S-2

"We grunts may be stupid but we know how to set a fuze!"

Reminds me of pulling onto a 107mm (4.2") firing point at Sill w/ a report of a dud round lodged in the turf at 50m to the platoon front.

Raining cats n' dogs. Firing positions have dunnage spread everywhere. Ammo is neither dug in nor segregated by lot or type. Most of all, it's uncovered and, at 1430hrs, rain has been falling since approx 0900hrs.

Dud round on first mission shot at 1330hrs. Go figure.

So here sits a 107mm HE round submerged one-third into the turf, UXB, fifty meters away from the tube. Nobody asked the Plt. Leader to mark the round but there, surrounding the buried projo, is white engineer tape (God knows where he had THAT), meaning that he sent somebody out to the projo to "mark" it shortly after firing and observing it's impact (GOD, what a sight that must have been to watch the section drop the round and see a 107mm projo exit and fall...RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU).

DUDE!!!!!!

The best part? The two gun sections and 1LT plt. ldr. are playing football in the rain between the tube and the round.

Now I know why they marked the round. It was the endzone.

You had to see the scene. It was an unbelievable goat-screw with the most oblivious lieutenant I've ever met. Shame on 4-31 INF.

__________________
"This aggression will not stand, man!" Jeff Lebowski

S-2

"Wonder what the MTBMF is on it and what kind of PLL they have on hand? Hope the supporting unit has a LOT of cherry juice!"

Helluva sentence for the uninitiated.

MTBMF- Mean Time Between Mission Failure

PLL- Prescribed Load List

Cherry Juice- Hydraulic fluid used to replenish recoil and recuperator cylinders.

Albany Rifles

Thanks for the translation!!!

Oh, my favorite was a Georgia Army National Guard 4.2 platoon I was checking. Noticed one of the barrels was sweating. Checked it out. It was fullof cans of beer and ice.

Shockingly, they NO GOed their ARTEP.

__________________
“When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.” — Oscar Wilde

S-2

Needless to say, that tube was ALWAYS out of action.

Did you explain that ice melts?

Did they offer you a beer?

Albany Rifles

No, hence the NO GO

Gun Grape

Fuze wasn't set wrong. It malfunctioned.

The M564 APERS-T round comes packaged with fuse attached. The fuze is set for MA at the factory. All we have to do is load and shoot. They sort of figured that if we are shooting those, we might not have time to set fuzes

And the case is thin walled and easy to damage so they try to keep handling to a minimum.

Albany Rifles

Hence the pillow?

We wondered why their marksmanship was so bad since they obviously were shooting REALLY big bullets!

S-2

Same family as the M564/565 fuzes.

G.G.'s right, I'd bet.

Albany Rifles

So would I.

Gun Grape

Thank you Gentlemen for your confidence in these old brain cells

Its the M563 fuze S-2.

Now my Mortar story. Long story cause I tend to ramble.

My "B" billet in the Corps was Career Planning. Had no desire to be a DI and didn't have the looks for recruiting

Anyway, for my "break from the fleet" they send me to a grunt unit. Anyway one day I'm up of the OP, conducting career planning interviews with the Bn mortar FOs. We have been at Ft A.P. Hill for 2 weeks already. They have been on the hill for a week of it. Cold, wet, nice breeze blowing and they have ate nothing but MREs the whole week. Bn Cdr didn't believe in hot chow in the field.

The perfect time for me to show up with a "Hey Devil dog, Lets talk about reenlistment."

Sitting there, watching the FOs, talking about staying in, (calling a few missions myself). The S-3 shows up and they do a 81 Plt mission for him. The rounds are all over the place. For some reason I said something about them "Shooting like S*it". S-3 says "SSgt, You think you can get them to shoot better?" and some smart remark about us arty guys thinking we are "Gods" and grunts don't know anything.

Go down to the 81 position, talk to the Plt Sgt, A Arty FDC Gunny who had been there about a month, and then hit the gunline. First thing I ask them. Do you guys Boresite these things? Yes
How? Test target. Show me please. All tubes do it, I check procedures and then look through the sights. Every one of them is off. From 5-40mils. So I gather them all around one tube and ask.
Ok, Now what do you do
Set out our aiming post and start shooting.
No, What do you do with the error you found with your boresite.
. "Nothing"
You don't adjust your pantel onto the target then slip the scales"
No,
Do you notify the Gunny so he can do individual corrections to make up for that error?
No
Do you keep the data on the gun so you can add/subtract that error?
No, we don't do anything. They told us at school not to fool with the sights because we might break them. And boresighting isn't that important anyway, but you have to go through the motions because its in the manual.

Within an hour the Gunny and I had them locked on.

And you wonder why we don't trust grunts with big guns

Albany Rifles

And you wonder why we don't trust grunts with big guns?

Well of course they were goofed up....they were MARINE CORPS mortar men!

Oh, and conversely, that's why you guys have to have adult supervision with edged weapons!

Gun Grape

That go to an Army mortar course

S-2

I've got some bad memories shooting for infantry mortars. Watched 400 81mm and 4.2" rounds fired sans subsequent CORRECTIONS. Their FDC wouldn't compute corrections nor send them to their tubes. My F.O. parties were there to observe a safe impact in the range.

Most of my F.O.s and self came from Portland, Oregon, drove to Ashland, Oregon (300 miles) on a Friday afternoon, piled in buses to Camp Roberts, Ca. (Pasa Roubles) Friday night/Saturday morning, arrived 0630hrs, OBSERVED all day, bussed back that night, arrived Ashland Sunday morning, recovered from the LFX, and drove 300 miles home that night for work/school Monday morning. Myself? Two grad school exams.

I wasn't happy. My battalion commander wasn't happy. My brigade commander became unhappy. 1-186 INF Bn. cdr became unhappy. His unhappiness made life really unpleasant for their CSC cdr and battalion mortar platoon leader who was running their consolidated "training".

It's a retention issue and our guys were dogged needlessly. We'd been better to stay home. They could have observed the impact area with their own folks.

Oh! 30mph winds that day, MET messages available but unapplied. I don't know how many METRO data lines a mortar round travels through but I'd bet max ord for a 4.2" is up there.

A bad day for the U.S. government.

Albany Rifles

I know...I graduated from that same course in 1981!!!

I understand what S-2 said about mortar men. As Will Sonnett used to say, No Brag, Just Fact, I had the best mortar plt in the 1st Infnatry Division (Forward) back in 1982-1983. But of the 9 platoon leaders (3 4.2 inch and 6 81 mm platoons) I was the only one who had been to IMPC.

I agree there were issues ion some corners. I think a big part of the problem back was the lack of upward progression for the 11C MOS. Took a guy FOREVER to make E-6...usually 14 + years to accumulate the needed points. A lot of guys saw that and changed their MOS. Left not enough guys to do the job. this often resulted in an 11B becoming the PSG. You guys saw the results.

In the infantry a lot of battalion commanders see no value in IMPC for a young officer and think there is something wrong for you if you show up to your unit without a Ranger tab. As a result, when filling out the specialty platoons, LTs look to try to get the Scout platoon...higher cool factor. Mortar Platoon assignment was always an after thought.

I stunned my battalion commander when I told him I didn't want the Scout Plt but the 4.2 PLT instead.

I will say my mortars were always on time, on target. My PSG and I took pride in that. But I also took FAOBC by correspondence (lived on the economy w/ no AFN!) so I studied my craft


This war has shown maneuver commanders the value of mortars...hope that fixes things.

Okay, back to normal disrespect mode!