M109 Self Propelled Howitzer: A Shell Slinger That Refuses to be Replaced or Retired

Member-only story

Au-Yeong Soong-Kong

Follow

--

Share

“The shells would eviscerate any human being within roughly 150 meters of the airburst but spare the overpasses and the highway any serious structural damage. Gantt was confident his crews could pull it off. The Paladins had performed well just the night before, when Stephen Twitty’s China battalion was harassed by [Iraqi] mortar fire. They had swiftly and efficiently destroyed every last mortar position.” — Lt Col Kenneth Gantt, 1/9 Field Artillery ‘Battle Kings’, 3rd Infantry Division in the advance into Baghdad, from Thunder Run (David Zucchino, Atlantic Books 2004).

Ever since mankind discovered the efficacy of slinging large stones, metal balls and later, explosive shells for cracking open castles and pounding large numbers of people into mushy pulp, artillery has been a staple of land warfare. While artillery has permitted armies to see off numerically superior foes, the delivery platforms — catapults, ballista and cannon — were constrained by mobility difficulties. Ancient and medieval artillery were moved by human or animal labour; if they were too massive, they were assembled close to a battlefield or contested fortress. Railways were capable of hosting monstrosities like the 11 inch calibre Krupp K5 but were limited by the proximity of the tracks to their target and too large to conceal from aerial attack. Though trucks, artillery tractors and helicopters have eased the movement of guns and howitzers, they still take time to emplace and pack up, preventing them from keeping pace with mechanized armies. Towed gun crews are completely exposed to retaliatory fire unless they build fortified firing pits and bunkers. Serving for more than sixty years with no replacement forthcoming, the US Army’s modern solution is the M109 Self Propelled Howitzer (SPH), combining a 155mm cannon in a fully rotating turret on a tracked motorized carriage.

Just like virtually all military hardware, the M109 was developed to replace and improve upon deficient predecessors. At the beginning of the Cold War, the US Army’s self propelled artillery were the M52 and M44 Howitzers Self Propelled (HSP, a 1950s…