2015 August

The Veterans Memorial Museum Newsletter

August 2015The Museum is open Wednesday - Saturday 10 am. until 4 pm.

To set up a tour call the Museum at 256-883-3737 during Museum hours.

Museum News by Dennis Gaare

-Buy a General Admission ticket to the U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum for a friend. Tickets may be obtained at the Museum office.

July 7 Today the Museum was visited by some 50 campers from Camp Marymount in Fairview, Tennessee. What a great group! We enjoyed their visit.

July 7 The Madison County Military Heritage Commission also met here today and we have had several walk in visitors, even though we are normally closed on Tuesdays. Folks came, we were here, so they were welcome.

Wed. 15 Jul and Thurs. 16 Jul –The museum was pleased to host sessions of the US Army Command and General Staff College this week in the 8th Air Force Briefing Room..

Thurs.16 Jul – Hamilton Children’s School visited the Museum. July 18 We were paid a visit today by the American Legion Riders. It was good to have

this group of folks stop in. The question is which was their favorite exhibit: the Indian 741 or the Harley WLA motorcycle?

Thurs.23 Jul – Hamilton Children’s SchoolPage 1

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(13 Students) visited the Museum. .Mon. 27 Jul La Petite Academy visited the Museum. We are pleased to note that the Dixie Division Military Vehicles Club received the Military

Vehicle Preservation Association 2015 Award for Website Excellence at the recent MVPA Convention in Topeka, KS. The museum was proud to accept the award on behalf of webmaster Chris Story and Dixie Division!

We are in the process of networking the Museum computers together and updating the Library date base.

Upcoming Events

The following events are scheduled at the Museum: .10-13 Aug Space & Missile Defense Command Symposium @ VBC—Museum

participates in Veterans Night-TBD. Aug-Date TBD-Museum participates in Air Defense Association Program@RSA Tue 18 Aug. USDA visit and Tour of Museum Sat. 29 Aug. West Point Association “Night at the Museum” We are pleased to announce that we have partnered with renowned artist Michael

Solovey to commission the first-ever, limited-edition print celebrating the historical lineage and remarkable achievements of the Army Materiel Command headquartered at Redstone Arsenal right here in our hometown - Huntsville, Alabama. A generous portion of the proceeds from the sale of each print goes to support the museum and our continuing efforts to honor the achievements of our American servicemen and women. You may order online and have it shipped to you or come by the museum and pick it up. The first prints will be available in mid-Augustand we are accepting pre-orders.

Museum Artifact by Rob Robley

105 & 155 MILLIMETER GUNS:

The 155 millimeter Gun: The entire French army had only 84 of the 155's in service in 1912,hardly enough to equip an army corps, and by 1914, the army had only had 104 0f them, nor was it much of a weapon. As it weighed 10,000 kilograms, it was hardly a mobile weapon. by contrast, its counterpart, the 15 centimeter howitzer, weighed roughly a fifth of that, had a much greater angle of fire (43-degrees), and out ranged the155 by 2,500 meters. All in all the 155 was not much of a weapon. Production of the 155-millimeter howitzer was going at a glacial pace. The army was supposed to begin taking the gun into service at rate of 16 guns per month, with deliveries slated to start October 1914. One of the items in the museums’ display is an M1918, US manufactured 155mm artillery howitzer. NOTE is the massive barrel, necessary as metallurgy was not refined and production technology was not fully developed. A

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comparison of the 1918 155mm howitzer and the 105mm howitzer's barrel is a classic exampleof the development of metallurgy in weapons technology. The 155mm howitzer uses over twiceas much metal (thickness 2-1/4 inches) as compared to the 105 mm howitzer (7/8"). By weight the 155mm projectile weighs 97 lbs and the 105mm projectile weighs 36 lbs. The 155mm howitzer still has the design shape of the old Civil War Black Powder cannons to compensate for the overpressure at the breach generated by the (propellant) powder charge. Due to the development of propellant and metals the barrel inner diameter increased to 18 inches for the Japanese battleship Yamato and 15 &16 inches for most western navy battleships. Land basedartillery saw size increases to 280mm for "Atomic Annie" and German rail guns.

