Hi Guys, can anyone tell me who makes a kit of the correct 155mm howitzer used by US firebases during the Vietnam war?
Any help would be appreciated, thanks and regards, Ed

If you are talking the towed howitzer it is the M114A1. As far as a perfect kit.....no one. You can pick up the old Perless M1 155 Howitzer. This is modeled after the WWII version which became the M114 and then M114A1.

You can use that as the base kit but you will have to scratch build the modifications.....if you want to be technically correct. If you are looking to build something that "generally" looks correct, then the kit is fine.

If you are looking self propelled, then it is the M109 which Italeri made a kit. They also made a kit of the M019A2 version. I have to checkbut if it was used it was later in the war.

You can find any of these kits from time to time on ebay. They are all currently out of production.

Any other questions or if you need more details, feel free to pull my lanyard!

Rounds Complete!!

Thanks Gary and Mike, I wasn't sure what model was used for towed arty. I'm an armor guy and have lots of ref for sp's and tanks, but little for arty. Thanks much! Now I just have to locate a howitzer

done both kits at onetime or another, and Mike's right. Neither is exactly right. Peerless has the barrel right; where the Testors kit has it completely wrong. The carriage for the M1 thru M114 are similar but not exactly the same. The M114a1 has a slightly longer barrel than the others with a machined groove at the muzzle (what for I don't know). The Testors kit has the jack system used in Vietnam, and for the life of me I can't remember what Peerless used. The older jack system used a vertical gear and rack to elevate the carriage. While the later ones used a screw jack system that cranked horizontally. I looked over a Korean War 155 howitzer awhile back, and the main thing I noticed was that most of the brackets were different when compaired to a Vietnam era piece.
I never saw a 155 with the gear and rack jack system in Vietnam. Also never saw a 155 with a groove machined at the muzzle. To take this further I never knew there was such an animal till somebody here posted a pic of one the Marines had on display (they had the barrel painted as well; which of course is dead wrong)
gary

Hi Gary, thanks for the help! You wouldn't by chance have any photos from your visits to those pieces would you?
Thanks to all for the help, best regards, Ed

If you check on E-Bay under military models there are always some.

are you refering to the Korean War piece?
gary

The Testors/Italeri kit is the old Peerless kit retooled to replace the metal parts (gun tube, springs) and vinyl tires with all plastic.

Hi Gary, I just found some good pics on Primeportal, also found some sites on firebases that even have the pics I need!! Thanks again for the help and info and thanks to all who responded with help and info. The biggest arty peice I got to mess with was the M203 grenade launcher! For the most part I humped an M-60, smallest guy in the platoon with the biggest gun!
Thanks again guys!

I lived with the pig for fourteen months and twenty one days forty years ago. Won't say I know everything about a 155 howitzer, but do know enough to get by. And yes I know the workings of the hog (M60) all too well! I weighd 147lb. wet. When I was an FNG a guy walked up to me and put one in my hands; along with two barrels, one and a half cleaning kits, half a case of LSA, a little tobacco bag full of springs and firing pins, plus a box of cigars. I carried that thing most everywhere I went for about three and a half months during the spring of 1968. Then a handfull of new guys showed up, and I did the same exact ritual.
The one thing I soon learned about that hog was that when the neighbors dropped by to collect the rent you soon became the center attention (they had no sense of humor and I was sorta nieve). Did you ever sit down and figure the weight of your combat load? I'd die right now if I had to carry that stuff a city block!! Let alone in 110 degree sunshine.
*three 300 round belts wrapped around you
*one extra barrel (somebody else took the second one
*cleaning kit(s)
*six to eight bottles of LSA
*the 28lb. hog
*small rucksac with four pairs of sox, three tee shirts and one set of jungle fatigues, and some stuff to write with plus two extra pairs of shoe laces
*one 45 pistol with five loaded mags
*a couple smoke grenades and three frags
*a Stone knife with a six inch blade plus a pocket knife and a couple small screw drivers
*a pair of asbestos gloves and a head space gauge wired to the outside of one of them
*every fourth day I also had to carry a radio battery (four of us had one all the time)
*two quarts of water and five packs of C-rats
*mess kit silverware
*sometimes a flak jacket

my number two man carried five belts, a forty five, and either an M16 or a Winchester Mod.12 plus an M79 slung over his back and the extra barrel. He also carried the asbestos gloves and headspace gauge too. (lightweight!!)
gary

EDIT: You ought to know by now that the smallest guy always gets to dance with the hog!!

Any manufactures make a metal gun barrel for the 155mm other than the Peerless? If you had both the Testors and Peerless kit with some scratch work a good model could be obtained? What kind of resource material is available, would the Tankograd M1 155mm book be the right book? I'm also working on the Italeri M1A1 105 Howitzer and looking for material as well. I've seen a Tankograd book for the M2A1 105mm would this be the right book as well?
Thanks,
Chris

keep in mind that there really has only been four or five 155 howitzers in modern history of the U.S. Military (towed). The first one is a somewhat obscure animal, and doubt it saw much if any combat. The one most folks think of is the WWII and Korean war version. That's the one with the vertical gear & rack setup for the jack plate. Sometime later they changed the jack to a screw thread system and that's the one in the Testors kit. Other than the jack there is little difference between any of them except for mounting brackets and maybe one of the shields if memory serves me right. With that in mind the book should serve you well.

Barrel! The barrels were chrome plated steel that had a ground finish on them. NO paint! But they were almost always given a coat of grease daily. Now I did some measurments sometime back, and making a barrel isn't that hard. Somewhere I have all the numbers written down. Seems like a .250" piece of aluminum with an 11/64th hole drived in the center will get you started. The O.D. will have to be sanded down or turned to about .234" (I maybe be off here as I'm going by memory). Seems like the ground finished part of the barrel is about 57" long and would have to be stubbed into the back half of the barrel. Next time I head down there I'll take a tape measure.

