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Team Yankee Unboxing: M109 Field Artillery Battery
November 8, 2016 by dignity
We're bringing out the big guns as we take a look at the M109 Field Artillery Battery in this unboxing for Team Yankee.
Firing a range of different ammunition types and guided by laser designators from afar these will be helpful for any American force hoping to pummel the hell out of defensible enemy positions.
As well as being able to blast you apart they are also capable of laying minefields too so even after the bombardment has finished you might want to be careful!
Do you use these in your Team Yankee army?
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SAW actually stands for squad automatic weapon
Ah yes, the M249. Used to carry one, back in the Dark Ages. 😀
Meanwhile: Artillery! Yes!
“Splash, over.”
Re: really big guns on armoured cars that may seem too small to mount them, the French also indulge in this hobby. The ERC-90 and Panhard AML-90 are good examples. They’ve actually seen combat use for decades now, I can only assume they work rather well.
There certainly IS an M240, it’s just not the SAW. The M240 is the 7.62mm MG that’s often mounted on loaders / commanders hatches on tanks, etc. I think it’s built in America under license from a Belgian design, originally the FN MAG I believe.
A lot of SPH/SPH systems like the M109 Paladin series have a traversable turret to allow hasty engagement of several targets very quickly. A big terror for artillery is radar-directed counterbattery fire. You fire off your shells from miles away (way behind the hill, as John says), but the enemy actually TRACKS your shells via radar, plots that point of origin, gets a grid reference, and before you know it, you’re dead. The best defence against this is “shoot and scoot.” So the Paladin can deploy, rain shells on a couple of targets, and then rapidly displace before enemy counterbattery fire has a chance to take them out.
Not sure if that’s how it works in Team Yankee, that’s just how these systems work in actual service.
I TOTALLY DIDN’T know about firing the 155mm from outside the vehicle. Awesome tip! 😀
Yes, the “Ma Deuce” is a nickname for the M2. Actually I think the full designation nowadays is the M2HB (heavy barrel), which includes a heavier barrel to reduce climb and improve accuracy, especially when firing on automatic.
Yay! A shout out at 4:58! Ah, I’ve been missing those.
Never got to fire an M2 .50. One of my few regrets. I take solace in memories of putting twenty 40mm HE-FRAGs through a Mk 19 automatic belt-fed grenade launcher. Ah, a simpler time.
Minefield counter is included for FASCAM ordinance? Artillery-delivered mine fields? A great trick from the 1980s. The shells fire, the case opens up, and mines fall out and scatter across an area. The mines are not buried, of course, but it’s still a great area denial option.
The laser-guided rules seems to be referring to DPICM “copperhead” antitank missiles. DPICM = Dual Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions. Basically, the case opens, a Copperhead antitank missile emerges and engages off the reflected IR laser painted on a Warsaw Pact target by friendly infantry.
Minor correction here. DPICM is very different to Copper Head. The DPICM of the early 80s is the M483A1 which is a base ejecting payload shell holding a mix of Anti Personnel and Anti Armor Sub munitions, about 80 of them if i remember correctly. Towards the end of the 80s an an extended range version was developed utilising ‘Base Bleed” at the sacrifice of some of the sub munitions. The M864. Even though these are both base ejection shells they can both be fused to not base eject but to act as a single unitary shell if required,
The Copperhead is the M712 and it is indeed a terminally guided munition relying on the target to be “Illuminated” with a designator. Its reliability figures are truly abysmal. Below 30%, i dont know a single person who ever successfully fired one.
Wow, really? Okay. I must be getting the Copperhead and the “cluster munitions” conflated.
Quick check . . . and yep. I totally got those two mixed up. Thanks for the fix, @artyengineer .
I do remember in GDW’s Assault platoon-based 1985 tactical game, that those missiles didn’t hit very often. Nothing near the hit probability of a TOW or a Hellfire.
I also remember, facing a Soviet tank regiment of T-80s backed up by a battalion of BMP infantry, I called in an artillery delivered minefield ON some Soviet tanks. Wasn’t supposed to happen that way, in that game you have to call in rounds a turn in advance (regimental / division level) or two turns in advance (corps level), and sure enough, the Soviets moved through a small German village in a way I hadn’t expected. Then the rounds drifted . . . and bam. The lead Soviet commander opened his natch to find a FASCAM mine sitting on his turret roof right next to him. 😀
In hindsight, I don’t have much luck with these. Maybe I shouldn’t have commented. (just kidding). 😀
Artillery is kinda my “thing” 🙂
Never would have guessed. 😀
A friend of mine was at the M109 during his service time at the Bundeswehr. He told me a lot about them… specially that they bog down in loose sand very easily, can make craters where a Leopard tank can play hiding within and of course that they had to fire these things from outside… here’s the point where I was laughing. OK… safty first and if they have to fire directly they do this from inside. But their firing distance at direct fire is only about 800m. So when engaged by propper tanks it’s a bit close, isn’t it?
Btw. the German Artillery guys are all called “Bumsköppe” (Bump Heads) because they get a bump on their head with the barrel cleaning tool after firing their first round 😉
A drinking buddy of mine crewed some British versions of these in Gulf War 1. He told me about two actions that broke the normalty of “Drive there, shoot waaaaaaaaayyyy over there”.
Once they were ordered to advance into what they were told was now friendly territory. About 5 miles down the road it became apparent just how far they had accidentally penetrated enemy lines when a dozen Iraqi tanks appeared on the dunes not far away. Fortunately, the crews were quick witted enough to stop and level their guns for direct fire quickly enough that they destroyed all the Iraqi tanks for no losses of their own. Needless to say, the officer that had mistakenly sent them forward got quite a telling off when they got back to base!
Second anecdote involves a light tank (think he said it was a scorpion) recce tank attached to them that got lost in the desert when it suddenly found itself being pursued by 6 Iraqi tanks. For several miles the Iraqi tanks chased the scorpion through the dunes before the Brits became stuck in the loose sand and prepared to defend them selves to the last….. Only for the Iraqi tanks to drive right up to them and surrender!
ran a platoon of 6 and @lloyd blew all up before they could wreck havoc, git!
Sorry John, The M109s are most certainly fired with the crew inside, the only time a remote firing will occur is due to the weapon being returned from maintenance and first rounds always fired using a long lanyard.
https://youtu.be/TEHa2izgkQw
a great looking artillery vehicle.
“Splash Out”
“Add 50, fire for effect”
The Ma Deuce gets its nickname from its official designation: M2
Ma = M
Deuce = 2 (deuce is the nickname for the 2 card in the usual deck of playing cards)
So, Ma Deuce. The nickname has been around forever and dates back to at least the Vietnam War if not sooner.