The old in-and-out
A familiar job for any cannon cocker going back to the 1300s for sure.
40 years ago today, 23 February 1983: Members of A Battery, 1/7th Field Artillery, 1st Infantry Division, swab the 20-foot-long 39 caliber M185 Cannon tube of an M109A2 155mm self-propelled howitzer. As was common in the early 1980s, as the Army was switching from the old olive drab OG-107 to the new M81 Woodland “cammies,” there is a mix of both uniforms being used.
An update to the 1960s M109/A1 series guns, the A2 version was much improved from the Vietnam-era models of the SPG, and upped internal shell stowage from 28 to 36 rounds while deleting the rarely-used hull flotation feature. It was by far the most popular model seen in the 1980s.
While the U.S. Army is currently fielding the long-barreled M109A6/A7 Paladin, at least until the M1299 howitzer reaches full-rate production, the Reagan-era M109A2 remains in the arsenals of Austria, Greece, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, Taiwan, and Tunisia.
And their crews probably hate “punching the bore” as well.
