Picture of the day

And back to some pictures

25pdrconstruction.jpg



308800776b0a9ae67d146d52d4a092bc.jpg
 
And back to some pictures

25pdrconstruction.jpg



308800776b0a9ae67d146d52d4a092bc.jpg

The British 25-Pounder Gun-Howitzer was originally designed as a weapon capable of taking on a dual role, that of a traditional field gun with its relatively flat trajectory, and that of a howitzer with its high angle of fire. The 25-Pounder was developed from the 18-Pounder which saw extensive service in the First World War. The gun fired a 3.45 inch (11.4Kg)25 pound (11.4 Kg) shell to a range of 11,500 yards (10515 metres), but with a supercharged propellant could achieve 13,400 yards (12,344 metres). Ammunition types included HE (High Explosive), AP (Armour Piercing), Smoke, Flare and Star-shell. A Gun Crew could fire 10 rounds per minute
 
Canadian gun crews at Cassino achieved a pretty high rate of fire...I wouldnt speculate on the actual RPM but a Canadian Brigadier gunner I knew who was there confirmed (proudly) the story that the interrogated German POW's thought the Canadians had an autoloading gun! I never fail to enjoy telling that story!
 
Recomended reading about Canadian forces using the 25 pounders in Normandy, The Guns of Normandy by George G Blackburn.
The rates of fire were astounding as were the total number of rounds fired. Blackburn also relates the story of Germans believing that the Canadians were using autoloading artilery pieces.
 
Was the 25 pounder the gun on the Priest?

No it was on the Cdn built ###ton. The Priest had the US 105mm howitzer.

Small world story. Our neighbour on the farm served in the 3rd Div divarty which was equipped with Priests during the early days in Normandy. These were soon swapped out for 25pdrs leaving the Priests available for conversion to Kangaroo APCs for use during Op Totalize. My uncle worked day and night on the conversion process. It wasn't until 50 years later that they got to swapping stories and learned about their respective duties with the Priests.
 
Ya gotta wonder why the Rising Sun flag wasn't banned when the Japanese weren't much better than the Nazis when it came to concentration camps, ill treatment of conquered people, POWs, etc. But - they weren't practicing genocide on a massive, state sanctioned scale.

The Japanese hated everyone who was not Japanese. They didn't single out specific racial groups for extermination, they did that indescriminately. Somehow that's better.
 
The Japanese hated everyone who was not Japanese. They didn't single out specific racial groups for extermination, they did that indescriminately. Somehow that's better.

Sort of like Dirty Harry described by the Hotdog eating cop (You know what makes me really sick to my stomach? It's watching you stuff your face with those hot dogs. Nobody... I mean NOBODY puts ketchup on a hot dog.) in 'Sudden Impact' “Harry's not racist, he hates everyone”
 
You would be surprised at the level of detail that was available from aerial photographs of the time.

Aaaaand that triggered me... I had to go look to find some examples of German aerial photography from WWII

Came across this site:

(warning! eye bleedingly bad web design)

http://www.wwii-photos-maps.com/

Clicked through a bit, and it's an absolutely massive archive of WWII photography etc.

Interesting shot of Sevastopol from a German aircraft... Haven't sorted out the legends yet, so don't know date/time etc. But looks to be a fairly high altitude "overview" pic. I don't have a lot of trouble imagining that a lower altitude shot would be able to pick out unit markings on a tank.

TUGX2316SG-040843--148.jpg


(right click and "view image" - if you have a big, high definition monitor, you'll be amazed at some of the detail that comes out).

The web design on that site and navigation are abysmal... Looks like late 90's early 00's design, that's just been left up and running.
 
Great War aerial photography was also pretty good.Bigger problem was getting getting those pictures back to your side.Unstable aircraft and long exposure time wasn't helping either.

nrilvti.jpg
 
One development of aerial photography was a metal detection photography .

For example, if your camouflaged truck was parked under a tree with the hood not covered by the tree, the hood would show up as red compared to the green of the rest of the photograph.

There was also talk that footprints across a grass field being delectable.
 
I had a 35mm 'Luftwaffe Robot' with a tele Xenar 75mm...it shot a square format picture... resolution was pretty darn good with panatomic film and rodinal (back in 'the day') not sure what the luftwaffe used for film..but even in the small format..they would be able to get pretty good imagery. As for the 'metal' sensing film...perhaps that was IR sensitive film that has been around a ling time and can be sensitive to some heat sources...such as a hot truck hood with a warm engine under it?
 
Back
Top Bottom