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Okay, I've googled the fething gak out of this. How do you shoot artillery and tank cannons? I'm not military and don't really KNOW anyone in the military to ask. Is it a button you press on a computer keyboard? A big red button in the tank? I'm assuming it's not a little pistol butt sticking out of the dashboard that you pull the trigger.
And artillery, particularly self-propelled artillery, is it fired the same? From inside the chassis? Or outside? Is it a plunger with a wire to the tank? Is it wireless?
Sorry for my lame questions, I've honestly never wondered before and can't believe "Artillery firing mechanism" "How does artillery fire?" "How do you fire artillery" etc, get NOTHING out of a search engine.
There are two kinds of artillery -- self-propelled and towed.
Self-propelled is a tracked vehicle like a tank but with light armour and a larger gun and turret. Some SPGs (self-propelled guns) have automatic loading, others are manually loaded.
Towed artillery is manually loaded.
Manually loaded guns sometimes have power assisted ramming.
Okay, and mainly I was curious about SPGs. They fire like tank from inside? With just some kind of button to work as the firing mechanism? It seems like you'd want to be further away from the artilery piece/SPG
When you load modern artillery you have to load a shell followed by the propellant charge. These have to be pushed into the breech far enough to engage with the rifling and let the breech block close.
A large shell may be too heavy for a man to handle. An M107 155mm shell is about 48Kg without the propellant. That is a hell of a weight to push in by hand.
To take an extreme example, the British 15-inch naval gun shell weighed nearly a ton. The gunners of those guns stayed inside the turret for firing. I don't know which modern SPGs let the crew get out for firing.
But - to bring it back to why we're on THIS website - in the case of something looking like a Basilisk (which i presume is based on some sort of RL self-propelled artillery) you would be outside to load by hand but the firing mechanism would be inside the tank itself?
Crew can stay inside the enclosed compartment when operating the weapon, otherwise firing the main gun of a tank would require the crew to vacate the vehicle as well every time they shoot.
Maybe the IG have appropriated some of the anti-grav studs from SpaceCrusade, allowing them to load by hand, juggle the shells etc...
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American Tanks fire using a two handed joy stick, the trigger on the right firing the cannon and the trigger on the left fires the coax also the turret is turned by turning the stick much like you would a steering wheel, left to right, pulling up or down on the stick moves the gun up and down.
Most US Military Field Arty is still fired by the tried and true method of "pulling on the string".
As for SPA I can only assume that its main gun is fired similarly to how the American Tanks do.
Nothing beats pulling the string while jamming a finger in one of your ears.
I do recall that German 88's had some sort of electronic trigger, I remember from some old Barbarossa propaganda footage that a Artillery operator could fire several guns at once with a wired trigger.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2009/03/29 12:33:46
That was important for firing anti-aircraft barrages. The idea of the barrage is to get the shells into a pattern to detonate and fill a volume of the sky with shrapnel.
Hey finger in the ear string pulling sound like the way to go with Arty. If I go in (back in) I'd probably just be building/blowing up bridges, or shooting the 120mm gun of the Abrams.
88s also had a 'Pistol' grip mechanism for firing single weapons.
I know for a fact that German '88 gunners simply had to push a button to actually fire the thing, the loading was done in an impressively speedy procedure through an automatic breach (I think?). Anyway, most of the more modern SPGs such as a Panzerhaubitzen (Drool.) are loaded automatically, and can fire, if linked up, in a synchronised way, so that all shells hit at once, or so that while one shell is in the air, another one is fired at a trajectory so that both hit at the same time.
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Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!
We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.
No soldier's paid to kick against His powers.
We laughed - knowing that better men would come,
And greater wars: when each proud fighter brags
He wars on Death, for lives; not men, for flags.
Never heard someone making fun of a field artillary man? "Pull string go boom" Sorry for the edit, just a note. Just google it and there are youtube video's and articles about SPA in today's army.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2009/03/29 18:56:02
I seem to remember that there was some expensive, probably failed experimental spg an American company was designing that could synchronize its own firing to have 8 shells hit a target at the same time. Sounds neat but I can't see it being worth a several million dollar project funded by taxes.
And Killkrazy: Weren't those railway cannons so large and stupidly powerful that the pressure wave from firing the weapon would kill anyone within several yards? I'd imagine you'd want to vacate from those to fire, with a very loooong string
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2009/03/29 18:31:49
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If your fire control officer is worth his stripes, he will be able to calculate the firing order of the guns based on their distance to the targets, putting the rounds "time on target", or so they impact simultaneously. Most FCOs have fire control computers that do most of the work for them anyway, so it isn't that difficult.
