|
Post by steveontherock on Dec 13, 2009 7:52:50 GMT 8
In the new book Tears in the Darkness, the authors state on page 140, that some Japanese cannon were capable of "averaging as many as fourteen rounds a minute." I find this number incredible. Even if 14 rounds a minute could be achieved, the gun would overheat making it impossible to continue to fire at that pace. Am I wrong? What would a cannon be capable of firing? And what artillery piece are they talking about?
|
|
|
Post by batteryboy on Dec 13, 2009 16:34:28 GMT 8
In the new book Tears in the Darkness, the authors state on page 140, that some Japanese cannon were capable of "averaging as many as fourteen rounds a minute." I find this number incredible. Even if 14 rounds a minute could be achieved, the gun would overheat making it impossible to continue to fire at that pace. Am I wrong? What would a cannon be capable of firing? And what artillery piece are they talking about? 14 rounds a minute is just average. The Philippine Scouts manning the 3-inch RF Seacoast guns can fire at a rate of one round every 2 seconds so that is 30 rounds a minute. In Bataan, Phil Army and Scout Field Artillery gunners manning the 75mm guns average between 20 -25 rounds a minute on a full barrage against the Japanese. If you want to narrow down which Japanese guns, then the suspects would be their 75mm, 105mm which can fire rapidly because of their fixed ammo. Larger caliber guns like the Japanese 150mm gun and howitzer and the 240mm howitzers had a slower rate of fire as their ammo used a separate bagged charge to propel the shell. FWIW,
|
|
|
Post by EXO on Dec 13, 2009 20:23:59 GMT 8
The Scrounger (from Boston) advises: The small Mountain Howitzer could easily fire 14 rounds a minute with an experianced crew. The ammunition was fixed and was easy to load and fire. It would not overheat the tube either. Art
|
|
|
Post by mgk1951 on Dec 14, 2009 12:30:52 GMT 8
Hi
The high rate of fire of some artillery pieces is also attributed to those that are Rapid Fire/Quick Fire as well as using fixed ammunition. Quick fire are those pieces with a single action breech - pulling one handle unlocks and opens the breech as well as provides primary spent case extraction (i.e. 3in M1903); as opposed to winding a handle, to unlock the breech and winding another handle to lower the breech (i.e. 12in Mortar).
Barrels of a lot of heavy artillery pieces, and especially howitzers, have to be lowered from the correct range elevation for loading of heavy shell and bagged charges. After the breech is closed and locked, the barrel is then raised to the correct range elevation to fire the next round.
Regards
mgk1951
|
|
|
Post by steveontherock on Dec 16, 2009 7:29:53 GMT 8
Thanks for the replies. Is the proper terminology for these much smaller guns to be called "cannons?"
|
|
|
Post by armyjunk on Dec 16, 2009 10:33:58 GMT 8
The US Army always referred to Japanese artillery 37mm or larger as either guns or howitzers depending on the weapon. ie; Model 11 (1922) 37-mm gun -- Model 45 (1912) 240-mm howitzer. The term "cannon' is almost never used, the term is "weapon" with of course the exception of the Model 98 (1938) 20-mm antiaircraft antitank automatic cannon...now what the Japanese called any of these is another whole story..............hope that helps
|
|
|
Post by buster on Dec 16, 2009 12:01:45 GMT 8
If you really want to get precise with it (not many do) a Howitzer barrel is about/ more than 15 times the bore. i.e. 100mm (4 in) howitzer has about 1500mm barrel (about yard and a half) Gun has barrel length more than 25 times the bore. Thus same 100mm piece would mean at least 2500mm barrel. Usually a gun or cannon is more than 30 times the bore. Then gun-howitzer is at about 20 times the bore. Anything under 15x bore is mortar. In the taxonomies of artillery pieces used by European (and European-style) armies in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, the howitzer stood between the "gun" (which was characterized by a longer barrel, larger propelling charges, smaller shells, higher velocities and flatter trajectories) and the "mortar" (which has the ability to fire projectiles at even higher angles of ascent and descent). And like sheep, cannon does not have a plural. The following is lifted directly oit of Wikipedia, and included because I find it interesting, even if only marginally on topic: The English word howitzer derives from the German word Haufen (heap) which as Gewalthaufen designated a pike square formation. Already in the Battle of Grunwald (1410), the Teutonic Knights used artillery[1] which was intended to break up enemy formations. In the Hussite Wars of the 1420s and 1430s, the Czechs used short barreled "houfnice"[2] cannons to fire at short distances into such crowds of Haufen infantry ("houf" came in use as the Czech word for crowd[3]), or into charging heavy cavalry, to make horses shy away.[4] From the aufeniz mentioned in 1440 derive the German Haussnitz and later Haubitze, the Swedish haubits, Italian obice, Spanish obús, and the Dutch word houwitser which led to the English word howitzer .
Since the First World War, the word howitzer has been increasingly used to describe artillery pieces that, strictly speaking, belong to the category of gun-howitzer - relatively long barrels and high muzzle velocity combined with multiple propelling charges and high maximum elevation. This is particularly true in the armed forces of the United States, where gun-howitzers have been officially described as "howitzers" for more than sixty years.
Because of this practice, the word "howitzer" is used in some armies as a generic term for any kind of artillery piece that is designed to attack targets using indirect fire. Thus, artillery pieces that bear little resemblance to howitzers of earlier eras are now described as howitzers, although the British, perhaps favouring brevity, call them guns.
The British had a further method of nomenclature that they adopted in the nineteenth century. Guns were categorised by projectile weight in pounds while howitzers were categorised by calibre in inches. This system broke down in the 1930s with the introduction of gun-howitzers.
|
|
|
Post by armyjunk on Dec 20, 2009 22:54:37 GMT 8
to add to the confusion don't forget the US 12-inch Mortar, it seems there is no one set of definitions that fits all cases....like most everything else.
|
|