In Vietnam how many feet around and tall would the sandbag barrier around the 105's be. Here is a pic of my dad's 105mm gun pit that Im going to make into a diorama. I would ask him but I want it to be a surprize.

Hi Keenan,
scroll down at this page and you'll find some info on the layout of gunpits

http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/Vietnam/FA54-73/ch3.htm#p63

hope this is of some help,

good luck with your diorama (and please post your progress!)

Mark

Thanks Mark those diagrams will be very helpful.

We usually made the gun pits a bit larger than the length of the trails in radius. A couple of meters longer than the distance from the road weels to the spades would do. It appears that the gun pit in the pic is a bit larger than that. It amy well have been an old M-114 or even an SP pit. The marston matting in the pit was a nice field expedient when the terrain was muddy....particularly in monsoon season. You can see that the walls of the pit are made from 105mm ammo boxes...filled with dirt. We usually covered the ammo boxes with sandbags. If you don't cover with sand bags, you can end up with nasty splinters flying everywhere if you take incoming. The height of the walls of the pit for the 105's was usually up to just below the level of the muzzle.

As comforting as it might be to have a nice wall to hide behind, it was severely bad juju to mask the muzzle of the gun if the gooners started coming though the wire...you wanted to be able to hit them with "beehive" rounds.....a convincing form of interpersonal communications.

Improving field fortifications was a constant task. You improved them until you moved...then you tore them down, unless friendlies were going to occupy your position when you left.

In some cases, when a unit had been inb position for a while, the sandbags would be covered with tar to keep them from breaking down in the rains. The result would be a very shiny black surface. Another interesting addition (depending upon the tactical situation woudl be chain-link fences in front of the ammo, FDC and Comm bunkers. The chain link was to detonate the B-40's and RPG's before they hit the bunkers.

I have rambled...Sorry.

Dave

Whiskey6 were the ANZAC guns done the same way as yours or not ?
I too are in the middle of a build for my dad and there seems to be same conflict of set up one says yes and one the other.

I guy I talked to say that they dug a 360 degree trench for the spades to sink into so they could rotate the gun quickly. Here is my interpretation

Kiwi -

I don't know about the Australian artillery. I never had the pleasure of working with them or seeing their positions. I was privilaged to work with an Australian Warrant Officer who was assinged to the 21st ARVN Ranger Battalion. He was fantastic, a real professional.

Dave

Alan -

The spade trench looks fine to me. Depending upon the nature of the soil, the weather and the materials available, the gun crews would likely attempt to reinforce the trench with logs, rock....anything they could get their hands on to absorb the recoil and keep the trails from digging further into the dirt and displacing the gun.

I would suggest cleaning up all that trash you have laying around the gun pit, however. (Unless the battery officers and NCO's were a bunch of sorry puds.) That sort of lack of discipline gets people killed.

Even in the middle of a fire mission the crew would make every attempt to keep that junk from getting under foot and tripping them. Trash from opening the ammo boxes and packing, as well as unused powder bags is kept out of the gun pit entirely. Ammo is unpacked and charges are cut near the ammo bunker rather than in the gun pit. Near the ammo bunker should be a "powder pit" .....2 - 3 feet deep...... for safely holding the unused powder charges. The powder is burned after the fire mission. Normally you would also find either a fire extinguisher or a couple of fire buckets near the ammo bunker......yes, even in combat. Powder burns just as hotly in combat as it does at Ft. Sill.

The ammo bunker should becovered with sandbags, one well placed mortar round on that thing and it all goes up and the crew is crispy critters.

If the red and white posts are intended to be aiming stakes, the bands are out of scale and the stakes are positioned incorrectly. If they are simply quick direction-reference markers, then they are probably OK.


Semper Fi,
Whickey6

that looks like a 155 parapit. The walls would be about three feet to three and a half foot tall. The center was usually built much stronger than that one, so this probably means that the previous owners took the center base with them when they moved out. The backup part where the trails come to rest have been made in many different ways, and a lot of that depended on what the soil composition was like. A 105 was pretty easy on the the pit, where as a 155 would sometimes "blow" the pit out causing the gun to shift to the point that they had to call the piece out.
That center base was usually made from eight by eight oak timbers sunk into the ground. The rear would be 12" x 12" logs at the minimum, and we often used 16" ones. In front of the logs we would attached PSP plate (not like the WWII stuff). Then when we shifted the howitzer to a new azmuth, we would then place smaller logs between the spades and the PSP to prevent the gun from shifting anymore than it had to. (note all of them shifted a little on the very first round).
At one place we were at the soil was very black and moist, and we blew the parapits out on occassion. After two or three rebuilds we sank 55 gallon fuel oil drums that had the tops cut off. Inside the drums we would then place green bag powder canisters filled with sand and gravel. The fill the area around the canisters with wet sand. In front of the drums we would then place two 16" square logs ontop each other. Then the usual PSP plate and a refill of the area we had dug out to bring it back up to the same level as the rest of the pit. We blew one of those out once and had to re-enforce it with 12" square oak logs on the outside ofthe drums as well. Takes a lot of work to build a parapit right! And if it lets go, it becomes a 24/7 ditch digging nightmare till it's usable again.
gary

In your diorama the guys holding rifles wouldn't be there. All the expended canisters would be tossed out of the parapit area as well as left over powders charges. The rounds would never be laid on the ground, but on a tarp to help keep dirt out of the breech. The only people between the trails would be the gunner, assistent gunner, and loader. There would be another person outside the trails handing rounds or powder (often the section chief). At the very rear, but to one side or the other would be a guy on a land line phone recieving the data for the fire mission. Also to oneside would be another guy (or guys) prepping the ammo (cutting charges [105's], setting time on fuses, and relaying the next couple rounds to the left side of the gun. A 155 is almost a completely different setup, but still follows the same rules.
Normally at the start of a fire mission you will know how many rounds and what charges you'll be shooting so most of that work is being done while the gun is shifted to the correct azmuth. With a 105 shooting a two or three round zone sweep it gets really busy prepping the ammo and getting the ammo to the loader.
gary