With Artillery, War is made.

minidazzler

The 25 pounder Field Gun fell silent yesterday for the last time, with live shot, in Ireland.

It's a sad day to know that the last guns off the WWII are to be decommishioned from Irish Stores.

It was a good day out and I have some very good Pics, some of which I will upload here and alot more I will put on RDF.ie, among other site's, when I get a chance.

"St Barbara of the Artillery Corp,
Be at the bursting of the doors of doom,
And in the dark deliver us,
Amen."

I can't upload many here because they are rather big Files, so I will post a link to the uploads when they are up.

It wasn't me!

Saw some being hauled through Blessington yesterday evening and it occurred to me that it had been a few years since I'd seen them. Impressive things. Be a shame never to see them used again.

arybvtcw0eolkf

Here's your photo resized Mini..

Great detail in full file size.



.

arybvtcw0eolkf

Upclose of the heli..

minidazzler

I do have better shots, but they are on my other computer, I can't work with them now, because my Da is using that. Thanks for the resizing Makitomi.

Will be uploading them as soon as I can, so probably tonight given my plans were cancelled for me!!!!:mad:

minidazzler

http://rapidshare.com/files/262261022/25_Pounder_Shoot.7z.html

That's a RS of more shots, it will need to be unzipped when you download it. It's not all the good ones but it is a first go with them.

It's good for 10 downloads after that I will Re-up it.

minidazzler

http://www.rdf.ie/media-gallery/?g2_itemId=5761

These are the first of my Lot

Donny5

I can hosted it indefinitely for you, Minidazzler, if you'd like.

minidazzler

It'll be grand sure, they will be on RDF.ie anyway until the RDF as a whole collapses!!!:D

Thanks anyway.

If anyone want's to take photo's for their own sites or whatever feel free, if your taking a rakeload though for a well seen site you might as well give me credit.:D

concussion

Thanks very much for the photo's dazzler, great shots. Must have been great to be there for the the final shoot. I see 1 Ad Bty are getting as much practice as they can with the new Giraffes!!

gizmo555

When Mary Robinson was inaugurated in 1990 a 21 gun salute was fired in her honour from Collins Barracks.

I remember reading a newspaper report a couple of days later about a chap who was walking his dog on Three Rock in the Dublin mountains when something whistled over his head and landed with a crash nearby. Apparently the men firing the salute had inadvertently loaded a live round along with the blanks. Fortunately for the witness and his dog it failed to explode . . .

I've searched online and can't find any reference to this episode, but I'm as certain as I can be that I read about it at the time. Can anyone recall any more details (or did I imagine the whole thing)? And would it have been the 25 pounder that was used for this type of ceremony?

minidazzler

You could have heard that, but it would be more a myth thatn anything.

People are generally stupid, but that would mean the 6 people on the gun are stupid, whoever drew the live rounds was stupid, whoever Authorised the live round to be drawn from stores is an idiot.

I doubt it actually happened, too many people making too many mistakes for this to be real.

arybvtcw0eolkf

gizmo555 wrote: »

When Mary Robinson was inaugurated in 1990 a 21 gun salute was fired in her honour from Collins Barracks.

I remember reading a newspaper report a couple of days later about a chap who was walking his dog on Three Rock in the Dublin mountains when something whistled over his head and landed with a crash nearby. Apparently the men firing the salute had inadvertently loaded a live round along with the blanks. Fortunately for the witness and his dog it failed to explode . . .

I've searched online and can't find any reference to this episode, but I'm as certain as I can be that I read about it at the time. Can anyone recall any more details (or did I imagine the whole thing)? And would it have been the 25 pounder that was used for this type of ceremony?

I think that goes with the story about the duty officer and the sentry on the beat in Collins Bks (Dublin) one night....

Duty officer approaches the beat "Private Murphy" asks Capt.Thicko..

"What would you do if a British naval battle ship sailed up the Liffey and started to shell the barracks?"..

"Sir, I'd get a squadron of main battle tanks and blow it out of the water" says Pte.Murphy...

"And where would you get this mysterious squadron of MBT's Pte?"..

"From the same place you got your fvcking battle ship, Sir!"..

.

dresden8

The Daily Star had a good picture on Friday, puff of smoke with the projectile visible in flight.

Can't find it online anywhere.

