Why is the Mortar so important in battle? 

Brian Leuthauser Lol thanks 👍

can you do a vid about 11EOD regt or EOD in the britsh army in genral please

It’s a very specialized weapon. It’s good because being able to suppress enemy Forces is A key in combat. I don’t see why we would get rid of such a weapon. Being able to suppress enemy troops is a great advantage two friendly troops. My coworker is an Army ranger he was deployed more than once I could see why a mortar would be a great advantage to a unit. He was deployed to multiple countries. I would like to mortars deployed more often for the security of US and NATO troops. I feel like Mortars could be deployed on a squad level that means infantry would have to carry more ammunition but it could save the lives of numerous soldiers on the battlefield. I think we could improve our military effectiveness if we deployed these weapons on a squad level seeing as these weapons are very useful in saving lives not necessarily taking lives. They do final enemy troops into a kill box which makes it easier for Friendly troops to illuminate or capture enemy troops in the kill box. I think capturing enemy troops is a very important move.

Matsimus The they’re good for suppressive fire, not accurate. Even with a ten digit grid, the best it will do is fuck up the area in which they are bunkered down in. But for the most part that is the intent. Once the barrage is over they will push forward and into a kill zone, or they will die in the blasts. It’s a tactic vs a solution. Not an end game. “ words of an army ranger”

Nice video! :) ...here one more (120 mm )mortal squad performance.... (fire start about 01:00 ---> ) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-jFsYfOi42Mc.html

Nuclear Submarine Captain: "I'm about to fuck up global climate"

Artillery - Pallet discount and 25% off for truck loads.

don't get frutrated, get even

The Sun : I am going to end this Solar system's whole career.

this is the shit i'm talking about. when we learned call for fire it was all to the charlies first. the arty fo and the air liaison weren't even part of it. plus we had four deuce which is practically arty

Typical person or jump with the baseplate

Or be on the downrange side of things

The tube and baseplate isnt TOO terribly bad, but the rounds are a nightmare to hump for long distances. That's why your bring Rifleman on your marches they carry the rounds cause they gonna be the ones asking for them when the ish hits the fan.

I own a demilled M29 81mm from korea / vietnam in my collection. If I ever find a place that I can shoot it im going to NFA and re-arm it... but until then, it sits as a display. Even my demilled HE round is quite heavy for its size and could not imagine having to carry a handful of those fully loaded in containers. The mortar itself is not too bad, the few times I have moved it I took it down but if I need to move my display, I typically just pick up the entire thing (note, the barrel is cut in half with torch/weld marks making it inoperable, but it also has some bent metal plate inside the tube to keep it in 'one peace' for the display making it heavier than if it was live) and it is still not too bad. I would guesstimate it is less than 150 lbs (bipod + barrel + base plate) so I can imagine that it is not too bad in individual peaces, more bulky weight than real weight. Picture - i.imgur.com/N2iSORZ.jpg

exactly!

Also, unsurprisingly one of the most primitive weapons in the arsenal of any army. If it ain't broke - don't fix it.

Yes, but they lack range, and that breaks the artilleryman's square.

@@maxiona714 they are made for the infantry teams not the arty

Simple, reliable, and easy to use.

Mounted on a truck with a thermal image drone spotter team could be very efective and very mobile.

Lol u cant see the results of round

Yep. TQ, oif 2.5.

If I remember correctly (WWII) mortar fire killed more than artillery,

@@BruceMyersLBZ FOB Forsyth Iraq, FOB Ridgeway, COB Keating, Kamu province...etc. Great weapon in defense and offense.

Echo that 👌

Tough is one thing. Very tough indeed.

My Grandpa was from Corunna, Ontario fought for the 1st Hussars, was a Signalman and mainly fired artillery. He unfortunately had shell shock from the constant explosions, it does something to your central nervous system...as long as you are being attacked the guns have to keep firing... He left in 39' and didnt return until 45' being wounded in France in 44'... He went AWOL quite a bit, sneaking away to London, UK to be with my Grandma who he eventually brought back after the War. 1st Hussars were the only Allied Unit to reach their final D-Day objective on the first day. Also the flying ace Billy Bishop was previously from the Unit en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Hussars

Legends. Cool stories!

My grandfather killed some GIs in Vietnam

SALUTE ...

Probably

Also, there's a chance he'll only have one hand.

Call out, "Are the any bubble chaser' in the crowd", only a mortarman (11C) would know what your talking about! (IE) The gunner is constantly making adjustments on the sight so as to keep the cross hairs of the sight on the aiming stakes and also keeping the elevation/ cross level bubbles in the center where they need to be!