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Historical facts by Rob Robley

ARTILLERY:

The artillery is known as the Queen ofBattle. The Artillerymen were knownas" Red legs". With the discovery ofBlack Powder, man has been ableproject objects greater distances. MostRocket boosters used in the SpacePrograms are made of some form ofblack powder mixture. Black powderdeveloped onto Smokeless Powder,then into propellant (Single & DoubleBase) by adding binders andstabilizers. The Chinese are creditedfor the development of black powderwhich was first used for firecrackersand rockets causing the demise of A good example of recoil effects is depicted in a photograph in

the howitzer display

catapults as assault weapons. Black Powder allowed projectiles to travel greater distances with greater velocity, thus inflicting greater damage to the target. Projectile diameters ranged from 20mm to 16 inches. In the 1800's the development/discovery of Nitroglycerine and Trinitrotoluene (TNT), gave the artillerymen a projectile with greater explosive power and stability which led to making fortresses obsolete. Since the development of off shoots of TNT incombination with other explosives led to better fragmentation and specialized projectiles for ship to ship warfare using Explosives which could withstand high heat and friction to allow the projectile to penetrate the ship before detonation, antitank ammunition, and high velocity fragment ammunition. Military developed explosive could be melted and cast into shapes to allow specific munitions for special purposes to include the Atomic Bomb.

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Up until the about the time of the American Civil War the standard infantry rifle was the smooth bore musket. Although sturdy and durable, these weapons were highly inaccurate, with very short range. Forty meters were about the optima range and even then the chances were prettygood that the musket fire would miss. In consequence gunners who were one or two hundred meters away were basically invulnerable, could fire directly ay their targets. Rifling, the practiceof grooving the inside of the barrel of the gun tube was a rude shock. A projectile fired from a rifled gun tube was vastly more accurate, and had a much longer range, particularly if it was a breech as opposed to a muzzle- loading weapon. Muzzle-loaded rifled muskets had been around for more than a century. Soldiers using rifles (as opposed to smooth bores) were specialists. Their weapons were finicky and fragile, and reloading them was a laborious process. The rifled weapon only became truly practical on the battlefield when the technology improved to the point that the breech loading weapon firing a metallic cartridge became cheap and reliable .

Gunners suddenly realized that their traditional positions during battle turned them into so many targets. A volley of decently aimed rifle fire from a platoon of ordinary infantry could wipe out the whole battery of gunners, so the sensible thing to do was to move out of range. Movingled to a problem as the gunners could not see their targets. Artillery soon became a much more complicated affair. The gunners needed observers to watch the fall of the shells and relayback corrections. The relatively new idea of not being able to see your target was called indirect fire.

The development of rifling also played animportant part in artillery's development into apotent weapon In the 1860's. Robert Parrottstarted the rifling revolution, replacing thebrass cannon with a cast iron tube. Hedeveloped a new method for strengthening acast iron barrel with a band of wrought iron atthe breech, an inexpensive method ofmanufacture. A Parrot was able to hit a targetat 2,500 yards, twice the range of a smoothbore cannon. Rifling provides spin to theprojectile, thus assuring stability and most Civil War Parrott Gun

importantly, accuracy. Think of throwing a football, throw it end over end and it might go 15 yards, but if you throw it with a spiral it could travel 50 yards or more. A functional 3/4 scale Parrott Cannon, is on display in the Civil War Section of the Museum.