Steyr

Lovely AW-139 Shot.

cork1

great pics mini!

newby.204

Em thats a 105mm hanging off the aw139 not a 25lber???

minidazzler

newby.204 wrote: »

Em thats a 105mm hanging off the aw139 not a 25lber???

Yes, I am well aware of that, there is no system in place to fly in a 25 pounder.

I think they were trying to show how we have evolved as a DF.

Steyr wrote: »

Lovely AW-139 Shot.

For the resident Aerosexual then.

Steyr

minidazzler wrote: »

For the resident Aerosexual then.

Thanks Sir, can i use that pic and the first one on a UK Mil Aviation Site? 274 looks well there. I will as always give you dues etc and a link to this post. If not its ok it just looks impressive with the 105 underneath.

Steyr

Also interesting to note the FLIR Ball under the nose of 274.

minidazzler

Steyr wrote: »

Thanks Sir, can i use that pic and the first one on a UK Mil Aviation Site? 274 looks well there. I will as always give you dues etc and a link to this post. If not its ok it just looks impressive with the 105 underneath.

Of course you can, I have no problem with people using any of my pictures.

The only exception is if I post something which is a picture specifically of people, in which case I would like people to ask, however, I have no plans to post such pictures so I don't think it will matter.

gizmo555

minidazzler wrote: »

You could have heard that, but it would be more a myth thatn anything.

Searched the Irish Times digital archive and found the headline to the original article:



PS - it's only now, 18 years later, I realise it was published on 1 April 1991 . . . .

newby.204

minidazzler wrote: »

Yes, I am well aware of that, there is no system in place to fly in a 25 pounder.

I think they were trying to show how we have evolved as a DF.



For the resident Aerosexual then.

Was it the l119 or the 118? cant tell from the pic

minidazzler

L118 long barrel.

gizmo555

Kevin Myers on this occasion in today's Irish Independent (4 Aug).

By Kevin Myers

Tuesday August 04 2009

I've never met a gunner who, I felt, inhabited the same time-space continuum as me. Standing on my lawn with a soldier friend some years ago, he looked at a middle-distance hilltop and mused happily, "Ridgeline, 2,000 metres, forward slope no dead ground, ranging fire: ah, easy," or something preposterously gunnerish like that.

Gunners usually look like human beings, but there's no convincing evidence that they're anything of the kind. This is usually proven whenever gunners gather, as they gabble gunnerese and get weepy over fat drainpipes on overweight wheels. These are not the happy gurgling, tubular domestic devices that ferry water from gutters to the drains, but creatures of the night that will happily ensnare an arm within a maw of steel and bite it off, and if not properly minded, will explode in a murderous rage, reducing its hapless votaries to kit form: torsos everywhere, and fingers twitching on the ground, like live prawns on a barbecue.

Gunners, you see, are not so much soldiers as members of a sect of metal-worshipping druids. Moreover, the thing they invest with such godly qualities is, despite its phallic appearance, a she. Even the word, "gun", comes from the Scandinavian woman's name, Gunnhildr.

And gunners galore were gabbling their ballistical mumbo-jumbo the other day in the Glen of Imaal, as the Army bade farewell to its 25-pounder guns. Some of the men present had gone North to collect their guns from the British army's Girdwood Barracks over 60 years ago. Three score years later, here they were again, their eyes glittering with joy as they were re-acquainted with these iron goddesses that have never been fired in anger, and upon which generations of Irish gunners mastered their almost purposeless peacetime trade.

"Ah, but that is typical non-gunner talk," gunners would reply. "You who say such things do not understand soldiering. It was never purposeless. We did our duty to our country. We served our guns." And the ghosts of the gunner-soldiers who had gone before, and who had gathered palely in the hills around the Glen for this last farewell, all agreed: We served our guns.

So the Army's Twenty-Five Pounders became the mute witness to generations of quiet devotion. The British army beckoned during the hungry Fifties, and many went, but others stayed, to serve the Republic, sleeping in Nissen huts where water froze in its jugs, enduring bitter nights of chilblains before falling in on an ink-black, frozen dawn, in rough, shaggy uniforms, with poor food and poorer money; and all as the reward for serving these haughty guns.

