Which way up?
What occurs to me about the practicality of that very high angle shot is the attitude of the projectile when it returned to earth. The gyroscopic effect due to spin does not reduce anywhere as rapidly as forward velocity and would, I believe, result in the projectile coming down base first. Presumably HE would be needed to have any effect on a target and the question arrises as to whether it would even detonate if impacting base first.
A mortar has tail fins and lack of spin to ensure arriving nose first.
IMHO firing a 25 pdr in the attitude depicted is no more than a stunt and of no practical use.
There used to be a fellow that was involved in ballistic testing and development of artillery during WW2 that wrote a column for a shooters magazine here in Oz. As part of the testing vertical firing for projectile recovery was carried out. The projectiles were arriving base first and so my doubts about results in this case.
David
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Hell no! I'm not that old!
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