As I have mentioned before, that when I arrived in Alaska I was assigned to Alpha Battery, 1st Battalion, 37th Field Artillery (ARCTIC). (A-1-37 FA for short.) I’d never been in the artillery before and I quickly learned that this unit was going to be quite the learning experience for me. Here is one quote that pretty much sums up the Artillery’s attitude to the rest of the army. "Artillery adds dignity to what would otherwise be a vulgar brawl." Frederick II of Prussia
This unit had six, M101-A1, Korean War vintage, 105mm towed howitzers. These were all pulled by a Small Unit Support Vehicle (SUSV) rubber tracked vehicles as their “prime mover”. The Battery Operations Center (BOC) was the computerized control center for the guns. The entire system was mounted in the back section of another SUSV. There were other SUSVs for the Tactical Command Center (TOC) and other unit functions. I brought up the rear of every convoy with the maintenance section Prescribed Load List (PLL) truck, an M35A2, 2 ½ ton truck. I was a wheeled vehicle mechanic and this was our only “wheeled” vehicle.
No one I had ever known in the Army liked to go to the field, until I arrived in the Field Artillery. Since it is the only time they ever get to fire their guns, the artillery lives to go to the field. I had never seen people in units get so excited to go out and live in tents in sub-freezing weather, so they could stand in the snow, behind a gun, and shove 105mm shells into the breech. But there I was, a truck mechanic, in the artillery. This was about as third wheel as you could get, I truly felt out of place there.
I need to explain how an artillery battery works so that if you are unfamiliar with “guns” you can understand how a battery operates. The six gun-crews (Gun Chief, Gunner, Assistant Gunner, Loader, Ammo bearer and Driver at a minimum) all compete regularly for the title “Base Piece”. Base Piece is the most accurate and efficient gun crew and all the other guns are set into the firing position or “Laid” in reference to their position on Base Piece. Of the six guns, Base Piece is always gun three, in the middle of the firing line. When the battery is traveling In convoy, Base Piece is the first gun in the convoy. (3, 4, 2, 5, 1, 6 is the normal traveling order of the gun crews.) The Battery Operations Center (BOC) receives mission requests from forward unit and converts the map grid coordinates of the targets into elevation, range, azimuth, shell type and fuse settings for the gun crews. This information is transmitted electronically to the guns and then the commands to fire are sent by the Chief of the Firing Battery.
The advent of radar systems that can track artillery shells in flight, made dramatic changes in artillery operations. While I was in Alaska, this radar was named “Firefinder”. Firefinder had the location information of each of our guns and could track the trajectory of each shell, plotting exactly where the rounds impacted. If the battery fired all six guns, the radar could tell you and print out where each shell landed. This was great for grading gun crews, but it also had a secondary function that was downright frightening. Firefinder could also track incoming artillery rounds back to the location they were launched from, allowing for Counter-Battery fire.
Counter-Battery fire is where you send a salvo of shells at the enemy artillery batteries that are firing at your force. Before this technological marvel, you needed an observer call in the location of the enemy guns. Now all the enemy had to do is fire one shell and the radar operator could plot the position the shell originated from in seconds.
Previously, Artillery would setup batteries in one location for weeks or months, depending on how fast the battle was moving. Nowadays, artillery is more fire some shells and get moving before some incoming rounds are fired back at you (They call this; Shoot, Scoot, Communicate). One of the missions that we trained for in the artillery was an emergency suppressive fire mission also known simply as a “Hip-Shoot”. The term “Hip-Shoot” was a variation of the phrase “Shooting from the Hip” where a cowboy would draw his gun and shoot while his pistol was at his hip to get a shot off fast without using the sights.
Any job we did in the Army was defined by an Army Training and Evaluation Program (ARTEP) standard. Your unit’s overall readiness was determined by specific ARTEP tasks and the HIP-SHOOT task definition was to have a “battery, one round” on target within eight minutes of the incoming radio call requesting emergency suppressive fire. All six rounds had to land within 200 feet of the designated target. (“Battery, one round”, meant that each cannon in the battery fired one shell and they are all fired at one time as a salvo.) Not too hard, right? Did I mention that the fire mission request comes in while we were convoying from one firing position to another?
