Artillery Salute Protocols

[David Dunlop]

In all the years I have watched a Field Artillery Battery provide a formal salute at an event, I have only ever seen a misfire once, and I cannot recall at all how it was handed. It was a 25-pdr salute in Winnipeg at a Decoration Day event in Winnipeg in the 1950's. It was my Dad and Uncle that actually noticed the misfire. I was too busy bouncing up and down with each shot and cloud of smoke!

Can the Gunners weight in on this? Is there a procedure in place to cover this sort of thing, since I would assume the gun that misfired would have some sort of wait period before clearing the misfire and reentering the salute.

David

[rob love]

Disclaimer: I am not, nor ever have been a gunner, so these are the by the book answers, and the manual quoted is from 1962. Things may have changed since then.

I read something about the drills a little while ago, and spare ammunition is carried in the event of a misfire.

Here is the text from the Canadian Army Manual of training for the M2A2 (C1) howitzer wrt blank fire and misfire of the blank. The meat of if it is 15 seconds minimum between shots on a gun and 1/2 hour pause in the even of a misfire.

I have the gun drills for 25 pdr if you specifically want that gun's drill.

Here is a RCA webpage that specifically covers the remembrance day salutes that you may find interesting: http://canadianartillery.ca/news/gun-salutes-11nov/

[Bruce MacMillan]

Our procedure with the 1916 3" AA gun is to wait 30 seconds and try a restrike. The firing pin can be removed without opening the breech. It is re-cocked and re-inserted. If it doesn't fire the second time water is put down the barrel (we use black powder) and a 30 minute count down starts. Only after that time is the breech opened and round removed.

We've only had 1 misfire and it fired on the second strike. After 100 years the firing pin was a little offset and didn't hit the primer properly. Been fixed since.

Hopefully all goes well for Remembrance Sunday when the WW1 gun fires the start of the two minute silence and our WW2 25 pounder marks the end.

[John McGillivray]

I experienced a misfire on a C1 once when firing a salute at the graduating ceremony at CMR St Jean in 1974 or 75. It is very disconcerting when as a gun commander you yell Fire and only hear a click and no boom. We replaced the firing lock and tried again on the next go around with the same result. We then sent our ammo to the other guns and waited 30 min. or more before the TSM and BQMS unloaded the blank round. And yes the primer cap was struck.

[rob love]

Reading the above two responses, along with the phrase in the manual of "the normal misfire drill is carried out" I had a look at the misfire section where it relates to normal firing. It is quite a bit more indepth, and notable is that the wait time is 1 minute vice the 30 minutes for a blank. It includes a methodical system of checks and solutions as to the cause of the misfire.