What did you say?? One more time, didn't catch that....Oh yeah, damn straight.

Lol... or he could be the RPG-7 guy..... that launching charge going off behind your ear gives you a hell of a buzz in the ears

I was 2/5 CAV "Loyalty and courage"

@Joseph Shannon... Love you mortar guys! "IF YOU AIN'T CAV, YOU AIN'T SHIT"

As a 13 fox I have massive respect for the 11C. Thank you guys, you have turned the tide of more battles than you will ever know.

Thank You All' For Your Sacrifice and Service 🇺🇸

Steel on steel

I came here looking for this comment. Wasn't disappointed.

Poor youngster missed out on the 4.2 inch the real big gun.

@@dirtyhlbly The 4.2 inch is 106.7 mm so its smaller than the 120 mm and the 120 mm KRH has a much larger effective range so which one is the real big gun?

Right? Lol

Naaaaaaaaaa 203mm mortar bigger the Soviet 203 b4m super heavy artillery oh shit ITS THE ULTIMATE SPG

BTW, mortars also assist with nighttime battlefield illumination (60 & 82mm)

Yip, these guys are key.

Our forward observers were the line platoons.

I am bit curious about the audio recording from these videos. From my experience, with modern mortars the less your charge is, the more it goes thunk, instead of bang. So when they are firing a round with no additional charges i expect a thunk, not a bang: But in this video you kind of get a bang noise, but i feel that it might be a product of the recording.

Don`t forget the impact sound.. !! Both sounds are so special. and the fact that u can shoot while fully covered.

Then someone sound make music our of it

The thunk sound isnt real man. Its Hollywood. They work just like any other gun, so they sound about the same.

oh. i was so sure that i had heard the sound in a video some time ago, and not in a hollywood movie.

Now Stephen, this pissssses me off. I was told by my ROTC Recruiters that I would have an air-conditioned office well away from the battle field. Then when I graduated from college, the next thing I know, they have me serving as a Platoon Leader, getting solder's ready for the Bosnian Conflict. Was the U.S. Army not aware of my sever level of cowardliness? I'm allergic to being shot at. Yes, that's a real thing, Led is a poison....and stuff. I feel so misunderstood. LOL; hope I made you chuckle, dude, I'm in the Denver area, hit me up.

@@danmurray1143 Damn, flashback to The Deer Hunter.

Stephen, welcome home brother. Ah yes, I remember carrying the PRC-25 for LT Sly. And we carried 60mm rounds for the mortar the CO appropriated from somewhere, plus when the 81mm humped with us we carried those also. And each night when we stopped for the night we would turn the rounds into the 60 and 81mm crew, and then in the morning pick them back up to start all over again. And don't be late picking one up in the morning as you might get two. Bill B Co 3/8th 4th Inv Div 68-69

Right? When I was assigned as our mortar platoon medic, the only time you saw a fireball was during night fire exercises. During the day it was just some smoke and whatever debris it blew into the air.

And the shrapnel

#Orion Red Not to go defensive on Hollywood, but there is a problem they face: how do you display danger? The shockwave and the shrapnel just not visible on screen, the camera unable to capture it. It's too fast. But we instinctively fear fire. That big orange ball of fire says 'DANGER'. Realistic? Not. But it makes danger visible. What is not visible on screen, doesn't exists in that universe.

when watching munition blasts of all types, ignore all the dust and smoke, all that matters is that first 1/2 second of burst that distributes steel at illegality at significant velocities through your body. Let the under-educated marvel at all the dust and smoke afterwards--of little military importance. Our little secret. Stay with me bro, can teach you so much!

@@danmurray1143 We used 4.2" Heavy mortars, equipped with HE or Willy Pete, which had about a 35 meter kill radius. Five or six M-113's (APC's) would pull in spaced 35 meters apart, set up and drop the rounds, and there wasn't nothing left out there that wasn't burning. This covered an area about as long as 1/2 football fields. Not good to be there.

I agree. No explanation of aiming either. Lots of blabbering though.

