81mm Practice Mortar

[Aragorn243]

Found this antiquing yesterday. Appears to have never been fired. No dents, scratches, etc. Heavy bugger, solid steel/iron from what I can tell.

81mm, WWII era. Only marks on the shell portion are two squares intersecting at the lower right corner upper left corner to form a smaller square and then a dot in the center of the two larger ones. Fin has SMP in two locations.

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.

[browningautorifle]

I used to shoot those when we practiced with Mortar Pl in the '70's. We used a simple 12 ga shotgun blank with lead washers at the front end and paper hulls. Marked 12 ga, Win. They had a slight bulge where brass met paper and they would just slip into the butt of the tailfins. They came in a crate of lots but the bodies came in a crate of six. I have an 81 that came from sprouting from an active Arbutus tree in the range where I used to fire them and was found by my old MFC/CPO/group comd. I said we probably shot that and he agreed... Mine has a bit of rust and damage but the little 60 is prefect. Never mind the other ordnance pictured, they aren't doing anything. Just a family pic.

[Aragorn243]

So if a 12 gauge shell is used, doesn't the brass portion stay in the tube making a mess. This one has screw threads in the bottom that would hold the firing shell in place. I only ever fired a mortar one time and honestly don't remember looking at the firing portion.

[browningautorifle]

doesn't the brass portion stay in the tube making a mess.

They can on occasion, causing a stoppage of round failing to fire, not too often though. Then when you extract the round you find a brass in there as well. Usually they stay put. The threads are for the combat ignition cartridge which is threaded like an artillery shell primer. The exact same tailfin assembly is used. Most guys only fired the 60mm in basic, I was in mortar platoon for about two years...

[rcathey]

Picked one up at auction about a year ago. Always found them so aesthetically pleasing in a sci-fi sorta way. You can just imagine Buck Rogers stepping out of one of them!

[Aragorn243]

Picked one up at auction about a year ago. Always found them so aesthetically pleasing in a sci-fi sorta way. You can just imagine Buck Rogers stepping out of one of them!

Yeah, my first thought when I saw it was that wooden bomb I picked up last year. Similar shape. The bomb is a lot lighter and smaller however.

[rcathey]

I remember that post. Still jealous! Really cool piece.

[browningautorifle]

Really cool piece.

Yes, very hard to find piece that seldom survived it's intended use.

[Bruce_in_Oz]

I also remember the actual practice tubes to use with these dummy bombs. They had a port cut into the side of the tube near the base and an angled plate welded in as a deflector.

This meant that the "drill" bombs dropped down the tube would self-eject and the crew did not have to uncouple the base-plate to tip the dummy out.

Thus the crew could run all their rapid fire drills properly.

The favourite toy was the sub-cal kit, universally referred to as the "mini-mortar" This was an insert system powered by compressed air and used on VERY short ranges. Basically an expensive, complex lawn-darts rig. The Mortarmen used to fabricate suitably-labeled, miniature target structures (like "Miss Nancy's Boarding House" and "Doug's Drugs", "Annie's Orphanage" etc), from cast-off cardboard from ration-pack shipping liners.

I thought Mortarmen were eccentric until I worked with Assault Pioneers!

[browningautorifle]

the actual practice tubes to use with these dummy bombs.

We never had those. Never even saw one until they were for sale on a surplus site.

an insert system powered by compressed air

We had those and used them, a bit flakey but gave you the idea at least. We set up out mini map and landscape on the edge of the parade square but started destroying the little bombs so concluded that. The little bombs could take a .22 blank in the nose so the gave a report on impact but we didn't do that. There was a later model insert that used a full sized steel bomb that was a barrel containing the sub bomb. They used a MUCH bigger scale map of about 300 meters and different colored bombs gave different ranges. You had to use a fetching rig to get the bomb out of the tube after firing so you didn't need to do the misfire drill. It came long after I was elsewhere so I didn't use that one.