And such service -- hour after hour of unspeakable monotony: hour upon hour of cleaning barrels, oiling mounts and polishing shell cases; hour upon hour of standing in the rain waiting for the order to come; hour after bitter winter hour guarding weaponry they knew that they would probably never fire in anger; hour after hour of mastering the mathematics of a counter-battery shoot, or creating a fire-plan that would only ever exist on paper. That was the meaning of duty, for soldiers who served their guns and who served their country. Old men forget, yet they'll remember with advantages what humble feats they did as gunners.

Hundreds of such former gunners were in the Glen for this final gathering, with Lieutenant Colonel Eamonn Fogarty of Curragh Command as their host. Rain fell for while, but then regretted its impudence, mumbled an apology and withdrew. That legendary gunner, and outgoing director of artillery, Colonel Ray Quinn, made the welcoming address, and the Chief of Staff, Lieut Gen Dermot Earley, replied. Both spoke easily and well. And those ghosts in the surrounding hills smiled knowingly: fit men to follow in the path that others had trod. Then for the first time ever, the Artillery Corps performed a heli-borne drop and shoot: both the new 105mm gun, plus crew, were delivered to the firing range by Air Corps helicopters, and then plastered a distant hill, slaying the enemy soldiery who have, with an obliging stupidity, teemed upon the slopes there for a century or more. And next came the last hurrah of the Twenty-Five Pounders, a six-gun battery firing at will, and doing yet more execution upon a happily cretinous foe who, it seems, will never learn.

There was much competition within the Artillery Corps to be in the gun crews for this final shoot, and so each Twenty-Five Pounder was served by enough soldiers to have launched a space shuttle. This is the true mark of a sect, and of the passion of its votaries. And did the guns even notice? What a question. The gun is a she.

The order for the very last round ever was delivered by Colonel Quinn himself. Almost 60 years to the very day after the first Twenty-Five Pounder shoot there, a single gun barked into the Glen, and a second later, the last such shell ever exploded upon a sorry and much-battered hillside: a farewell to arms, and a fine one too. As the many satisfied gunners trailed homeward from Imaal, like Sunday worshippers leaving church, the words that define their mysterious calling hung unspokenly in the air: "We served our guns."

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/creatures-of-the-night-that--explode-in-murderous-rage-1849916.html

iceage

Nicely put. Myers sometimes gives me the pips. Hat doffed in that mans direction.

Thanks for that Gizmo555.

Morpheus

Nobody seems to be mentioning the obvious issue here....

According to WIKI, ireland has a total of 24 105's (L118 and 119s) and we had (until that last shoot) a total of 48 25 pounders.

This means that the number of available artillery guns has been slashed to just 24.

Anyone know if there are plans to replace these 48 25 pounders with more 105s??

arybvtcw0eolkf

Morphéus wrote: »

Nobody seems to be mentioning the obvious issue here....

According to WIKI, ireland has a total of 24 105's (L118 and 119s) and we had (until that last shoot) a total of 48 25 pounders.

This means that the number of available artillery guns has been slashed to just 24.

Anyone know if there are plans to replace these 48 25 pounders with more 105s??

I'm going to throw a spanner in the works here and ask 'why do we need arty in the Irish DF?.

We've never deployed it oversea's, apart from 120mm mortars in Lebanon - which in 25yrs service out there only ever fired illums.

We're never going to send the 105's oversea's, can't ever see them of any use here either - so whats the point in keeping them at all?.

Morpheus

Well stupid question maybe but why DONT we deploy them?

Surely when on patrol close to base, for example in chad, it would be nice to know you can call in an arty strike - from irish guns - in case its needed??

Dont worry, theres probably a stupid answer to that question.

Just assume that the cost in transportation wouldnt be hugely more than that of the other vehicles already in theatre?

The base the irish are in is in effect the most endangerd, militarised and heavily protected military establishment currently controlled by the DF and could surely use these weapons as a deterrent and possibly counter battery to mortars at least??

minidazzler

Morphéus wrote: »

Nobody seems to be mentioning the obvious issue here....

According to WIKI, ireland has a total of 24 105's (L118 and 119s) and we had (until that last shoot) a total of 48 25 pounders.

This means that the number of available artillery guns has been slashed to just 24.

Anyone know if there are plans to replace these 48 25 pounders with more 105s??

There were less servicable 25 pounders than we have 105's so it doesn't really make much a difference.

BigDuffman

That Myers fella has a way with words. You have to give it to him, when he's not raising my hackles he's stirring them with masterful writing!!

Does he come from DF background?