Mortar increments

[andundiek]

3

[andundiek]

4

[andundiek]

5

[andundiek]

6?

[andundiek]

7

[andundiek]

hope you didn´t get bored.............
That´s it!

[Chris Boonzaier]

Good stuff Eric...
and dangerous stuff !!!

[andundiek]

Don´t worry....

Hello Chris,

Although I have a licence to collect ammunition I didn´t feel comfortable with the big amount of powder inside the cartridges and increments.
So I removed most of it, leaving 1 box of cartridges and one with increments the way they were.

[Chris Boonzaier]

I was showing Chris Stewart a photo a couple of days ago showing our Sgt setting the left over increments alight..... Whooooooosh !!!!

[MikeP]

There have been serious injuries and fatalities involving mortar "charge Increments"

In some places mortars are set in pits as permanent defensive or support weapons.

The pits have range and firing data around the edge to facilitate targeting.

There is supposed to be a sump or box to throw unused increments.

These can pile up during sustained firing.

They can flash up with intense heat and fire when ignited.

I knew a guy got both arms and face burned away in an increment fire.

He was lucky enough to die in a short time.

[Jean-Loup]

You old military boys might be interested in some hardcore mortar souvenirs from a First Special Service Force vet, recalling the fighting on the Franco Italian border (an interview I did myself ):


"And when we couldnt get… Reach them with the standard mortars that we had taken out of the forterress… of the old French forterress, Maginot line that the Germans had occupied. When we couldnt get the range we needed, we pourred in… Instead of using four increments on the mortar, we would use up to 14, 15 increments on the mortar. And in order to keep the barrels one those mortars from blowing up on us, we wrapped them with haywire. I dont know where the hay wire come (!) from, but it was a good quality haywire as we knew it in the prairies, encountered it before the war; and we'd wrap the barrels on these mortars untill we had an extra<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o></o>

half inch, or five eighths of an inch of steel to hold the thing together. Then, when it was set approximatly right, a visual setting; then we'd pack the barrels with sandbags so that if they did blow up… (it would limit the damage), and there would be, lets say, seven eight nine<o></o>

of these mortars all set up, and the ammuniton layed out alongside, and one man would dump a shell in the first one, run to the next one and the next one, next one and so on. And so we didnt, if one of those stupid blew up, or if they replied in fire, and got lucky, we didnt have a bunch of men involved."<o></o>