You like milsurp refurbs? Here's one of the bigger ones...

[Dark Alley Dan]

Hello, folks.

I was attending a shindig for my employer and one of the guest speakers was the CO of the local reserve arty outfit. We got talking, found some common ground, and the next thing I knew I was a guest at his office looking at this old lady:

Yep, a 25 pounder, 1943 Canadian production, missing a few bits but fireable.

Came home, warmed up the interwebs, sent a PM to XRCD011 to ask advice. He put me on to stencollector who has been both a gentleman and entirely invaluable in my efforts to find resources to get her back on her feet.

She's largely in one piece. The first thing that jumps out is that cut down gun shield. She was last used a s a funeral gun, carrying old artillerymen to their graves, doubtless with dignity and appropriate respect. The platform was laid atop the cut down shield and then attached to brackets welded at the muzzle and the breech. The brackets have been removed, but the scars remain:

The shield still has a number of useful brackets and such attached. Well be salvaging those.

At some point in her life, someone saw fit to sandblast her and then paint her green. The sandblasting did the wee plaques and notices no end of harm...

(I hope there's a source for replacements) and that green paint went everywhere. Note the traverse equipment is now brass and green paint:

Most of the markings are still very clear:

The bore rates NRA train tunnel:

"Light frosting in the grooves, should clean up well..."

Breech mechanism is functional and feels solid to my untutored hand.

Tires are solid - holding air and appear NOS - they still have the wee moulding hairs on 'em.

So here I am, utterly new at arty or projects of this size, and ignorant in the ways of very large guns. Step one in such situations is to RTFM. Alas, I can't find one. Been all over the internet, and come up empty. IWM in London will run me a copy of the one they have for about a hundred bucks, and make no guarantees of quality. If any of you know of one, please let me know.

There's an interesting political/financial angle on this job. The gun is currently the property of the Friends of the Regiment society and NOT National Defence. I'm told that this means there can be ZERO spillover in resources between ND and the organization that owns the gun. No parts can change hands, no transport resource can be employed, no labour on government time can be used. The RCA museum may have a ton of spare bits, but we can't access any of it. I understand this and am very OK with playing within the rules outlined by necessity, but it does make the job harder.

Things we need right now:
- sight mount
- associated sights
- uncut gun shield
- big-ol' round firing platform
- various bins, boxes, bags, ranging sticks, shovels and accoutrements to hang off the multitude of brackets, webbing, and such.
- a pull through about the diameter of a 2 litre pop bottle

Let me know what's out there, folks. If you know an old farmer who's using a firing platform to prop up the corner of his chicken coop, I want to talk to him. If you've seen the correct issue shovel in the corner of a neighbour's shed, tell me. If there's a suspiciously familiar big chunk of steel plate laying in the ditch near your house, send me a PM.

Thank you, hive mind. You've never failed me before. I'm anticipating great things.

Cheers,

Dan

 

[jibjedi]

What an exciting project to discover and take on. I don't know a thing about field guns, but I sure look forward to seeing the progress of this as you go along.

Best of luck with it! -TT

 

[Robert Nicholson]

Wonderful! I will keep an eye out for parts, FWIW. Any chance it may get test fired?

 

[Dark Alley Dan]

MANY obstacles to that goal, Robert, but maybe, in some distant day... Lotta paperwork between this old girl and live rounds.

By way of reference, here's a nicely turned out example. I'd like ours to look this good:

 

[Colossal Ursidae]

That's cool as hell, if you got it working where can this thing be fired, my range doesn't allow anything bigger than 50 BMG

 

[purple]

Britain's wonderful field gun, the 25 pounder. It seems the main reason why we went away from the 25 pounder to the 105 in the 1950s was the greater weight of the 105mm projectile. Both are really light artillery though. The big dogs all shoot 152/155mm.

 

[Suther]

That's cool as hell, if you got it working where can this thing be fired, my range doesn't allow anything bigger than 50 BMG

Yes, where do I have to go to see you fire this badboy?!? Lol

 

[buffdog]

.
I will see what we have in manuals for the 25 Pounder at the Canadian Military Heritage Museum in Brantford, Ontario. There are two guns there, a Mark I and a Mark II.