This is where the purpose of the convoy order of the vehicles came into play. When the BOC got the radio call, they immediately stopped, and the Chief of Firing Battery (CFB) got out with a device called an Aiming Circle. An Aiming Circle is similar to a transit used by surveyors and is designated in 6400-Mils, instead of 360-Degrees. The CFB first designated the direction for the guns to line up, using a compass with his arm extended. Base Piece pulled off the road and into the firing position along that general direction. Once this is established, the CFB set up the Aiming Circle and gave exact alignment directions to Base Piece. The Gunner on Base Piece aligned the sights of the cannon on the Aiming circle and once properly aligned, the Gunner called out “Zero Mils!” When this was completed for all six guns, the CFB called out that "The Battery is Laid!". Meanwhile, the BOC was plotting the battery’s exact location into the ballistic computer to be ready to compute firing solutions.
It takes longer for you to read that last paragraph than it took to accomplish the tasks I described. While all this is happening, the other five guns were turning off the road and taking up their assigned spots on the firing line. After they pulled into the position, they started aligning their guns with the CFB. Meanwhile, Base Piece had already been given a firing solution from the BOC and fired the first sighting round. (Total elapsed time about 3 to 4 minutes so far.) I had seen Base Piece fire the sighting round before the last of the six guns had pulled off the road. Once all six guns were laid and the forward observer (FO) had given firing corrections based on the sighting round(s), the radio call “Battery one Round, Fire for Effect” was given.
The BOC informed the FO the shells are on the way with the call “Shot, over” and the FO replied “Shot, out” that he knew to be watching for the rounds to hit the target. When the rounds arrived, the radio call from the FO was “Splash over” and the BOC replied “Splash out”. It was quite an impressive sight. The last Hip-Shoot we completed during our ARTEP evaluation, all six rounds landed within 50-feet of the target. This included three direct hits, “Steel on steel”, all in less than six minutes. Even the evaluator was impressed by the speed and accuracy of the battery.
What was I doing during all the excitement? My truck had a M2 50-Caliber machine gun on a 360-Degree articulated ring mount. My job was to block the road and to provide security cover for the rear of our convoy while the gun crews were having fun.
This unit had six, M101-A1, Korean War vintage, 105mm towed howitzers. These were all pulled by a Small Unit Support Vehicle (SUSV) rubber tracked vehicles as their “prime mover”. The Battery Operations Center (BOC) was the computerized control center for the guns. The entire system was mounted in the back section of another SUSV. There were other SUSVs for the Tactical Command Center (TOC) and other unit functions. I brought up the rear of every convoy with the maintenance section Prescribed Load List (PLL) truck, an M35A2, 2 ½ ton truck. I was a wheeled vehicle mechanic and this was our only “wheeled” vehicle.
No one I had ever known in the Army liked to go to the field, until I arrived in the Field Artillery. Since it is the only time they ever get to fire their guns, the artillery lives to go to the field. I had never seen people in units get so excited to go out and live in tents in sub-freezing weather, so they could stand in the snow, behind a gun, and shove 105mm shells into the breech. But there I was, a truck mechanic, in the artillery. This was about as third wheel as you could get, I truly felt out of place there.
I need to explain how an artillery battery works so that if you are unfamiliar with “guns” you can understand how a battery operates. The six gun-crews (Gun Chief, Gunner, Assistant Gunner, Loader, Ammo bearer and Driver at a minimum) all compete regularly for the title “Base Piece”. Base Piece is the most accurate and efficient gun crew and all the other guns are set into the firing position or “Laid” in reference to their position on Base Piece. Of the six guns, Base Piece is always gun three, in the middle of the firing line. When the battery is traveling In convoy, Base Piece is the first gun in the convoy. (3, 4, 2, 5, 1, 6 is the normal traveling order of the gun crews.) The Battery Operations Center (BOC) receives mission requests from forward unit and converts the map grid coordinates of the targets into elevation, range, azimuth, shell type and fuse settings for the gun crews. This information is transmitted electronically to the guns and then the commands to fire are sent by the Chief of the Firing Battery.
