information on firing a mortar

[Alpo]

Does it have to be set on the ground - on dirt?

 

Could it be fired from the asphalt street in front of my house, or for that matter from my concrete driveway? Could one be fired from the steel deck of a ship?

[Subdeacon Joe]

You can. But yo risk damage to the weapon,  damage to the surface,  damage to you. The recoil has to go somewhere. 

[Alpo]

Novel. Army. Ship full of soldiers arrives in Korea with their 50 calibers still in the cosmoline, the soldiers' individual weapons had not been sighted in, and their mortars had never been test-fired.

 

And I had some thoughts.

 

Sighting in the rifles would have probably been difficult. Cleaning the machine guns during that long sea voyage would have given them something to do. And they could have at least test fired their mortars, to make sure that a shell would go thataway.

 

And then I wondered if you could fire the mortars from the deck of the ship.

[Chantry]

You can fire mortars from a ship.  During WWII the British (10th Indian Army division) invasion of Iraq, mortars were sandbagged on the ship and fired, supplementing the ship's fire power.  I'll mention that this landing was not conducted with the purpose built invasion ships we think of from WWII.  And that's your useless fact of the day.

[Major Hazzard, SASS #23254]

6 hours ago, Alpo said:

Does it have to be set on the ground - on dirt?

 

Could it be fired from the asphalt street in front of my house, or for that matter from my concrete driveway? Could one be fired from the steel deck of a ship?

The mortar won't know what it's sitting on.  Shoot it off just about any surface.  Accuracy gets challenging firing off anything overly soft, hard, slick or sloped.  Experienced crews know how to cope.

[Sgt. C.J. Sabre, SASS #46770]

As Subdeacon Joe said the recoil has to go somewhere, an it is SUBSTANTIAL! You would want, as Chantry mentioned, to mount them on sandbags or something similar, not only for that, but I promise you that if you fired one off the bare deck of a ship, the baseplate would slide, ruining any chance of accuracy or control. And SOMETHING would break.

Even on hard packed dirt, they move while being fired, even if only a little. 

[Alpo]

2 minutes ago, Sgt. C.J. Sabre, SASS #46770 said:

but I promise you that if you fired one off the bare deck of a ship, the baseplate would slide, ruining any chance of accuracy or control.

Well, like I said - in the book they said that the mortars had not been test-fired.

 

So take them back to the fantail of the ship and lob a few shells out into the ocean. Not looking for accuracy. Looking to see if they work.

[Sgt. C.J. Sabre, SASS #46770]

6 minutes ago, Alpo said:

Well, like I said - in the book they said that the mortars had not been test-fired.

 

So take them back to the fantail of the ship and lob a few shells out into the ocean. Not looking for accuracy. Looking to see if they work.

Again, bare steel on bare steel, something's going to break. Korea era, probably the old two piece steel baseplate. They look like this:

There is NO give to this thing, and the Ship's Captain would probably frown on Marines denting his Deck. Again, could it be done? Yes. but something's going to break.

[Texas Joker]

A mortar round is fired once. Why would you test fire it?

 

Mortar tubes are just that. A tube on the plate adjustable for elevation and azimuth, again it's angles and ballistics math why test fire?