The difficulty for artillery designers lay in scaling up of the weapons. The forces required to propel a 75 millimeter-diameter shell were not simply ten times greater than what was requiredto propel a 7.6-millimeter shell, because the artillery shell weighed numerous multiples more that the bullet. This was made all the more difficult if the gun was a breech loader, since all rearward force was directed against this end of the barrel, which in order to operate properly,

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had to have a mechanism that allowed it toopen and close- otherwise the shell couldn'tbe loaded into the rear. But by the mid 1870s,The key breakthrough for the French wasmade by a military officer, Charles Ragon deBange, who figured how to design a breechmechanism that would handle the involvedforces. By 1878 his guns were in production,and in recognition of his abilities, Frenchgunners referred to almost all of the gunsdesigned during this period by his name, eventhough some were actually designed by someone 1918 Howitzer, 155mm ---

else. De Bange became the generic designation for all French Artillery designed right up until 1897. There was a trade -off involved with these new guns. Since the expanding gasses were much more powerful, the gun tube and its mount had to be considerably studier. Although advances in metallurgy meant that immensely stronger metal could employed, a certain mass was still necessary meaning that mass meant weight. If an artillery piece was going to mobile, able to accompany troops in the field, its weight was restricted to what could be pulled by a team of six horses .The concept worked out to a constant; that is to say, everybody's standard field gun turned out to be a weapon that fired around 80 millimeters over a relatively flat trajectory of about 6,000 metersaway. The shells fired by these gunscould do horrible damage to infantry, butthere explosive payload was too feeble todo anything much against fortificationsand, indeed, gunners mostly carried onlyshrapnel shells - effective only againstmasses of troops in the open.Heavier weapons were not simply thosefiring larger (heavier) shells, but guns thatweighed considerably more. Armies alldivided their artillery into two categories;Field artillery , as described above, andsiege artillery WW II Howitzer 105 mm

The guns hadn't change but the explosives used in the shells had. The new explosives were more powerful than what everyone had used before. By the 1870s , everyone involved understood the chemistry of high explosives. A whole family of nitrates, including Trinitrophenol (TNP) and trinitrotoluene (TNT) existed, and any competent chemist could make them in a school chemistry lab - provided he had the raw materials assuming he did not blow himself to glory, since TNT in its pure state was extremely volatile compound, and TNP was even worse - or better, in terms of explosive energy.

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A kilogram of the new material contained three or four times as much energy as what gunners had been using. The new melinite shells were dubbed: les obus torpilles, or torpedo shells, since, compared to the older shells, the new ones were more like naval torpedoes.

De Bange was no fool : his weapons, particularly the 120,-155-millimeter guns, were massivelyoverbuilt, could easily fire the new shells.

RECOIL REVOLUTION:

As the widespread adoption of THP as the preferred explosive material for shells was not enough of a challenge for the beleaguered engineers, by 1897,they were faced with yet another innovation, one that fundamentally transformed the nature of artillery and had an impact on the battlefield that was even more dramatic.

Although Sir Isaac Newton didn't work it out a law until 1687, every gunner realized that when he fired his cannon, the expanding gasses generated by the explosion did much more than hurl the cannon ball at the enemy. The gasses confined by the cannon barrel, also pushed back. This was a practical example of Newton's third law, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Gunners called it recoil. Fire the gun and it moved backward, shifted position.

Over the centuries, the recoil phenomenon got worse, first as the fit of the projectile in the barrel became tighter, and then, with theadvent of rifling, breech loading, and TNP, aserious problem.

Gunners who were required to move theirweapons from battle to battle had a bit of aproblem. The most practical way transport acannon was to mount the gun carriage onwheels and pull it behind a team of horses.When the gun was fired those same wheelsworked against you., as the gun would movebackward, or jump wildly.

As the problem became more acute, WW II Howitzer 105 mm

gunners came to depend more and more on mechanical devices to keep the gun from moving around each time it was fired. Not only was the movement dangerous to the gunners, but it meant that they had to manhandle it back into position, after each round, and aim it all over again. The more potent the gun, the worse the problem.

