Some 17-pounder artillery term questions

I am a little puzzled over the use of a couple of phrases from 54 AT regiment's War Diary from a sort of practice shoot on a house in Bergen.

"Ammunition: HE Red". Would this "Red" refer to tracer colour or something else? In my copy of Dick Taylor's Firing Now! I see that "red" could be labelled on the cartridge cases of more than one type of ammunition.

"We went to fire for effect with 3 lots of 3 RGF." Is that "Rounds per Gun Fired"?

Incidentally, the commander of the battery had this positive thing to say about the guns: "I have never seen rounds fall so often into the same hole. The accuracy of the gun at the range between 300x-3500x was phenomenal." (I think this must be 300-350 yards, not 3500!)

P.S. Hope this is the right place as opposed to the RA forum.

 

according to this
Glossary of the Royal Artillery (abbreviations relevant to gunners)

https://www.7fd-regt-raa-association.com/Documents/UK Artlillery terms and abbreviations.doc
RGF stands for “Rounds of Gun Fire”

 

'Red' is almost certainly 'reduced' as in propellant charge.
HE rounds initially had the same charge as AP but got no benefit from the high muzzle velocity. The reduced charge offered several advantages - less obscuration, less barrel wear, slightly lighter round for loading. Of course, the recoil was reduced as well.

 

I agree; although, I am not sure that the 17 lber was supplied with HE rounds.. Can anyone confirm this?
Regards Matt

 

Yes. The initial HE rounds (not sure when first issued) had too high a propellant charge and not enough explosive material. (I am trying to remember whether a lower velocity was also simply desired in and of itself.) A higher capacity round with a reduced charge and more explosive was made (started to be issued in the second half of 1944, I think?) and also a round with a timed fuse.

Archers (and later towed guns??) had the sights and equipment for indirect fire.

 

There may be something in here for you - AMMUNITION

TD

 

I read that the lower charge was to decrease the Muzzle velocity and therefore the shell could be thinner and therefore more HE could be added. But I was thinking since the there was plenty of 75mm Shermans I wasnt sure they actually issued the HE rounds to the fireflies

 

That is a good question. I don't know which ammunition was issued to Fireflies. But the 17 pounder was also used in the M10C (Achilles), Archer, and as a towed gun.

 

And definitely at least Archers used also the reduced charge HE rounds, learned it from this site, the video clip showing Archers giving fire support during the battle of Goch IIRC but anyway during the Oper Veritable.

Juha

 

The production data on wwiiequipment.com shows Reduced Charge predating High Capacity. The 'Super' suffix to the HC is odd as the term normally relates to charging which rather contradicts the reduced charge - reduced velocity - reduced stresses - thinner shell - more HE filling logic.

17 Pounder Anti-Tank Gun

 

Firing Now mentions more ammunition types than on that site and it all leaves me even more confused. In the text, Dick writes "The earlier HE shells were sometimes referred to as 'short' HE, the later HC variants as 'long'" but you'll note that the WW II Equipment page lists HE 2/T being shorter with a smaller burst charge than 1/T. I wonder if the WW II Equipment page is mixing up things.

One page of Firing Now gives this listing of HE "natures" which I'm going to number for the purposes of my post:

1. HE Mk 1/T
2. HE Mk 2/T
3. HE/HC Mk 1/T
4. HE/HC Mk 2/T
5. HE(SUP)HC Mk 2T

But the page with illustrations of projectiles shows slightly different designations:

• HE-T Mk 2/T (which is shorter than the other HE rounds) (this looks to match #2 above)
• HE-HC-T Mk 1/T (matches #3 above)
• HE(SUP)HC-T Mk 2/T (matches #5 above)
• HE-HC-T Mk 2/T (matches #4 above)

Then in a possibly reproduced diagram of stencilling on cartridge cases, there is "HE/SUP/HC RED" (matches #5 above), but also "HE TIM RED" which is labeled "HE Reduced Charge with Tracer & Time Fuze"

This leaves me to wonder if HE Mk 1/T and HE Mk 2/T were both the early "short" HE with 1.08lb burst charge.

 

Having finally found Firing Now!, I'm inclined to think that HE/SUP/HC is super-high-capacity, i.e. a bangier shell than plain old HC.

The sectionalised drawings on page 69 are rather confusing as the shells aren't drawn to the same scale. Even worse, the fuzes are marked as the same type - if so, they are even more out of scale than the shells.

More by luck than judgement, there is a better comparison in Gudgin's Armoured Firepower which has HE/T and HE/T/HC drawn to the same scale with the driving bands level so you can see the HC is slightly longer in both the base and the nose. This tallies with Firing Now's 'complete round' drawings. Looking at the bottom row on p71:
5 (HE-HC-T) is slightly longer to its [noticeably larger] fuse well than 4 (HE-T).
7 (HE-HC-T) looks to have the same shell body as 5 with some sort of adapter for the smaller fuze.
6 (HE(SUP)HC-T) appears to have a much longer integral nose than 7.

The same pattern is apparent on p75 for the 77mm ammo (17-pr projectiles in a different case).

I'm not even going to venture an opinion on the 'marks'.

I'm afraid I haven't got anything nerdier. That's not strictly true - I have got Don Juan's A34 Comet Tank A Technical History somewhere which might have something on the ammo if it goes into the development off the 77mm, which I'm sure it does. Hogg's British & American Artillery of World War 2 was a bit of a disappointment on the ammo front, but I suppose it's only dealing with the towed version which was less likely to use HE.

 

Idler that is still very very helpful! thank you! I will have to get out my copy to compare with your notes. Sometime when I'm in bed with a cold.

 

Getting warmer...

17pr construction and markings 1946

 

Wow, no kidding! There's an extremely extensive list of types of ammunition on the second page.

 

There's an interesting comment later on that the supers were withdrawn because of instability in flight. I need to have a longer look through it, but apart from a few lengths of round or projectile there still wasn't much hard data.

 

There's a propaganda film on the development of the 17 pounder here:

A DATE WITH A TANK [Main Title]

The real names of the key characters appear to have been changed, but any expert should be able to spot E.M.C. Clarke, Claude Gibb, and Sir Andrew Duncan.

 

That list is actually an early version of my book, which was posted on line without credit. The book is consideably longer than the posted list.

 

I completely missed an easy point with RGF!

The book:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Royal-Artillery-Glossary-Terms-Abbreviations/dp/1862274762/

 

Can you reproduce the WD entry?

Was this at Bergen ranges post war?

If the house was 300 yds away and out of combat it would be risky to use HE. A range of 3,000-3500 yards is a sensible range to play at field gunnery.
His remarks are also out of line with the usual criticism of the 17 Pounder as having a larger zone than other anti tank guns? Or is the 17 Pounder with reduced charge ammunition an accurate gun?