WW2 RCA Gunner

Originally posted by Art Johnson
Karmen,"who loves you baby" but lassie you can sure come up with the questions
I am not a gunner but did serve with 6pdr A/T guns. Basicaly, and I stand to be corrected, there are two types of ammunition, Qwick fire and charged.
Qwick fire include the old 2pdr, 6pdr, 17pdr and 75mm mostly used on tanks. Qwick fire ammunition has the projectile attached to the cartridge casing
The 25pdr used by most Canadian Field Guns units was refered to as a Gun-How. It had the characteristics of a field gun as well as a Howitzer. It had a crew of 6 plus a driver.
Surprisingly enough the recall for the driver was the old semifore signal "H" for Horses.
The crew consisted of an aimer, a No. 2 who was resposible for loading, a man on the traverse handle and three people to pass the ammunition plus a Sergeant
The range of the 25pdr was approx 13,000 yards. There are incidents of the Artillery firing over open sights I don't recall any involving the Canadian Artillery.
George Blackburn has an interesting triology of the Artillery. He mentioned the fact of having a thermometor at the Limber site and the tempurature was taken into concideration when plotting a shoot.

Hi Art, and "Back at you baby"

Thanks a lot for the GUNNERS 101 For Idiots like me ... all very interesting to learn all the details of "all in a days work" on the actual jobs and tasks people had to do to pull things off ... from the tools of the trade and how they work, to the knowledge and skills needed.

I recall watching and listening to GEORGE BLACKBURN during the Liberation of Holland shows ... and Geoff has that trilogy of books Mister Blackburn wrote, sitting on his bookshelf just to my right from where I sit ... I'll look at them ...

I can't express my many reactions to all I've seen and heard over this whole 60th Anniversary time ... especially the interviews and footage of people who were there, civilians and soldiers ...

I owe you some more Drambuie for this!

Karmen