To dampen the recoil, gunners used mechanical wedges, ramps, and dirt – anything and everything that would absorb the energy As the range of guns increased, as indirect fire became the norm, the inherent weakness of mechanical recoil devices became more noticeable. As long as gunners were aiming directly at the target, simply sighting the gun as if it

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was a giant musket, the fact that it moved after each round was fired was not much of a problem. Indirect fire as it was, even at a relatively short range of, say 5,000 meters, a one -degree shift in position of the gun tube from one round to the next would mean that the second round would land nearly 100 meters from the first - and that was assuming the gunnerscould reposition the gun to within one degree of the initial position. In actual practice, the margin of error was significant.

DEVELOPMENT OF ARTILLERY RECOIL MECHANISMS:

By 1879, French artillery designers had come up with a truly elegant solution to the recoil problem. The gun tube was resting on a trough, attached to the gun mount by hydraulic cylinders. The gun, when fired, moves the barrel back, the cylinders absorbing the forces generated, and then recoils moving the barrel back to exactly the same position. The method had many advantages The gun tube remained in exactly the same position, indispensable for the indirect fire. The gun mount and carriage could be much lighter, since the hydraulic rams absorbed the shock of firing. nothing moved , the rate of fire increased dramatically. The new French field gun, the justly legendary 75, could in theory fire 15 rounds per minute, whereas the gun replaced could only fire three. Everybody's artillery was suddenly obsolete. The new French gun, on account of the of the shell, was the best field gun in the world. The French army’s 75 was lighter and hence more mobile The 75 had a much higher rate for fire, and its explosive shells had significantly higher payload of high explosive.

The 75 was the perfect gun of its type, and neither the Germans nor the Austrians were able tomatch it. By 1914, although the German and Austrian standard field guns had the same principal, their weapons were markedly inferior. The 75 is really a fascinating piece of machinery, because generally speaking , devices relying on new technology always have teething problems, and rarely deliver immediately on the claims of inverters, one reason being a failure on the part of the user to understand what he has. The superiority of the 75 was not mythical. It was better than its German counterpart, the 7.7 centimeter field gun, in two key prospects: It had a 1,400 meter range advantage firing shrapnel shells, and although the rangewas the same for both guns when firing high explosive shells, the French shells contained fivetimes as much explosives as did the German ones (0.650 as opposed to 0.160 kilograms). Had the armies of 1914 and after relied exclusively on field pieces of less than 88 millimeters, the French would have had a tremendous superiority. Unfortunately for the French, the battlefields of 1914-1918 would be controlled by a combination of heavy artillery, field howitzers, and infantry guns, principally mortars.

But the French put their faith in the 75. In 1914, a French army corps had 120 of them. The German army corps had only 108 7.7 centimeter field guns. But in addition Germany deployed36- 10.5 and 16- 15.0 centimeter howitzers. When the American army began doing tests they found that at distances from two to three thousand meters, the howitzer was two and a half times as accurate as the 75 millimeter field gun, and that over the practical range of both weapons, the howitzer would always do significantly more damage than the field gun. Multiplying out the values obtained by the American experiments suggest that each German

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infantry division had had as much killing power in its 105millimeter howitzers as did all the artillery of a French Division. Given that enormous advantage, a German army corps simply outgunned its French (or British) counterpart.

General Information

The U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum located in Huntsville Alabama is a 501c3 not-for-profit organization. There are more than 30 historical military vehicles from World War I to the present as well as artifacts and other memorabilia dating back to the Revolutionary War. Displays include a "Merci" 40 et 8 boxcar from World War I, a Cobra attack helicopter, a collection of jeeps, Sherman tanks and Stuarts, a half-track and flags, maps, uniforms and other artifacts from every U.S. conflict. The Museum is located just west of Memorial Pkwy in John Hunt Park at 2060A Airport Road, Huntsville, Al 35801. The U.S. Veterans Memorial Museum is dedicated to promoting the accomplishments of American military men and women.

The Museum's web page is www.memorialmuseum.org. The Museum email of is Info@memorialmuseum.org.If you would like to be removed from our mailing list, send “REMOVE” to Info@memorialmuseum.org.

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