Artillery Salute Protocols

[John McGillivray]

I experienced a misfire on a C1 once when firing a salute at the graduating ceremony at CMR St Jean in 1974 or 75. It is very disconcerting when as a gun commander you yell Fire and only hear a click and no boom. We replaced the firing lock and tried again on the next go around with the same result. We then sent our ammo to the other guns and waited 30 min. or more before the TSM and BQMS unloaded the blank round. And yes the primer cap was struck.

[rob love]

Reading the above two responses, along with the phrase in the manual of "the normal misfire drill is carried out" I had a look at the misfire section where it relates to normal firing. It is quite a bit more indepth, and notable is that the wait time is 1 minute vice the 30 minutes for a blank. It includes a methodical system of checks and solutions as to the cause of the misfire.