Every time I see a 25 Pounder it takes me back almost 60 years and a lot of shells fired from one. You will have to look for an ammunition Limber to go with it too.

 

[RRCo.]

I picked up a solid shot for a 25 Pounder last year. Quite a substantial piece of metal to have come crashing into your tank. 88mm too!

 

[maple_leaf_eh]

That's cool as hell, if you got it working where can this thing be fired, my range doesn't allow anything bigger than 50 BMG

That's for firearms. Artillery is not classed as a firearm. This could be fired across any field. The issue might be availability of enough projectiles to establish a group!

 

[Grizzly Adams]

So, what's the function of that cone shaped gizmo in the pics ?

Grizz

 

[donor]

I found "range scale cone".I imagine that's artillery specific version of mechanical calculator for determining range/load combo (firing solution?).

https://www.quora.com/How-were-tank-and-naval-guns-and-artillery-aimed-and-rotated-in-WW2

 

[Claven2]

For large artillery pieces, the range calculators account for azimuth correction as well as barrel elevation. A spinning projectile firing over large distances is affected and drifts due to its own rotation and the rotation of the earth.

These mechanical calculators let the artilleryman quickly approximate this for indirect fire and observers correct them onto target the rest of the way.

 

[XRCD011]

Looks like the gunners need to get the bore brushes to work. Sweet project.

 

[RRCo.]

Once read a war memoir by an Australian officer serving in a British regiment in 1944. They were being bothered by a German sniper in a tree maybe 800 yards away so they called for the FOO who came up with his maps, did some calculations, rang up the 25pdr. battery on the field telephone and about a minute later a single shell passed over and landed smack on said tree blowing tree and sniper to bits.

 

[buffdog]

.
The range cone is for the four charge loads that were used ---Charge 1, charge 2, charge 3 and super charge. The 25 pounder was loaded in two operations ---the shell was loaded into the breech where it was rammed home by the Number Two man on the right side of the carriage. The separate case had four bags of powder in it, all of them connected by a string. If, for example, you were firing Charge two, you cut the string between charges two and three, and discarded the top two charge bags. There was a type of wad, ( the Becket), that then was put back on top of the brass case, and the case was loaded into the breech behind the shell. The Number Three man, having set the appropriate range on the dial cone, then pulled back on a lever to fire the gun.

This system allowed for versatility, as you could fire over a hill like a mortar with charge 1, or out farther with charge 3. It was also easier on the gun, as you were nto firing full power loads each time. Super Charge was rarely used, and then only if being attacked by armour. With the 25 pounder on the round base, you could actually fire 360 degrees if you needed to as it was easy to move the gun round.

 

[Dark Alley Dan]

Update:

Found a downloadable copy of the manual. Thirty bucks later, it's sitting on my hard drive in PDF format.

"Cool" thinks I. "Print that sucker, throw it in a binder, and we're off to the races." Except it's protected and won't print. Bugger. Sent an email to the vendor, who has yet to respond.

Was in touch with the Limber Gunners in Toronto (owners of a pair of guns, plus the limber and a Field Artillery Tractor (FAT). The gentleman there has directed me to a few sources of info. Good contact. Also touched base with a fellow from the Montreal group that owns and operates a gun like ours in the same we we hope to.

Projects like this take time. I'll keep you updated as we go. Whenever we start taking bits off, I'll post pics.

Cheers,

Dan

 

[D King]

I thought that gun was deactivated. I've been walking past it every week for the past 3 years and thought the shiny bit near the muzzle break was a deactivating weld. Huh.

 

[Dark Alley Dan]

That shiny bit is where they ground off the weld from the funeral bier. Breech drops, looks workable to me...

 

[Tyler]

A very cool project! We expect updates.

I don't know what it is... but the second I saw that bore, I just felt an urge to go at it with a jug of CLP and a bore scrubber. It... just... bothers me.