Rightwire. I was shooting arty in the late fifties, early sixties. We also used aiming stakes. The aiming stakes are just a straight line reference to the azimuth of your gun. All adjustments were made off that. Elevation was adjusted with a gunners quadrant which had a bubble like a carpenters level. This was set on a ledge parallel to the bore axis and the elevation run up and down until the bubble was level at the required number of mills.

Everyone should please note that at least in training, no gun is fired until a safety officer verifies the settings of powder. deflection and elevation. Elevation and deflection are read from the stakes and the gunners quadrant. Powder charge is confirmed by counting the "unused" bags.

All of this is of no used if the gun is "laid" incorrectly. I can not verify this story that was going around when I was at Fort Sill, but supposedly someone laid a gun 180 degrees in the wrong direction. When the gun was fired, an inert 200 lb round was launched into a residential area of Lawton instead of the range.

In 1987 I started life as a 13B. Trained on the M198 then got assigned to a mech unit on SP 8" (M110). After a special weapons assignment overseas I offered to reenlist only if they'd let me reclassify 13F, which they did. I've been on both ends of the Artillery business as an enlisted guy.

Shooting the guns was always a good time and remarkably heavy work. The M110 used hydraulics for everything, elevation, traverse, and ramming. Woe be unto you if you let the electric "5 horse" hydraulic pump run the gun batteries dead because now you're pumping up the hydraulic pressure by hand until somebody can slave the gun to get the engine started again. That was a long night. Gutpile Charlie, for us the section chief was in charge of each round fired. He verified deflection, quadrant, charge, and fuse for each round. His stripes were on every round that went downrange. A collimeter was the primary aiming device with the aiming stakes as a backup. I was also the platoon Gunnery Sergeant's driver and my responsibility on the advanced party was to set up the aiming circle. I still remember the acronym "SAD ULU" - "Subtract the azimuth of fire from the declination constant, then upper, lower, upper." Did I get the right 30 years later?

13F was the best job in the Army. Loved running around with the grunts and loved calling in artillery fire. It was the the days just before GPS so we still did a lot of manual adjusting fire. We had a nice laser and computer in our FIST-V but it wasn't eye safe so it could only be used on the OP's at the artillery impact area. It would have been handy to use at the NTC during my one rotation there. As much fun as it was calling in fire, I grew weary of living in the field. We went to the field whenever the Infantry mortars, the Infantry BN, or the Artillery BN went out. Too many cat holes, too many MRE's, too many cold nights.

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Originally posted by redleg2/9:

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You may be confused. "Proximity" and "VT" fuze are the same thing; the names are used interchangeably.

You are correct, I am going back 50 years to '68 - '69, and can legitimately claim senior moment/ brain fart.

I was not a "gun bunny", so I had no hands on the fuzes. My MOS was 13E20 (FDC) and had learned all that at Fr. Sill. In Nam I was Artillery Liaison and occasionally an informal F.O., or RTO. In other words, controlling and coordinating all the direct infantry support and Counter Mortar /Counter Rocket, "H" and "I", and playing outside the wire with the grunts. I happen to be dyslectic, so I avoided all FDC work once I got to Nam.

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I was 13E20 from Sill, too, 1965-'67. I worked FDC in Korea, direct support, towed 105s. I did the OCS lite course in survey and FO, that put me back from my original class that went to VN.

That was some job you had, I'm impressed!

I was a battery XO in the late '70s in a pig battalion. Smoke and I would set up 2 aiming circles - one to lay the battery and the other to double check/safe the battery for lay. I was also the safety officer, running around checking the deflection, quadrant, bubbles and charge on each of the six howitzers; sometimes the time setting on smoke, illum, HE/Time and HE/VT projos when fired. Probably the worst time doing this was at night for a FFE that included VT or MT fuzes, dodging around equipment and camo nets.

We later moved to establishing a training program in which we certified section chiefs to be their own safety officer.