Very cool video (so long as I am on the "sending" side)...

 

Adds clarity to the term "shell shocked."

 

I was in an artillery unit and the coolest thing I ever saw was one of our 8 inch guns scoring a direct hit (in training) on an old bradley vehicle. It was like invisible hands grabbing a piñata in the middle and ripping it apart sending candy flying everywhere.

 

I had the opportunity to watch a timed fire demonstration at Bragg. There was that ol' shucks moment when the rounds impacted. It was cool!

 

That camera guy sucks, he, needs to hold the camera more steady!!

 

Now imagine the same thing on a much, much larger scale and you'll have WW1. The rate of shells for some battles works out to about 4 or 5 shells per square yard. Barrages in the Ypres area could be heard as far away as London. Because of the depth of the mud in the target areas and no mans land, it has been estimated that the dud rate is on the order of 20-30%. Now do the math for a barrage with nearly 100k shells falling. There is a phenomenon over there called the Iron Harvest. Somebody gets killed about every year by UXO from the war. If you travel down a highway in Belgium or France, there are designated areas to leave UXO that you find in your fields as you plow.

 

Doesn't seem all that bad. Didn't see anybody actually injured.

 

I guess direct hits rarely happen?

 

The blast radius of an 8" round is about 60 meters so it doesn't require a direct hit.

 

And the target can be up to 30 miles away.

 

All those shells going off and they still didn't knock down that little shack. I guess that was the safe place to be!

 

In Kosovo back in 2001 I was in a shelling, but it was mortar fire. Scary and not fun. Laster for 15-25mins as a standard suppressive fire technique.

Counter battery and AH-64's broke the contact for us up in The mountains.

John

 

Had something similar happen in Iraq; We had mortars walked in on us when I was at FOB Loyalty in Sadr City. We took 17 rounds in as many seconds. Having to take a dump that day actually saved my life; shrapnel tore through the jack shack above my head. If I'd been standing to urinate I would have been killed. I made my way back to our vehicles/platoon for a head count, and what was later determined to be a Chinese rocket splashed about 30m from us....a dud. Chalk that up to "almost killed again in just a few minutes". It embedded itself in the concrete and took EOD three controlled dets to destroy it

Our medic kept (and still has) one of the mortar tail fins that almost got him that day

 

Some people get class rings and mouse eared hats for souvenirs. Some people get pieces of exploded ordinance.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Someone needs to make a large wooden cut-out of the Duck Hunt dog to come out of the building and laugh at them when they miss. Of course, someone is gonna need to translate "he he he he he" into Finn.

 

All that shrapnel zinging around in that video is no joke. Explosions like that are strong enough to throw cardboard through steel (seen it happen)

The scene from Band of Brothers when the trees are exploding in Bastogne comes to mind. The tree splinters were just as deadly as the rounds.

 

In the days of wooden ships the damage didn't come from cannonballs as much as from the wood shrapnel created from the hull when it splintered.