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-mGORzau-TWY.html

I was wounded by a mortar attack in Iraq in 2004. You’d usually here the report before the incoming detonation. This particular attack that wasn’t the case. We were staging up to leave our FOB (Justice) on the banks of the Euphrates River in Kadhimiya, when the first mortar rounds detonated. The initial round blew up an ING’s car making us think initially it was a V-BED. Then the second round impacted half way between myself and the smoldering Caprice Classic. It was obvious then, we were taking indirect fire. I remember being shocked that the second round, which impacted a good asphalt road only left a shallow “splash” mark. Nonetheless, I turned in a panic looking for the closest cover. That’s when the third round detonated directly behind me and threw me over the M-1114 I was prepping for that nights’s directives. That mortar crew was shit hot. It was “Add 50 Fire for Effect” 11 out of 28 of us were wounded. Miraculous that we suffered no casualties. They had “eyes on”.

​@@jamesmoss9487hm

No one volunteered to go down range? How odd! 😒

It's probably water to cool the barrel and prevent cook off.

@CompleteXgaming Tell Sgt Miller Barclay says wassup

Ha! No man its CLP, it's a type of oil. they just put it in a Gatorade bottle, I've see CLP carried in many more obscure places, it's just how we do it XD

@CompleteXgaming wow good for you brother, 11C is a slow painful death for me XD I like to here the motivation, kind ass bro! You can keep it though, I'm headed too psyops.

It's not Gatorade, it's Mortarade!

I'm actually wondering now...how do you deal with misfire? If you drop a shell, and it doesn't fire. What do you do? I'm interested in what's the safe protocol.

@@Quicksilver_Cookie Here's an answer one year later. If it's the US 60mm you can try manually firing it by pulling the trigger, if it doesn't fire or it's one of the big bois, you just lift the back end up and the round slides back out.

Heavy artillery is better against armor and strategic targets like airfields where a have bomber isn't practical and a multipurpose fighter isn't enough

To the contrare mon cherrie. The A-10 is the de facto king of infantry support. I know you are talking about man portable infantry weapons but the infantry support crown belongs to the brrrrrrrraaaaaappppp.

Dunno what it's like for other armies, but Canadian artillery regiments have mortar batteries as their soldiers will also go out into the field and perform pretty much the same job as the infantry. We have our field artillery batteries, mortar batteries and reconnaisance batteries too. Funnily enough, they pick artillery soldiers for door gunner jobs. How's that for weird?

Two Buffalos Making Noise dude u have no idea wtf u talking about. Mortars are quick, and can travel anywhere in the World along with the infantry

Young Lord I suggest you go around to every infantryman you can find and ask him if he’d rather have an A-10 supporting his operations or a mortar team. Let me know what you find out. You’ll probably get waterboarded for asking stupid questions like that.

@Megas Pantelos And far too expensive to justify itself. A RC plane with a hand grenade would be more useful and less expensive.

I agree that the 60mm mortar is a great company/platoon level asset. If you want bigger, you get the 81/107/120 platoon on the radio. if you need bigger than that, you have to climb up to artillery or CAS, which is harder to get quickly without pre-planning or luck.

I used to be a mortar maggot and have used all the mortar systems in the US Army. The 60 MM mortar is pond-for-pond the most lethal and my personal favorite. As a section SGT for a 60 MM Mortar in a light infantry company weapons platoon, we were quite devastating. I had the best crew; my gunners were like magicians on that thing. Oh yeah, I convinced my battalion commander to have every infantry soldier in the line companies carry a minimum of 2 rounds HE each. Initially they all bitched and complained but when we bailed them out of some tight spots in combat, they came around pretty quickly.

@@epion660 Nah, a regular frag grenade has a casualty producing radius of 15 meters or about 50 feet. Also most grenades will detonate after 5 to 8 seconds, making it very ineffective when dropped from to high up. a 120 mm High Explosive round has a kill radius of 60 to 75 meters (200 to 250 feet), depending on the type of round used. You drop that kind of ordnance with precision on something, like a building or fighting position, it will break it real good :)

@@Cavemale2000 Alright, I'll gladly correct myself - An RC plane with equivalent explosive charge would be almost as effective as a GPS shell, at likely under half the cost.

Remove the word "the" and we got "the mortar merrier" still sound like the more the merrier tho

Whomagoose Long ago soldier thanks for your service 👍

Whoomagoose not an elevator a standard buddy. Fall out one.

