Artillery Quartermaster Sergeant

It's all a question of local laws. Our 25pdrs can fire blanks only.  The Canadian government I suppose, likes it that way. We could fire a live round, of course, but only once.  


When firing blanks, there is practically no recoil. I say practically none, because any time you set off a half pound charge of black powder in a barrel it generates some rearwards pressure, but you won't see it on the 25pdr which brakes and base plate to keep the gun from budging under a blank charge. I've noticed from the videos I've shot however that the 12pdrs, which have no brakes and are fired with the barrels more or less parallel to the ground do move slightly when fired, even when chocks are put behind the wheels. If you've ever seen the John Ford directed film "The Horse Soldiers" with John Wayne and William Holden, there is a scene where Wayne's encamped cavalry brigade comes under fire from a hidden Confederate battery of two guns. The guns look to me like they were the old 1842 guns, not Napoleons and are fired using linstocks rather the more historically correct friction primers...but the thing that grabbed me about the scene is that they are bucking backwards...really jumping when being fired, which means they had something up the muzzle when fired. John Ford was just too fine a director I think to accept anything less than something that was visually perfect.

Recoil systems are quite easy to disable.  However I suppose that even if some of the parts were welded so that they could not move, it would still not be impossible to replace the entire recoil system with a new one. The thing is that 25pdr recoil systems are kind of rare these days, as are any parts for these guns.  

In the US, the laws are different and guns of up to a certain caliber can be fully functional as long as the only ammo used is non-exploding. There further more I believe, something called a "destructive device permit" you can obtain from ATF for the bigger stuff. It's all kind of silly really because it's pretty much impossible for a civilian to obtain exploding ammo for just about any kind of artillery piece, and in any case, 25pdr ammo is only made in Pakistan, and even the shell casings are very hard to come by.

We fired soda bottles filled with nails at a few snowmen from the pack howitzers, and softballs from the James guns. There was almost no recoil from the pack howitzers, more appreciable recoil from the old muzzle loaders.

-Nate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaclWgkY_PY

The above is a short video of one of our 12pdr guns firing a blank round behind the Armoury

The fellow in the red mess jacket is the commanding officer or the 2nd Field Regiment, RCA Lcol Mike Bourque, whom I knew as a junior officer way back when....The fellow firing the gun in the blue patrol uniform is the Regimental Sergeant-Major. CWO Guy St-Hillaire. The guys wearing green parkas with WWII Italian campaign uniforms are members of the 3rd Montreal Field Battery, the volunteer ceremonial unit.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O1Sb7e4VtA

The above video was shot at Fort Ingall, Quebec a few years ago. This is before we had the 12pdrs and so one of our 25pdrs.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNoEbCu6MW0

The third video is put together from footage shot on several occasions at various ceremonies. The music in the background is the slow march of the Royal Artillery, Royal Canadian Artillery, Royal Australian Artillery, etc