explicit recognition. Kvetch if you will, but I feel it's a good idea and shall act accordingly. Would other sites extended me the same courtesy, say a lead paragraph and a link, rather than using entire posts from my site and driving up their traffic!

JonS,

The really odd thing is that when you read some of the accounts the M1 240mm Howitzer was a favorite of attacking infantry as a close support weapon. While target effect was certainly impressive, unless we're talking TRP type fire on call, or something like a dedicated battalion in support of, say, a regimental attack, I fail to see how 240mm fire would work in close support. Now intimidation...

Regards,

John Kettler

[Rob Deans]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that show a 25% chance of rounds landing within the centre 4 boxes? Your original table said 11 rounds before a hit to target centre?

So it seems pretty reasonable if you'd gone to the trouble of wheeling up a 240mm howitzer to fire on a hard bunker, that you could spend maybe a day and 10-20 rounds to kill it.

Not precision fire, granted, but pretty plausible.

You are correct as the scenario goes. Some key points about though that may not necessarily relate to shooting at a bunker (depending on it's size).....

The target is 10 yds x 40 yds; and

The fire is delivered while the gun is in line with the long axis of the target (key point in this calculation).

As a point of clarification, the "Target Centre" referred to is not a "a round landing on target centre", but refers to "the number of rounds it will take to achieve a hit when the centre of the 100% zone is on the centre of the target. (vs on a point that is within 2 PE of the target centre,...... this is the second figure in the table in that column)

If the target is accross the line of fire (line Gun-Target or GT) then the odds go up greatly...

Indulge me in a quick explanation of the math...

The target here is 10 x 40 = 400 square yds.

This fits into the 50% zone (2 PE x 2PE) = 16 yds x 72 yds = 1152 (in this "50%" zone actually 25% of the rounds land)

400 is 35% of 1152....

35% of 25% is 8.75% chance of hitting the target

1/.0875 (the reciprocal) = 11.#$%&@*@ or 11 rounds.......

A bunker 10 yds by 10 yds = 100 square yds

or 8.7% of 1152 (the 50% zone)

8.7% of 25% = 2.175% chance hitting the target

1/.02175 = 46 rounds to hit.....

Complicated yes, but explainable....

Anyway, plauseable, but not quite "sniping".

Cheers,

Rob

[sburke]

Would other sites extended me the same courtesy, say a lead paragraph and a link, rather than using entire posts from my site and driving up their traffic!

And to those who say I can't exercise better judgement and just walk away...

No comment.

[Rob Deans]

Rob,

Thanks! I get the 64 PE (8 x 8), but could you please explain a) the horizontal and vertical exterior numbering, as well as why the decimal numeric values inside each PE box seem so low, relative to 100? Or do they in fact add up instead to 1?

Regards,

John Kettler

John,

The exterior numbering refers to the percentage (in decimal, of course) of rounds that will fall in that "row" or "column".... The interior numbers refer to the percentage (again, in decimal) that will fall in that "box". It should be read as follows:

1. Take the box (PE) in the top right.

2. Now, in that "column", 2 % of the rounds will land (from the top to the bottom, ie all of the 8 PEs that make up that column);

3. Now read from the values on the exterior right of the diagram. The corresponding value to the top right box is 2% (.02); therefore

4. Read the value for the box as "2% of 2%" or .04% (.0004, the value in the box)

You can apply the formula to any box by reading "X% of Y%". ie the box that is immediately upper right of centre is "25% of 25%" or 6.25% (.0625, the value in the box)

So, yes, the whole system is perentage based. As it is presented, the whole equals "1" or 100%

Here is a diagram showing the whole theory from beginning to end with examples as the game SHOULD be. A 100 round shoot and the dimensions involved,

At the time of the last discussion, this is what a given mortar was shooting,

This is what it should have been shooting...

Regards,

Rob

[LukeFF]

However the majority of what he adds to these forums is actually of value

That is very highly debatable. I've been here long enough to know that he posts a lot of crap from authors that have been thoroughly debunked as frauds.

[JonS]

Oh, be fair Luke. I'm sure in Diesel's case it is completely true.

[dieseltaylor]

Rob, thanks for the extra explanation. Its one of those things which is entirely obvious when you know about it but confusing to most civilians.

LukeFF I am quite happy that the majority of what JK posts here is WW2 centric. If you wish to lay a decent wager, say $50 I will actually bother to count the number of lines relevant to the number off topic since January ist 2013. However my own feeling is that the thread is better off not discussing JK.

We do have other oddballs including those who believe they live near Venus! WTF!?

: )

[JonS]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_%28disambiguation%29