Railguns wrote:I seem to remember that there was some expensive, probably failed experimental spg an American company was designing that could synchronize its own firing to have 8 shells hit a target at the same time. Sounds neat but I can't see it being worth a several million dollar project funded by taxes.
Probably the Crusader project. Some of its technology went into the development of the FCS NLOS-C (Future Combat Systems Non-Line-of-Sight Cannon), which uses a similar gun but on a lighter chassis and without the auxiliary vehicle (think Forgeworld Trojan) to supply it. This also costs millions, and might be on the chopping block as well (the FCS program as a whole is insanely expensive). Considering our current SPGs are 20-year old modernizations to a 40-year old design, it wouldn't hurt to replace them with a more capable and easier/cheaper to maintain system. Still, the NLOS-C isn't perfect, since it only has a crew of two men: have fun changing the tracks with just you and your gunner!
I dunno about all these modern tanks etc., but the standard Basilisk certainly doesn't look like it could be operated from inside the vehicle. IA1 says states that the Basilisk has a crew of four, but strangely enough the Basilisk artillery platform has up to five. And considering the height of the "gun deck" of the Basilisk and the weight of the shells, it would surely be hell to lift shells from wherever they're stored up to the gun itself.
If I ever decide to buy and build a stock Basilisk, I think I'll be merciful to the crew and scratchbuild some sort winch or crane. With only four men operating the gun, I expect they'd need the help.
Noble713 wrote:
Probably the Crusader project. Some of its technology went into the development of the FCS NLOS-C (Future Combat Systems Non-Line-of-Sight Cannon), which uses a similar gun but on a lighter chassis and without the auxiliary vehicle (think Forgeworld Trojan) to supply it. This also costs millions, and might be on the chopping block as well (the FCS program as a whole is insanely expensive). Considering our current SPGs are 20-year old modernizations to a 40-year old design, it wouldn't hurt to replace them with a more capable and easier/cheaper to maintain system. Still, the NLOS-C isn't perfect, since it only has a crew of two men: have fun changing the tracks with just you and your gunner!
While FCS is expensive, it is also probably necessary given our population deficiency with respect to emerging military powers, and the general reticence of the American public to accept casualties.
The NLOS is an intiguing weapon though. The ability to control the actual time of impact would be amazingly useful in the course of anti-guerrilla campaigns where the mission is less about material destruction, and more about casualty infliction. Its integrated targeting system also allows for the dynamic application of heavy ordnance, which would free contact units from carrying overly heavy weaponry. You end up with lighter, more mobile platforms that still maintain a special emphasis on survivability.
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A close comparison for the Basilisk in RL, check out the US armies M12 and M40 self propelled howitzer. same basic ideal of a honking gun on a tank chassis, the crew is painfully exposed but it is a howitzer and not designed to come under small arms fire. The Lanyard that fired the gun was needed to ensure that the gunner didn't get hurt by the fast moving breach as it shot backwards upon firing of the gun. Manual loading of these shells was a standard op. So yeah, a few guys in back plus the two up front in the armored drivers compartment and you have a standard crew of 4-5.
Auto loaders are still not very commonplace in tanks for some reason...no one seems to trust them...
Also look at the Marder III Sd.Kfz.139 from Germany in WW2, another way of looking at the Basilisk as an assault/tank hunter gun on a tank chassis, the gunner and loader are still sitting exposed, while driver and someone else manning the hull machine gun hides in front and buttoned up behind armor...
glory wrote:I dunno about all these modern tanks etc., but the standard Basilisk certainly doesn't look like it could be operated from inside the vehicle. IA1 says states that the Basilisk has a crew of four, but strangely enough the Basilisk artillery platform has up to five. And considering the height of the "gun deck" of the Basilisk and the weight of the shells, it would surely be hell to lift shells from wherever they're stored up to the gun itself.
If I ever decide to buy and build a stock Basilisk, I think I'll be merciful to the crew and scratchbuild some sort winch or crane. With only four men operating the gun, I expect they'd need the help.
On that note, for anyone not aware, the Forge World Armaggedon Pattern Basilisk actually has the shell magazine modelled. It's in the floor, directly under the gun, running lengthwise to the front crew compartment (at full load it appears to be able to hold 9-10 shells). There is a door to lift the shells out of the floor to the immediate right of the gun.
There are also a whole butt-ton of internal electronics that make you wonder how the open-topped Basilisk even function. They look spartan by comparison. But there is what appears to be a targetting computer, so I imagine in this case it is just a push of a button.
Just an interesting note.
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Sorry for the edit, just a note. Just google it and there are youtube video's and articles about 
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