Gentlemen,

I've started to do some research for an upcoming project: The M7 105mm HMC Priest.
During my quest, I ran into an small oddity...well, in my opinion that is.
I can't seem to find any pictures of a radio mounted in this vehicle, which seems rather strange, while this is a piece of armored artillery, and thus had to rely on good communications.
Can anyone clarify this for me?

Thanks in advance.

Grtz, John.

G'day John,

I might get this wrong and hopefully someone will clarify.

I asked the same question some years ago. As I recall, the answer was because the vehicles operated as a battery. Thus, they would get their firing instructions via field phone from the battery commander.

Steve

Most artillery pieces did not have radios in them until the late '80s - early '90s. The FA prefered to use wire and field telephones as a more secure and reliable method to relay firing data to the guns. Radios can be jammed, fail, or just not get good transmission from a certain location. Due to this and for computational requirements for a firing solution, the battery was usually lined up with about 50 meters between guns. No need for radios at that distance. When moving, they move in convoy and the command vehicles (jeeps for WWII) had radios interspersed in the march column to keep them straight.

Thanks guys,

It makes sence, I tend to forget how spoiled we are in these modern times, with our GPS's, radar's cell phones and all the other gizmo's.....

Thanks again for the quick answers,

John.