US 105 mm Artillery Piece
Gun
Weight
Caliber
Velocity
Range
105 mm M2 L22 Howitzer
2260 kg
105 mm
11,270 m
The Story of the US 105: In World War I, the US Army had relied heavily on the famous French 75 mm Field Gun, but by World War II, they had invented a powerful and innovative new style artillery piece of their own. The caliber itself wasn’t anything unusual; the Germans had been using 105 mm howitzers of their own for some time. The US innovation was more in the carriage and shells it fired. The carriage allowed a wide range of elevation, from the relatively straight trajectory of a traditional “direct-fire†gun to the high arcing fire of a “howitzer.†What’s more, the carriage was extremely mobile; with its fat air-filled road wheels, it was designed to be towed by motorized vehicles, not by horses. While the German Wehrmacht had developed a reputation for being a “high-tech†army designed for the “blitz,†the reality of the German Army was that its mechanization had been very uneven; many of its infantry had been forced to march on foot and most of its artillery was still horse-drawn. Not so with the new US Army, as increasingly its standard artillery was being towed entirely by its ubiquitous “Deuce & a Half†(2 ½ ton) 5-wheeled trucks, which the US auto industry was churning out for it in unheard-of numbers. (...And that’s when it wasn’t mounted in a converted tank chassis to form an M7 Priest Self-Propelled Gun, a vehicle that the US was churning out in fairly large numbers too!) Even its shells were innovative. Available in fixed brass cases for rapid fire, those cases could be easily unscrewed in the field so that the smaller bagged charges inside could be either added or subtracted, giving just the right charge for the range required. In accuracy, firepower, and mobility, the M2 105 mm Howitzer had it all! It was considered so innovative at the time that it was featured in an article from Popular Science in 1942! (Two Guns For One, November 1942, Popular Science) Not only would it be very widely used in World War II, but it would go on to become the primary US artillery piece for much of the Cold War, soldiering on through the Korean and Vietnam conflicts and even be used by at least 46 countries!
Usage Notes: Use this piece for “Global 1939†and “Invasion of Italy†Variants an artillery unit. Other US pieces of interest may be: the M3/M5 Halftrack & the M4 Sherman tank. Other artillery pieces of interest might be: the German “88†and the Japanese Type 92 70 mm.
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