How does a DU round obtain accuracy?

Seems like there is a lot of stuff in a nuke besides uranium and a practice shot could be made out of lots cheaper material the same shape and weight overall.

mcb said:

Opps I missed the "practice" part of your post.

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Yeah, for some reason the DoD didn't want them practicing with live atomic weapons.

Of course, now they are still stuck cleaning up the DU sites anyway!

Gordon,

"The problem with Davey Crokett was what could go wrong with a Lt. and a jeep with a live nuclear weapon ? "

Lordy lordy the stories I can NOT tell...…….

-kBob

Practice shots were included in the package for some systems to check to allow a shot for corrections. These were also used in training. There were jokes about call for nuke fire where "splash out" was followed by "I will adjust.....right five thousand add three thousand." and others involving adjusting after severe eye injuries and the ever popular

"Splash over...….. splash over......splash over...…."
"Sir, Second ACR is totally off the air!"
"Dang short round, again!"

-kBob

The phalanx cannons the navy uses are 20mm guns shooting a tungsten round, it uses a plastic sabot

Back in the 1970's the Army had a Tactical Nuke Simulator. This was a 30 gallon oil drum fitted up as a fireworks mortar of sorts that tossed a fast burning huge flair up a little ways. In use there was a loud explosion, the burst in the sir of a short duration but huge flair and a classic mushroom cloud. Depending on who measured what , length of burn, cloud heights at a particular time and weather it looked pretty much like what something in the 1.5 to 3 KT range may have looked like going off.

A Captain I worked for had been in charge off putting together a demonstration of Corp and down Artillery Assets for a largish group of visiting congress criters and various DOD and State folks. He started with Infantry Company Mortars (81mm) and moved up through 4Duece to 105G/H and 155 G/H and eight inch Gun and ended his show with a very low angle Honest John shot just barely over the next ridge line about two miles out. Right where the Honest John crested the ridge he had installed a Nuke Simulator and he had it detonate seconds after the rocket disappeared.

Multiple VIPs freaked out and leapt from the bleachers...….and that is how one of my bosses found himself on a short stateside tour.

-kBob

Gordon said:

The problem with Davey Crokett was what could go wrong with a Lt. and a jeep with a live nuclear weapon

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The other issue with the earliest ones was that the warhead yield was high enough that the "danger" radius was greater than the effective range. Oops.

The LASL & LRL folks managed to figure out ways to dial down the yield (down around 0.5 KT, IIRC).

The redlegs objected to blue cord types playing with artillery and so the brass shut the concept down. ( It was also a logistical nightmare as the PAL--Permissive Action Link) gear took more space than the weapon and launcher; you needed about 3 jeeps for just the one round.)

CANNONMAN said:

So what's the largest and smallest of these? I understand that they have been called carcinomic and are? or are not in use anymore? Since we're here, what are black tips made of and are all black tips the same materials?

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Largest is probably the alleged Soviet/Russian 125mm DS round.
Smallest is probably the Norwegian .50bmg round, which was alleged to have a 5-6mm diameter penetrator in it.

DU rounds are controversial. Carcinogenic is subject to debate. DU has had the "active" U-235 removed from it, to where ±0.3% remains (hence the description "depleted"). Now, the remainder will make a radiac detector click, if dialed down enough. But, so will bananananas, or coal, and a number of other common items.

US AP rifle caliber rounds used either steel or tungsten cores of varying diameters. Usually suspended in lead in copper jackets with the same profile as FMJ. There's a sweet spot ratio of 15:1 to 17:1 for penetrators where their penetration maxes out. This was not really discovered until the 50s, and not much used until the late 70s (the WWII AP shot were tungsten because it was hard, and since it was less dense than steel or lead would have higher velocity than 'standard' sheels/shot).

CapnMac,

It may have been possible to shoot a Davie Crockett to a range distant enough to allow arming and have it fetinate at close enough range to burn or knock down unprotected crewmen, but the biggest warhead ever put in one would not have been all that deadly at anything near max range.

What killed the Davie Crockett was the same thing that killed Atomic Annie, sort of. The Atomic cannon, an 11 inch gun, was huge, heavy and needed a lot of support and there were never more than 12 in say Europe at one time. This made them rather easy to keep track of and perhaps deal with. They were a Field Army or at least Corp asset with folks with many stars of thars having dang near direct control. Incidentally my Father in Law was assigned to them in Europe.

Basically a round was developed for the 8 inch gun. This is a Division asset and once release is given under the control of a Bird Colonel that Commands each Division's Division Artillery "Regiment" So instead of 12 guns in three kassernes in NATO there were 12 guns in every Armored or Mech Infantry division.

Now Davie Crockett was an attempt to make the Soviets play a shell gam at finding all our tactical nukes.

Honest John was brought in as a Corp asset.

The Non Mech out fits like Airborne and what would later be called "Light fighters" Had Little John attached to shoot a nuke.

Now all these weapons were what are called gun types or linear devices....think primitive as in Hiroshima bomb.

Enter a Compression warhead (collapsing sphere) small enough to go in a 155 shell and suddenly every artillery tube in a Mech Division DivArty is nuke capable Now every mech division has those 12eight inch and NINE six gun batteries of Nuke Capable 155 guns. The 155s of an Airborne/air assualt/ light fighter division are nuke capable so even they had 12 nuke capable guns.

Davie was let out to pasture because it was not needed anymore.

-kBob

CapnMac said:

Largest is probably the alleged Soviet/Russian 125mm DS round.
Smallest is probably the Norwegian .50bmg round, which was alleged to have a 5-6mm diameter penetrator in it.

DU rounds are controversial. Carcinogenic is subject to debate. DU has had the "active" U-235 removed from it, to where ±0.3% remains (hence the description "depleted"). Now, the remainder will make a radiac detector click, if dialed down enough. But, so will bananananas, or coal, and a number of other common items.

US AP rifle caliber rounds used either steel or tungsten cores of varying diameters. Usually suspended in lead in copper jackets with the same profile as FMJ. There's a sweet spot ratio of 15:1 to 17:1 for penetrators where their penetration maxes out. This was not really discovered until the 50s, and not much used until the late 70s (the WWII AP shot were tungsten because it was hard, and since it was less dense than steel or lead would have higher velocity than 'standard' sheels/shot).

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Yeah, tungsten is about 3X as dense as iron/steel. You might want to look at a periodic table...

What I always tell people about DU rounds causing various health issues is this; it isn't radioactive enough, but you are breathing in or ingesting a toxic heavy metal when they are used.