Does a mortar have a muzzle flash

[Alpo]

Novel

 

If I was sitting out there, in the middle of the night, and started lobbing a few mortar rounds in your general direction, would you be able to spot my location by a muzzle flash?

 

Conversely, does it produce smoke? If I started lobbing some at you in the daylight, could my location be exposed by smoke?

 

Personally I do not expect the answer to question number two to be yes, but that is just my opinion and I figured I would pick some knowledgeable brain.

[DocWard]

 

 

The answer to both questions is "yes"

[Subdeacon Joe]

Yep.

https://www.dvidshub.net/video/58807/mortar-night-fire

 

They are relatively smokeless.  

Unless

 

[Alpo]

The second video Doc posted - what were they using to clean it? It looked for all the world like apple cider vinegar.

[Texas Joker]

[DocWard]

1 hour ago, Alpo said:

The second video Doc posted - what were they using to clean it? It looked for all the world like apple cider vinegar.

 

I wasn't a mortarman, but my hunch is they use CLP, just lots of it.

[Sedalia Dave]

1 hour ago, Alpo said:

The second video Doc posted - what were they using to clean it? It looked for all the world like apple cider vinegar.

 

Orange gatorade. Didn't you recognise the shape of the bottle. 

[Charlie Harley, #14153]

49 minutes ago, DocWard said:

 

I wasn't a mortarman, but my hunch is they use CLP, just lots of it.

In the 1980s CLP cleaned everything from 1911s to 155mm howitzers. Good stuff by the 55 gallon drum. 

[Subdeacon Joe]

Re: Cleaning - I see that the shape of the rammer for muzzle loading artillery hasn't changed in centuries.    Surprised that they haven't gone to a sheep's wool sponge.  

 

[Larsen E. Pettifogger, SASS #32933]

This one made lots of smoke and fire.

 

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

Ya call that a mortar?

 

 

 

 

[DocWard]

4 hours ago, Charlie Harley, #14153 said:

In the 1980s CLP cleaned everything from 1911s to 155mm howitzers. Good stuff by the 55 gallon drum. 

When I retired it was still being used on 105mm and 155mm howitzers!

[Chantry]

6 hours ago, DocWard said:

 

I wasn't a mortarman, but my hunch is they use CLP, just lots of it.

CLP  ugh.  It does a great job of pulling fouling, powder & copper out of the barrel.  But if you're in the National Guard (early 1990's) you were cleaning Vietnam era M16A1's that were never fully cleaned, so we ended up with rifles that were clean when they were turned into the armory on a drill weekend, but dirty several weeks later when there is an inspection.  

[DocWard]

3 hours ago, Chantry said:

CLP  ugh.  It does a great job of pulling fouling, powder & copper out of the barrel.  But if you're in the National Guard (early 1990's) you were cleaning Vietnam era M16A1's that were never fully cleaned, so we ended up with rifles that were clean when they were turned into the armory on a drill weekend, but dirty several weeks later when there is an inspection.  

 

I didn't enlist in the National Guard until 1996. In the early 1990's I was still in the Army Reserve in a Med Lab with an anal retentive supply officer who preferred us to not even think of the M-16s in the vault. The stories I could tell about that guy. But yes, I know exactly what you mean