The advent of radar systems that can track artillery shells in flight, made dramatic changes in artillery operations. While I was in Alaska, this radar was named “Firefinder”. Firefinder had the location information of each of our guns and could track the trajectory of each shell, plotting exactly where the rounds impacted. If the battery fired all six guns, the radar could tell you and print out where each shell landed. This was great for grading gun crews, but it also had a secondary function that was downright frightening. Firefinder could also track incoming artillery rounds back to the location they were launched from, allowing for Counter-Battery fire.
Counter-Battery fire is where you send a salvo of shells at the enemy artillery batteries that are firing at your force. Before this technological marvel, you needed an observer call in the location of the enemy guns. Now all the enemy had to do is fire one shell and the radar operator could plot the position the shell originated from in seconds.
Previously, Artillery would setup batteries in one location for weeks or months, depending on how fast the battle was moving. Nowadays, artillery is more fire some shells and get moving before some incoming rounds are fired back at you (They call this; Shoot, Scoot, Communicate). One of the missions that we trained for in the artillery was an emergency suppressive fire mission also known simply as a “Hip-Shoot”. The term “Hip-Shoot” was a variation of the phrase “Shooting from the Hip” where a cowboy would draw his gun and shoot while his pistol was at his hip to get a shot off fast without using the sights.
Any job we did in the Army was defined by an Army Training and Evaluation Program (ARTEP) standard. Your unit’s overall readiness was determined by specific ARTEP tasks and the HIP-SHOOT task definition was to have a “battery, one round” on target within eight minutes of the incoming radio call requesting emergency suppressive fire. All six rounds had to land within 200 feet of the designated target. (“Battery, one round”, meant that each cannon in the battery fired one shell and they are all fired at one time as a salvo.) Not too hard, right? Did I mention that the fire mission request comes in while we were convoying from one firing position to another?
This is where the purpose of the convoy order of the vehicles came into play. When the BOC got the radio call, they immediately stopped, and the Chief of Firing Battery (CFB) got out with a device called an Aiming Circle. An Aiming Circle is similar to a transit used by surveyors and is designated in 6400-Mils, instead of 360-Degrees. The CFB first designated the direction for the guns to line up, using a compass with his arm extended. Base Piece pulled off the road and into the firing position along that general direction. Once this is established, the CFB set up the Aiming Circle and gave exact alignment directions to Base Piece. The Gunner on Base Piece aligned the sights of the cannon on the Aiming circle and once properly aligned, the Gunner called out “Zero Mils!” When this was completed for all six guns, the CFB called out that "The Battery is Laid!". Meanwhile, the BOC was plotting the battery’s exact location into the ballistic computer to be ready to compute firing solutions.
It takes longer for you to read that last paragraph than it took to accomplish the tasks I described. While all this is happening, the other five guns were turning off the road and taking up their assigned spots on the firing line. After they pulled into the position, they started aligning their guns with the CFB. Meanwhile, Base Piece had already been given a firing solution from the BOC and fired the first sighting round. (Total elapsed time about 3 to 4 minutes so far.) I had seen Base Piece fire the sighting round before the last of the six guns had pulled off the road. Once all six guns were laid and the forward observer (FO) had given firing corrections based on the sighting round(s), the radio call “Battery one Round, Fire for Effect” was given.
The BOC informed the FO the shells are on the way with the call “Shot, over” and the FO replied “Shot, out” that he knew to be watching for the rounds to hit the target. When the rounds arrived, the radio call from the FO was “Splash over” and the BOC replied “Splash out”. It was quite an impressive sight. The last Hip-Shoot we completed during our ARTEP evaluation, all six rounds landed within 50-feet of the target. This included three direct hits, “Steel on steel”, all in less than six minutes. Even the evaluator was impressed by the speed and accuracy of the battery.
What was I doing during all the excitement? My truck had a M2 50-Caliber machine gun on a 360-Degree articulated ring mount. My job was to block the road and to provide security cover for the rear of our convoy while the gun crews were having fun.
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