Artillery Mishaps

[Grapeshot]

Here's a story I ran across 27 years ago when stationed out in Colorado at Ft Carson.  We had an old issue of the Artillery Journel and the author was writing about a group of M107, 175mm, Sefl Propelled Guns in Viet Nam that had suffered catastrophic barrel failures.

Each gun had exploaded at the origin of rifling upon firing.  The exact number of guns I don't remember, but it was enough to cause a cease fire army wide of all M107's until the problem was found.

All damaged barrels were examined in the field and sent back to Watervelite Arsenal for examination.  The barrels in question had passed all prefire and post fire gageing prior to their failure.  None of the barrels had anything in common.  The Effective Full Charge Round count was different for all guns and none were in any serial number block.  All catastrophic failures took place in Viet Nam.

It took several months of examination of these barrels to come to the conclusion that they did not know what happened.  Reluctantly, the Army decided to allow the guns to resume firing.

At an unnamed fire base in the RVN, a Tech Rep from Rock Island was watching a 175 gun crew get ready for a fire mission.

As the guns began firing, one soldier ran over to an 8 inch battery, (M110, 8inch SP Howitzer), and come back with a "Green" bag of Powder.  The Teck Rep stopped that soldier and asked him what he was going to do that Green Bag.  The soldier told him that they were going to put it behind the projo to get more range out of their gun.

That Tech Rep had just found out why the earlier guns had suffered barrel failures. 

Now weather the Green powder bag alone was the culpret or it was being used in conjunction with the standard load of the 175mm Gun, I do not know, however, adding more powder to exceed the design limitations is never a good idea.