History
In 1935, the 2nd Chemical Mortar Battalion was established at Edgewood Arsenal Maryland with the chemical mortar as its primary weapon. At the onset of World War II, there were a few other mortar battalions and companies, including one that was lost on Bataan in the Philippines. In 1942, General George Marshall ordered the formation of five additional chemical mortar battalions equipped with the mortar. (These were the 3rd, and the 81st through 84th.) Later, the mortar was developed to be capable of instantly firing shells from a mere 565 yards (517 m) at minimum propellant charge, to a range of 4,400 yards (4,023 m) by having propellant-charge disks of powder added that by then were being manufactured as square disks with a hole in the middle, strung together, fitted into cartridges and sewn together into bundles of various thickness. Its rate of fire was 40 rounds in the first two minutes, 100 rounds in the first 20 minutes and thereafter a sustained rate of 80 rounds per hour. These variations were caused by the stresses and strains on the barrels and the rest of firing mechanisms that were being imposed by different firing conditions.
The mortars were transported in 3/4 ton trucks or on hand carts, in island engagements in the Pacific by boat, and in difficult terrain by mule.
During the Allied invasion of Sicily in the summer of 1943 - the first time the mortar had been used in war-time - 35,000 rounds were fired in 38 days, of which more than 90% were HE.
Read more about this topic: Chemical Mortar Battalion
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“It gives me the greatest pleasure to say, as I do from the bottom of my heart, that never in the history of the country, in any crisis and under any conditions, have our Jewish fellow citizens failed to live up to the highest standards of citizenship and patriotism.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)