The latest news from Utah !The state of Utah uses the 105 Howitzer to knock down snow to prevent avalanches. They put too much powder in a charge and it went over the mountain and landed in some ones backyard in Pleasant Grove Utah !!

mete, it seems they need a fire direction control officer there. I am available at the right price. Charlie

They do need to address the issue of marginal bullet performance. Only managed to blow up a shed, and leave a 6 foot crater in the yard. I would have expected much better performance from a 105!

The test media must be taken into consideration, was it muddy, or firm, or frozen?

As to the powder charge, they did not put to much in, they did not take out the appropreate number of powder bags. There are seven different powder increments (bags) in the 105mm howitzer case.

Any way you look at this event it is a BIG Woops.

Hog Killer

They used to use Recoiless rifles to do this job but I guess they changed when they ran out of Ammo for the recoiless rifles.
This is not the first time that the mountain has been missed here in Utah. It happened about 10-15 years ago in North Ogden. About the same effect thank Goodness.
Just how do you miss a whole mountain???

quote:

Originally posted by Hog Killer:
As to the powder charge, they did not put to much in, they did not take out the appropreate number of powder bags. There are seven different powder increments (bags) in the 105mm howitzer case.

Hog Killer

The last I heard both UT and ID were using surplus M60 tanks that had everything but the secondary sight that is attached to the main gun stripped out for the avalance control. And the secondary sight gain a huge amount of error the more they super-elevate the gun. if they were trying for a cornice at teh top of a ridge it wouldnt be that hard to put one over the top. I seriously doubt that they have ever zeroed the guns in the last 10 years.

And the M68 105mm cannon uses cased ammo. If they were using the 105mm Howitzer they would be playing with the bags. I can just imagine that these have a hard enough time trying to run the tank gun, let alone have to figure EFC and bags from an artillery piece.

If they would get a surplus F-16 and a stack of Mark 82 high drag bombs I would fly it for free. I guarantee I would hit the cornice and not the back yard.
lawndart

quote:

Originally posted by lawndart:
If they would get a surplus F-16 and a stack of Mark 82 high drag bombs I would fly it for free. I guarantee I would hit the cornice and not the back yard.
lawndart

Better yet would be to get a proper tanker, like myself, to put it where it counts.

Letting a flyboy or cannon cocker try to hit a small target like a cornice is like a drunk playing darts!!!! A real tanker will put steel on target every time!!!!

I got to watch the guys at Sun Valley doing avalanche control with the M60 several years ago. Those 105mm HE rounds would bring the slide down in a hurry.