You certainly cut some charges my friend

@@dirtyhlbly I don't know about the word "standard" as a name for any part of the M-30 mortar system. Maybe you are referring to some video game. The "four deuce", or, M-30 mortar, was composed of a base plate, a rotator that was inserted in the baseplate, a bridge was inserted into the sockets of the rotator, the elevator was inserted into the opposite side of the bridge, the cannon had trunnion pins on bottom of the cannon that were inserted into the socket of the bridge, the top of the elevator had a fastening pin on top that was fastened to a collar on the cannon. The optic sight was fastened to the left side of the collar on the cannon. There was an extension bar that could be used to raise the optical sight to relocated the sight around obstructions. After all the guns we're placed a special transit was used to align all the guns toward a specific direction. That transit looked just like a land surveyor's transit. Then the aiming stakes were placed at 50 meters. Then you waited for a fire mission. So the part in question was an "elevator." I still have some of my old army manuals that no name of "standard" was used. Only an elevator; an elevator raised and lowered than angle of the cannon. The M-30 was a mortar gun that was completely different from any other mortar in the world. Only used by the American Army. I never saw the M-30 being used by the US Marines. Also for a time by the Norwegian Army. Another thing about the ammunition for the M-30, Four-deuce mortar, was a Canadian engineer that designed a better seal for the Four-deuce shell that improved the range of the shell to 7800 meters. That new seal prevented gas blow by loss so all the pressure made by the charges was used to push the shell down range. That engineer was Gerald Bull. The same guy that was employed by Saddam Hussein of Iraq. He made that very long artillery cannon to hit targets in Israel and Iran. Somebody assassinated Gerald Bull in his apartment in Belgium. The cannon in Iraq was never finished. That assassin disappeared and was never found. Now a cold case with only a bullet that was removed from the body.

Whomagoose Long ago soldier I've always wondered just how effective the 60mm mortar is. Personally it seems too small a caliber to be efficient and effective, but I know absolutely nothing about mortars.

I was in Vietnam in 70-71 with the 1/1 Cav Americal but I was 11D

Was fighting in Vietnam for helicopters and heroin worth it mate? Fighting farmers worth it?

@@neilgrant6876 should have been mate. Shoot'em up, burn'em up. Anything that breathes

What kind of range could you get from that 81mm ?

I served on a 105 towed howitzer from 82-89. Thank you sir for all you did. @John Ponton.

Nothing is free.

Eric Johnson I mean it as in already deployed.

Your mortars are too short ranged to serve anyone else than you. Which means they're yours and yours alone.

Almost as good as free real estate.

A mini artillery, can't direct fire though

But wait, theres more...................

you had me at 51mm; I'd kiss you through the internet, but my wife is watching.

Sounds a bit op, especially if your can aim with gps.

taxation is theft brother. taxation is theft

I thought they needed rotations while in flight to arm. At least that's what I would tell myself if I had to do that.

mostly the smaller mortars have a smooth barrel. The french Hotschkiss-Brant 120 mm Brandt Rayé (rayé means rifled) witch the dutch artillery also uses, is one of the few mortars i know with rifling. So because of the lack of rifling the other mortar munitions use the acceleration of the projectile to arm themselves. @@kevinc9065

@@thermoskanThe mortars I learned in the 1980s were 60mm and 81mm (smoothbore) and 107mm/4.2inch (lands and grooves). Getting a misfire out of a smoothbore is quick and scary. Getting a misfire out of a tube with lands and grooves is like a well-made slow-build terror film. And you can hear the round coming slow down the barrel as air passes the rubber ring.

One range day, we were firing 107mm/4.2inch from APCs, and the sergeant on the gun called for rounds faster than the listed rate of fire on a hot tube. The last round he fired that day didn't make it all the way down the tube. it bounced out on a spring of expanding hot gases, tumbled out of the tube, and bounced three times down the ramp, on the detonator end. - - - I have never seen people jump out of a tracked vehicle without touching the sides before then... That sergeant had to be ordered to go recover his misfire and carry it to the dud pit while the Lt. put in a call to range control and EOD.

@Gene Palmiter.... Yep, that was the scariest thing, dumping the dud round back out. I had to do it once, had the shakes for a long time after!

Jagannath Barman what u mean

@@dr3yfusz ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-XnQkLt3VJF8.html

Watch Gun Jesus preaching about WW2 German light mortar ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-XnQkLt3VJF8.html

@@dandhan87 All hail Gun Jesus.. He got his hands on a G11 for chrissakes

@@jagannathbarman6712 jai Hind nice to meet you again after a long time

I had a Rojas in my boot camp platoon, good guy

@@randydewees7338 Everybody had a Rojas in boot camp.

@@13ivanogre13 shit had one in 2007 great guy

@@moeb9561 Yeah, I never talked to ours. We had a Black guy named White and a White guy named Black!

