Loudest artillery?

I'll support your threadjack, for a moment, the 16"/50 of the Missouri are the loudest guns I ever heard. During West Pac '90 aboard the Pelilieu there would be standing room only at the rails anytime the Missouri was close.

 

After digging into an old book by Hogg, my guess is that the loudest gun (of those that were likely to be encountered on the field) would have been the U S 240mm howitzer. I'm baseing that on the fact that it was the largest diameter bore and heaviest projectile in what he classifies as field artillery, and it also looks to have a short barrell. There were others in that class, but for various reasons were not fielded in any numbers or were seldom used.

This excludes coastal defense, rail guns, and those very low production models like the German siege guns (60cm, etc) or experimental weapons like Little David.

 

Wouldn't the Loudest artillary be The WWII German Dora Gun? Because It's bullets are 800mm armor piercing. Heres a link 4 it of the bullet. (No thats not me, thats some random guy. I just found this off of google images thats all.) http://farm1.static.flickr.com/26/43215446_39041801b0.jpg

And heres what a whole pic 4 the WWII German Dora Gun looks like. http://www.afv-news.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/82911.jpg and this http://users.swing.be/sw208720/char1/231955.jpg

 

I wish we had a rogue that would give us a good description of the 16" guns that were fired. My father described one for me that was of WWI vintage that he was trained to fire.....he described it took a full 24 hours for a large crew to dig in this gun before it could even be fired. In his training it had been taken out of mothballs from WWI. I warn you this is second hand as I can only repeat what I remember my father describing. In taking it out of mothballs they had to consult a book, and develop loads for certain distances. As they approached the heavier loads of powder and fired it there were some that went unconscious for a short while from the concussive blasts. That happened in practice and he said they sometimes wore muffs and were not required. My dad was quite deaf at the end of his life but it could have been combined damage from old age and shooting the big gun. He definitely disliked the concussive blasts they had to endure while shooting the big gun. Also I rely on what an ordinance expert out of the military told me about explosive blasts. It depends on the speed of sound yes but different explosives have different speeds. For example muzzle blast has gunpowder speed. Dynamite and maybe TNT has their speed. He described the worst to endure were the HMX variety often found inside large shells. He described that explosive speed as many times the speed of sound that was unlike the bone crushing power of TNT and dynamite. He said at the same distance it would be bone crackling into many small pieces. The "Shell Shock" is caused most regularly by the HMX type that is present in shells which is like a C-4 or plastic explosive. I worked under this fellow in demilling shells and other explosives and cannot claim the experiences but some of the rogues may have more complete descriptions than I. These descriptions are from others so you are getting them second hand....so a rogue could correct me or add to this understanding.

 

I was a Naval Gunfire Spotter for most of the time I was in the Marine Corps. I qualed Missouri in the late 80's on her 5" 38 Marine Gun Mount in the Philippines. During that qual my Gunny observed a mission for her number 2 turret main battery. She fired a one round 3 gun salvo of round HC.

Our OP was across Talisagn Bay from the White Horse Creek Impact Area about 5000 meters. The rounds coming in sounded like a freight train the impact and concussion wave could be felt on the OP and the actual detonation oblitarated a small hill and turned it into a crater.

 

My bucket list would include being close enough to hear/feel big arty takeoff and land. ...F18 low flyby scared the hell out of me. Loud thunder too. But to feel the scream/thump of the God of War would really make my day.

 

I had a 155mm HE round land in a draw 200 meters from my OP in 29 Palms and a 105mm MT fuzed round go off 100 meters in front of my OP at Camp Pendelton, being that close to detonating rounds is highly overrated.

 

Been to a few live fire exercises myself...can second your analysis.
Keep looking around to see if anybody saw you flinch...and jump!

BANG! "Fu#k sake...!"

 

Strangely enough - When I was twelve, I was blown off my feet and deafened for a day; but not by artillery...

By Concorde going supersonic over the Irish Sea during testing in the early 1970s!

I know now that it must have broken the Sound Barrier less than a mile away - up or sideways LOL - for me to experience the full pleasureable effects of a sonic boom; I'll warrant the noise/shockwave from nearby arty must be distinctly similar.

 

Ha. Great stories men. Excellent. Thanks for those.

 

Once at 29 Palms at night we had an illumination round deploy directly over our OP. The sound of "Check your fire." being screamed into radios was deafening. It wasn't the illum we were worried about it was drifting out into the impact area, but we all knew what followed the illum and didn't want a 155 round landing in our laps.

On San Clemente Island I called in a fire mission to the USS Henry B. Wilson adjusted my mission and called for a FFE. Heard "Shot out. Rounds Complete out.........neglect." Generally neglect means they plotted the OP as the target, so I was crappin nickles. luckily they had plotted the location of the last adjustment round.

 

HAHAHA, crappin' nickels. I suppose that's exactly what I'd do.

 

maybe not the best place for this, but...
https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the-u-s-army-wants-a-cannon-with-a-crazy-and-nearly-im-1829150693

 

Don´t know about the loudest "bang" but breaking the enemy morale I´ve read that using katjushas or nebelwerfers would usually break the backbone of most defensive lines. No wonder they were used so often. The whistling sound and the pressure effect?

 

..that's Poppy---interesting is weird/weird is interesting ......I like it
..I was an 81mm mortarman.....mortars aren't that ''loud''...seems like the sound is ''muffled'' ....we were ''near'' M60 tanks when they went off..they were loud ....however, one time we were firing mortars at Vieques Puerto Rico when that was still an active training area...I think it was 1989--around there....we were firing our mortars at around 2000 m range...we took a break while the USS Wisconsin fired her big guns ..[ I'm pretty sure it was the Wisconsin ] ..we could see her in the distance before she started firing ...then she slipped out of view to our right behind the hill......she fired and the impact area was about 4000m away---but the sound was LOUD even at that range !!