And lastly the tires are completely wrong in the Testors kit!
gary

Howdy Gary, how did the headspace procedure for the M60 MG work? Outta here, Mike sends . . .

the head space was fixed
gary

Howdy Gary, so why would you and your A Gunner have Head Space gages wired to your Asbestos Mittens? Outta here, Mike sends . . .

As mentioned, there has only been one kit of the M114 howitzer, though it was slightly modified over the years. Peerless Max issued it around 1977 (Max was the Japanese manufacturer, Peerless the US distributor), and it came with some metal parts, including a piece of stainless steel tubing for the barrel, with a plastic insert for the muzzle (since the walls of the pipe were too thin for a scale gun tube). Max folded in the late '70's, and their molds went briefly to Tomy, but they were quickly sold off. In the early 1980's, the Max molds went to Italeri (after a short stop with Airfix, who issued a few of the kits, but not the howitzer). Italeri didn't want to mess with multimedia, so the metal springs and gun tube were replaced with new plastic parts. Testors imported them into the USA for a while, so you may see them in Testors Italeri boxes. More recent issues come in a regular Italeri box.

Only when playing with the fifty. I never wired anything to that one asbetos glove. Sorry to confuse you. I might add here that we all felt the idea of setting the headspace on the M2 tobe a crap shoot. Sometimes it worked just fine, and othertimes it was try again. I'm not a Browning anything fan in case it matters
gary

Howdy Gary, you are the one whom said you wired the M60 Headspace gage to the asbestos mitten, go see your post. Which is odd as most Joes in the field with M60s would have no need for them. And how is setting the Head Space and Timing on the M2 a crapshoot? You either know how to do it or not. It is a basic soldier skill, especially for a combat dog like yourself. So your unit was humping arond with a .50 Cal too? Who were you with over in the "Nam' anyway? Outta here, Mike sends . . .

Hmmm... SF going back to the Kimber 1911. Everyone in the free world using the fi'ty. Several nations still using the .30. And many armies I've worked with still using the Browning Hi-power as well. I'd say he had his $#!+ wired pretty tight.
You're not a fan of the Tech-9 by any chance...?

One of the benefits that came with being in an artillery battery in Vietnam was that each battery had an allotment of M-2 .50 cals for anti-aircraft protection. (At least the Marine batteries had 4 of them apiece.) In addition to the truck mounts, we also had 4 AA ground mount contraptions and tripod and T&E mechanisms.

The Marine batteries also were alloted two bulldozers, but we never saw those in the field and had no truck/trailer combinations to move them with the battery. I always found that difficult to understand until I returned to modeling. It appears that the dozers were initially on the TE as prime movers for the guns. Later, after the Marine Corps discovered trucks, they were replaced, but a couple tractors were retained for dragging the guns through unpleasant places and for setting up field fortifications. Naturally, the genius that allotted the tractors made no provision for moving them at highway speeds with the rest of the battery's vehicles.

If memory serves me correctly, the machined ring near the muzzle of the M-114A1 was used to hold a strap that, in turn, held a couple of crossed "wires" used to boresite the piece. There should also be a couple machined slots right on the muzzle that held the wires in position at right angles. The wires were laid in the grooves and then placed under the stap to hold them in position. A steel plate with a hole in the center was inserted into the breech of the piece and the cross hairs aimed at the boresiting board. The pantel was them adjusted to its target on the board and the piece was boresited.

The M-1917/M-1918 155mm Howitzer was updated (high speed tires) and used in WWII until the M-1 155mm Howitzer was brought on line. The M-1 155mm howitzer had a stable-mate - a 4.5 inch gun. It was not used much in WWII. There used to be a line of those bad boys at Ft. Sill. We practiced laying the guns on them....getting familiar with the pantels and aiming circles. No one knew much about them except they were an odd British caliber. The 4.5 inch gun also had the machined surface that Gary spoke of.

I think Gary was speaking of my pics of the M-114A1 at Camp Lejeune. He is absolutely correct that the barrel of the weapon was machined steel and not painted. My guess is that the 10th Marines chose to not spend Marine time continuing to maintain and polish the tube...so they just threw a coat of aluminum paint on it to simulate the machined surface. It's difficult to find a display piece anywhere that is kept in near-functioning condition.

Lastly, the M-109A1's and later models were not used in Vietnam. The M-109A1's were just being introduced in 1971/72 just as the war in Vietnam was winding down. None of those guns were deployed in country to my knowledge.

Semper Fi,
Dave

Robert -

I hear what you're saying.....but what's Browning done for us lately??? I mean his stuff is almost a hundred years old and still in use...but show me the plastic. Where are all the sexy camo colors? The guy had no sense of marketing or sex appeal. All he really did was create very straight forward, effective killing machines that have stood the test of time.

I really need to replace my 1911A1 one of these days, if I can ever find another pistol I'd trust my life with!!



Semper Fi,
Dave

What was even better was some of the SP units would have a Duster on each end....great support weapon!!!

Old Ma Duce has taken care of many a soldier over the years....every soldier loves Ma!!!

As far as the M1911A1....yep, I agree....close in it was the best....sort of like Raid for the enemy....guarnteed to kill them...

Nothing like a group of old redlegs boresighting stories

Rounds Complete!!

Yeah, the barrel needs updating! The metal kit part is much too thin & has no rifling where photos show this rifling to be very prominent. Now hear this, Barrel Depot!: We need a 155mm rifled metal barrel for the M114 155mm howitzer used in Vietnam! Please?
Ed, if you do get any info back then let me know, please? I'm building this kit too!
Good luck.
Joe.