My father served in a mortar platoon in Jan-Feb 1942 (Malaya-Singapore). When the battalion was been over-run, by using 3 loaders they fired from their 3-inch mortar 21 ten pound bombs into the air before the first one hit the ground. He said it was a bit scary and they had take care with keeping they timing correct but the situation was desperate. In 22 days the battalion was effectively destroyed twice and reformed twice have suffered nearly a thousand battle casualties; not a fun time especially followed with the surrender of Singapore on the 15th Feb 1942 to the Japanese.

Yes siege weapons , totally different to modern mortars that started in WW1.

There were man-portable mortars before WW1, one of the best known is the Coehorn mortar: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coehorn

There are, mortars first appeared in Ming dynasty China in 1372 and all of them were man portable, weighing in at 37 kg. It actually got increasingly larger from then on because gunpowder was not as volatile as modern day propellant so the range and explosiveness was heavily dependent on the size of the mortar. They were though quite extensively used in naval combat, then siege.

But you were right about one thing, they became standard equipment during WW1, regardless of when they were invented.

fun fact; the mortar appears to have been invented ether in india or china in the 700s and not as a weapon of war. but as a way of getting big firecrackers high into the air at religious festivals

The siege mortars of the civil war and those from prior times provided the high angle of fire of a mortar but were quite different from todays mortars. They were heavy and required a lot of time to set up. The trench mortars of WWI are basically the grand daddy of today's mortars.

@tommy fred fun fact; gunpowder was invented in the 900s...

@@stevebutler4629 There were smaller versions (horse/mule portable) though meant for mountain warfare, forested areas and the like. The british for example used them in colonial warfare to good effect. I think he was just a little bit inaccurate there, the modern mortar indeed was invented in WW1 (because the basic form is essentially unchanged since then) but the principle of mortars - high angle, high trajectory artillery able to fire over obstacles without LOS - is almost as old as gunpowder.

Historical Chinese military text Wu Jing Zong Yao shows that mortars have existed in China since the 13th at least.

Thanks brother

I was an 11C 20 at one point. The 4.2 was heavy, had a great illumination round and could destroy troops in the open. Our truck, a 6-wheel monstrosity had a turbine engine and was so loud it could be heard for miles. At 672 lbs it was too heavy too carry.

and with computerized loading, auto fire and aiming. Could you imagine it firing off 9 rounds in under five seconds in any sort of pattern needed using either manual aim, or gps assisted?

good way to retask m113 imo.

Well...you could take the bastards prisoner. Sometimes.

@@neilgriffiths6427 prisoners are liabilities and slow your mission down.

@@Ehsggsh12747 well you can disarm and tie them, and send them far behind your lines. You don't need many soldiers for a very large number of well tied prisoners.

@@ras573 true but it will still slow your mission down regardless, also you have to feed and shelter your prisoners which costs money. But from an ethical standpoint taking prisoners is much better then lining them up in front of a rifle squad, then moving on.

The bloke sitting behind the mortar base plate is the gunner and he should be adjusting fire based on the info from the radioman, who should have a fire control computer to direct his fire. Geoff Who notes modern times.

You mean this video? ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-gsxaeIPOJIs.html

Also sometimes teams have a mortar leader. His most visible imminent job being pulling the firing string on models with non fixed firing pins. Though in reality that is rather their smallest job. The leader of course leads the team given tasks etc, he also determines the base direction of weapon, checks the calibration of the sights etc., receives incoming orders, keeps track of available ammunition and rounds fired etc. Also that is the person most imminently getting their head bitten of by infantry platoon leader, if mortar accidentally aim bad and land on friendlies. Sometimes elevation and azimuth are on different persons, depending on mortar model. Most again heavier stuff might have separate elevation and azimuth scopes, adjustments. there thus being gunner, assistant gunner who aim one of the axis each and loader who lobs rounds in the tube. the lead pulls the string. Ofcourse this is mostly based on my Finnish experience and we are known to be rather artillery&mortar crazy and have usually massive teams on guns. Just to make everything that few seconds faster. And since we are conscript army, there isn't exactly lack of personnel. Plus it speeds up transport, maintenance etc.

Ah, you're Finnish? The ones who built the giant double barreled 120mm MRSI-firing self propelled mortar of doom?

@@GameFreak7744 you must be referring to Advanced Mortar System. And yes I'm a Finn. Though I must add AMOS was kinda joint project with Swedes. Though the single barrel NEMO follow up is ours only. Apparently AMOS kinda was even too heavy and powerfull. Which lead to smaller single tube variant to allow smaller mounting platforms and vehicles. Still it is one amazing mortar I must say. Both technically and just the 'we have epic looking double barreled scifi turret' factor.

