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Responsible howitzer owner shells house 5km away...

catsmate

No longer the 1
catsmate
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Claims "freak accident"...

An Oklahoma home was damaged last weekend by a 105mm artillery shell fired from a gun range some 5km away at a the Oklahoma Full Auto Shoot and Trade Show. The 15kg inert shell struck a tree and the ground before ploughing through an exterior wall, hitting a ceiling and an internal wall.

No-one was injured.

The range owner, Mike Friend, insists the historic weapon was safely fired by professionals in a downward projection.

It was not on a level plane, but on a downward trend, pointed downhill in the bottom of a valley. For that thing to rise and go far northwest of the range, it’s just unheard of.
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Link.
 
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Well, as long as it was safely fired by professionals, no harm done. Nothing to see here; move along.
 
catsmate1 said:
The 15kg inert shell struck a tree and the ground before ploughing through an exterior wall, hitting a ceiling and an internal wall.
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It sounds like they turned their howitzer into a field gun.

For many centuries until the artillery fuze became practical, it was the standard tactic to use cannon to mow down troop formations by bouncing the projectile across terrain.
 
The shell traveled 5 km after being pointed at the ground? It's not that surprising. This is what happens when you make cannon rounds out of flubber.
 
The gun range owner has agreed to pay for any damages from the accidental artillery shooting, but Kelley questions whether such weapons should be legal to use.

“The people that bring these type of weapons need to think about whether it is really safe and an appropriate area to take a weapon of that magnitude and shoot it,” Kelley said.
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It is just too bad that they managed to hit the home of a freedom hater.

”He who gives up freedom for safety deserves neither.” -- Ben Franklin
 
The school needs to do an analysis to determine what happened, why and how to prevent it. But it happens to the best of them.

Many years ago when I was assigned to Hq. & Hq. Battery III Corps Artillery at Ft. Sill there was a similar incident, though not as dangerous. I was with an NCO driving the test firing range to check the field wire lines. There were several units practice firing. At one point as I drove along the NCO exclaimed, "Oh man look at that!"

I turned to see an air burst -- a puff of smoke caused by an exploding shell -- over Ft. Sill's heavily populated barracks and administrative area. Some how a round had been fired the wrong way (?) and luckily had exploded in the air. The sergeant and I drove around checking the units that were practice firing but nothing seemed amiss. We had no possible way to explain what we had seen. But we saw artillery firing rounds every single day and we knew an air burst when we saw it. I never heard any more about it.
 
newyorkguy said:
...Many years ago when I was assigned to Hq. & Hq. Battery III Corps Artillery at Ft. Sill there was a similar incident, though not as dangerous....At one point as I drove along the NCO exclaimed, "Oh man look at that!" I turned to see an air burst -- a puff of smoke caused by an exploding shell -- over Ft. Sill's heavily populated barracks and administrative area. Some how a round had been fired the wrong way (?) and luckily had exploded in the air...I never heard any more about it.
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It was a long time ago but as I think about I believe I did hear something else about it. The sergeant and I were not the only people to have seen it. In fact I believe a colonel in some office saw it and made inquiries. I don't really remember if anything came of it.

The reason the incident the other day at the Oklahoma Full Auto Shoot and Trade Show jarred my memory was -- in case anyone doesn't know -- Ft. Sill is also in Oklahoma.

Maybe it's something in the water? ;)
 
Gawdzilla said:
Crane Naval Ammunition Depot had a similar event back a few years ago. About 50 years ago, IIRC. In those days you keep things like that out of the papers.
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newyorkguy said:
The school needs to do an analysis to determine what happened, why and how to prevent it. But it happens to the best of them.

Many years ago when I was assigned to Hq. & Hq. Battery III Corps Artillery at Ft. Sill there was a similar incident, though not as dangerous. I was with an NCO driving the test firing range to check the field wire lines. There were several units practice firing. At one point as I drove along the NCO exclaimed, "Oh man look at that!"

I turned to see an air burst -- a puff of smoke caused by an exploding shell -- over Ft. Sill's heavily populated barracks and administrative area. Some how a round had been fired the wrong way (?) and luckily had exploded in the air. The sergeant and I drove around checking the units that were practice firing but nothing seemed amiss. We had no possible way to explain what we had seen. But we saw artillery firing rounds every single day and we knew an air burst when we saw it. I never heard any more about it.
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A few years ago (actually quite a few it was when I worked there in the late '90s) one of the ceremonial gun salutes fired by (I believe) the RHA accidentally had a live 13 pounder shell fired over Central London. It ended up in the mud down by one of the Docklands developments and didn't explode.
That cost quite a bit to hush up...
 
catsmate1 said:
A few years ago (actually quite a few it was when I worked there in the late '90s) one of the ceremonial gun salutes fired by (I believe) the RHA accidentally had a live 13 pounder shell fired over Central London. It ended up in the mud down by one of the Docklands developments and didn't explode.
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I have no idea whether to be more scandalised by the quality of British safety protocols, or the quality of British ammunition!
 
newyorkguy said:
It was a long time ago but as I think about I believe I did hear something else about it. The sergeant and I were not the only people to have seen it. In fact I believe a colonel in some office saw it and made inquiries. I don't really remember if anything came of it.

The reason the incident the other day at the Oklahoma Full Auto Shoot and Trade Show jarred my memory was -- in case anyone doesn't know -- Ft. Sill is also in Oklahoma.

Maybe it's something in the water? ;)
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Speaking of OK, the thing that strikes me as out-of-kilter:

It was not on a level plane, but on a downward trend, pointed downhill in the bottom of a valley. For that thing to rise and go far northwest of the range, it’s just unheard of.
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Admittedly I haven't been to every area around OK, but "downhill" and "valley" just don't fit with much of OK more than few tens of miles west of the AR border. There are a few rills and dips here and there, but nothing I would much qualify as a hill or a valley. Looking at the video of the range, it is apparent that "hill" and "bottom of a valley" are at best, exaggerations.

Additionally, while not an expert, I have a bit of familiarity with artillery. If the piece isn't properly set and prepared, and especially if it wasn't a full/normal charge, the piece can "buck" a bit before the round has left the barrel. That may have been enough to elevate the trajectory above the gentle slope of the slight depression that the piece was sitting in.
 
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Seismosaurus said:
I have no idea whether to be more scandalised by the quality of British safety protocols, or the quality of British ammunition!
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A colleague who was in REME in the 1980s would say that's traditional.

This week he told me that a lot of the grenades had fuses with "variable" timings. Apparently range days with grenades were interesting as one wasn't allowed to leave the range if there was an unexploded grenade.
 
Seismosaurus said:
I have no idea whether to be more scandalised by the quality of British safety protocols, or the quality of British ammunition!
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Well to be fair, the 13 pounder wasn't in active service and the ammunition was probably decades old.

jimbob said:
A colleague who was in REME in the 1980s would say that's traditional.

This week he told me that a lot of the grenades had fuses with "variable" timings. Apparently range days with grenades were interesting as one wasn't allowed to leave the range if there was an unexploded grenade.
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Early in WW1 the gunners had no little faith in the safety of the fuses that they often removed them before firing, hence a hell of a lot of duds.
 
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