Anyone interested in pictures of this gun ?? I make a visit to the Longue-Pointe garnison Museum in Montreal today and took aroud 70 pictures of different stuff here and there.

25 Pounder
 

Hi Luc,si vous en allez au coin de Rene Levesque et la rue Peel aux Memorial des anciens combattents de guerre.il y en un autre 25 Pounder-Luc,if you go to the corner of Rene Levesque & Peel Street at the War Memorial.you'll find another one here in montreal

Garry

D-Day Vet...
 

Garry and Luc,
I was at the D-Day events in Ottawa yesterday and was talking to an 84 tear old vet who was in Normandy with the 15 Field,4th Division on 25 pounders..
The Canadian crews could load and fire accurately 6-8 rounds a minute,but in reality were firing between 10-14 rounds a minute in the heat of battle and one crew had recorded 17 rounds a minute..The Canadians were firing the 25's so fast that the German prisoneers were reporting that the German high command suspected they had an auto load system...
This from a guy that was there has merit..,

25-pounder super gun
 

What that vet told you is correct. In George Blackburn’s book “The Guns of Normandy” he writes:

“And while the official ‘normal’ rate of fire for the 25-pounder is three rounds per minute, and ‘intense’ is five rounds, 4th Field gunners easily achieve twelve to fifteen rounds per minute”.

I could not find the exact quote but I think the record for 4th Field, set by one gun crew, was more than 20 rounds per minute.

Also the command and control methods used by the Canadians and British, allowed them to bring down the fire of hundreds of guns onto a single target, in minutes. Of course the Germans attributed this to a secret super gun, a belt or hopper fed automatic 25-pounder; and not to a superior organization.

Finally Canadian and British gunners simply outworked their German counterparts.

25 rounds per minute!!
 

During the Italian campaign,which is in one of the books,1RCHA,my uncle's unit,reached a high of 25 rounds a minute.Geez,that's a round every 4 seconds.Hard to believe!!

Re: 25 rounds per minute!!
 

Since when is there 100 seconds in a minute???
When I went to school there was 60....but that wasn't in Quebec...
Let me see....HMMMMMMMMMM........
60 divided by 25...=....2.4 seconds......
Possible...???
No idea....May be one of those secret autoloaders the Germans suspected...

25 rounds!!
 

That is truly a staggering rate of fire from a 25pdr considering that the 25pdr fires "Separate, not "Fixed" ammunition. That is, it is loaded by first opening the breech, placing a projectile into the breech, ramming the projectile into place with a ramrod to engage the rifling, then placing bags of gunpowder into the shell case which is then put into the breech behind the projectile, fingers out of the way, close the breech and fire. Behind the actual gun crew, other gunners will be preparing fuse settings on projectiles and others will be preparing charge bags for cartridges.

Fast loading
 

In the book "An Awesome Silence" written by Padre Eldon Davis, who was with 3rd Fd Regt RCA in Italy; tells of how the gun crews took a short cut by trowing the shell hard into the breech so that there was no need to ran it home. However, once the loader missed and hit the breech with the shell. The safety failed and the shell exploded, killing all of the crew.