Mortars hit it from every angle!

andrew dunkle In fact, 45 (longest range) to 85 degrees, that's call 'uper angles'.

@@TheBing65 What about 0 degrees? Maximal kinetic energy? Useful to destroy things at close range, I guess?

@@alaric_3015 kraut

Need those peltors lol a 120 gave me gnarly hearing damage

Ice27076 we had to wear earplugs together with earmuffs when firing the 120.

First time I used those it freaked me out because I couldn't figure out who was talking to me, then I realized it was the FDC Humvee that was nowhere near me I was hearing.

@Alaric its resonance. Everything has its own natural vibrating frequency. Try hold a string with something tied to the end then shake it. First swing it slow, then shake it fast, then try to swing it at a rate where it actually can swing nicely. Thats the natural frequency. Some sounds are too high and some are too low. Engineers can design stuff to filter off different sounds while leaving different sounds to pass through

Aeth Alpenglow oh sweet jesus. My private gave me a misfire cuz he fucked up one of the cheese charges while I was gunning. Had to kick that bitch to get it to fire xD felt my heart sink when I kicked and heard the 0.5 seconds of it sliding down till BOOM. Thought I was dead xD

MISFIRE MISFIRE MISFIRE

Reminds me of that training camp scene.

To bad you didnt borrow a pack animal or use a farmer

No hiking with an 81mm definetily isn’t fun, let alone the ammo crates, but it is very deadly as an infantry support weapon

I have only been on the giving of artillery in training... that was enough to convince me... that can't be pleasant to experience. Lost 30% of the hearing in my left ear before I left Fort Sill, OK. Love you my brother-in-arms.

Significant emotional event

REPEAT

REPEAT

6:04

@@zachdurocher1166 This is how reliable witnesses to a crime would be, all of us.

What cameraman is stupid or crazy enough to get close to the landing point to film it?

Neither did the enemy...

105mm 자주박격포 120mm 자주박격포 155mm 자주박격포...

No not the same, not even close. 3 lbs HE with the 120 mm mortar and about 14 lbs HE with the 155 howitzer. Thats a modern howitzer Maybe the effect comes from a much higher rate of fire. If you can fire 4 or 5 rds to every 1 from the big gun its kinda the same

A 120 motar would break the track on a m2 but maybe a shitty track apc or a palidan .... A ww2 tank u ever stood next to a sherman a "tiny" tank

Almost impossible to hit a tank with a mortar. And mortars overheat like any weapon so you have to wait after a burst (I think it was about 6 or so) - otherwise you cook one of in which it pre-ignites and fires short.

Ok what tank? Like a ww1 tank then yes a sherman doubtful anything larger you honestly dont know cause the answer is NO a 120mm could hit anywhere but the tippity top and like the hatch or driving scope otherwise no

While I would agree with the sentiment, people said the same thing about swords, spears, and bows

Frank Tank they did with the recoilless rifle, mortars are antiquated and really rarely used by conventional forces

@@irishsavage8715... although it is true that mortars are quite old they are still being used the only difference is mortars well, morters of the U.S has tracking capability which allows the operator to aim and fire with pinpoint accuracy!

And the ak47? It was I think used in ww2 or ww1 made by Mikhail Kalashnikov

@@harharhahrahrharo fail. Go read about it -_- AK47 was post WW2... the 47 is 1947.

The WW2 British Medium Mortar, the Ordnance ML 3 inch, was actually more like 3.2 inches = 81 mm!

The quote is from the British army training memorandum, of oktober 1942, and only talkes about a 2" and 3". The historian that wrote the book, only talks about 3" = 76,2mm. Now he might have not measured the mortar, or he is talking about earlier (he only talks about a ML 1 and 2)... But does it really matter?

What is more hilarious is that in terms of HE power the 120mm mortar=155mm howitzer... this is due to more explosives fitted into shell and a thinner case

Make sure to lock and close the door behind you

You forgot your fanny pack. Don't come back. We'll mail it to you.

Bah dunn. Tissshh

Boom boom! So to speak....

Don't forget the morale factor. Artillery, armour and aircraft require specific weapons to typically cause them harm (i.e., ranged, AT and AA). Infantry can be killed by a rock. Mortar crews frequently share the same dangers as other infantry and if operating close enough to the infantry, have a minimum range that makes "friendly fire" very difficult. The fact that they can occasionally see their target means they can adapt and almost follow it as it moves. Add in "danger close" missions which are far less dangerous to friendlies than your "earth movers", they feel a "little" safer.