Different names for the same thing?

Technically....... the main weapon on the M1 is a Gun. They are normally referred to as Tubes since they are changeable and with the breech removed, is essentially a metal tube.

Rounds Complete!!

redleg12

Technically....... the main weapon on the M1 is a Gun. They are normally referred to as Tubes since they are changeable and with the breech removed, is essentially a metal tube.

Rounds Complete!!

And perhaps being a smoothbore makes it easier to call it a "tube" (though we know it's more than that) rather than a barrel? Do we know of any rifled barrels being referred to as "tubes"?

He is correct. The proper term we use for the M1 is gun tube. We bore sight the main gun. The MRS is used to compensate for "gun tube droop" or the bending of the main gun when it heats up or cools down after firing or due to weather (sun warming it or cold cooling it).

Now, the .50 cal has a spare barrel.

Interesting. you learn something new every day.

It seems odd that they're smooth bore instead of rifled. Is this because of the ammunition? or because of the way they're fired?

The smooth bore fires a fin stabilized round. Basically a giant dart traveling at Mach 5 towards its intended target. A rifled main gun, the the previous 105mm, used spin to improve accuracy. The 105mm rifled main gun was still called a main gun tube.

The official acronym for the main gun round is APFSDS or Armor Piercing Fin Stablized Discarding Sabot. The sabot is basically a boot (the literal translation of the French word) that fits around the actual projectile called the penetrator. The sabot falls apart as the round exits the main gun. The discarded sabot portions are called petals, like petals of a flower.

The sabot allows a penetrator with the diameter of a broomstick to be fired from a 120mm gun tube.

As far as the gun tube vs. barrel, nothing scientific, but I guess we refer to small arms as barrels and larger guns as tubes regardless of whether it is smooth bore or rifled.

Thanks for that Rob. Very informative.

And guns are crew served weapons in US Army parlance. An individual soldiers' weapon may be a Carbine, Rifle, Rifle with Grenade Launcher, SAW, Submachine gun, or Pistol, but he does not carry a "gun"

Do we know of any rifled barrels being referred to as "tubes"?

Field artillery pieces are often refered to as "tubes", whether rifled or not, (especially by the O's, as in "How many tubes are you firing, Captain?")...  But the actual "tube" is the part that comes into contact with both the breech AND the ammunition, rather than the part that is on the "outside", which is actually called a "Jacket".....

In the Howitzer Section Chief's Gun-Book, there's a form on which the Section-Chief records the remaining "Tube Life", DA Form 2408-4, Weapon Record Data. The "Tube Serial Number" is recorded and kept as a "living document".. The daily number of rounds fired from each Fire Mission (to include charge) are added up (taken from DA Form 4504) and total cumlative number of rounds fired through it are recorded... 

The cannon's serial number is separate from the tube S/N, since all howitzers will undergo what's known as "Re-tubing" after the current tube's service-life is reached (I can't remember exactly how many total rounds for the M109A3 I owned, but it was about a thousand, give or take, with scheduled bore-scopings)..  The 2408-4 also records how many times that particular cannon has been re-tubed, IIRC (Been a LONG time since I was a Section-Chief)...

As an aside, in general "Redleg-speak" a "gun" is smooth-bored, and a howitzer is rifled.  The rifling in a howitzer is made up of "lands" and grooves"...  

Probably way more info than you wanted, but I felt like typing something besides "model-stuff"..

Hans, great recap.....remember, in "Redleg-speak" a gun is a weapon that fires on a relatively flat trajectory and fires low angle (less than 45 degrees or for the redleg's less than 800 mils only.

The M59 & M40 155mm "gun" and the M107 175mm "gun" had rifling. Their high caliber tubes......large length to diameter ratio, and their ballistics had them classified as a gun. But they are still tubes.

As for others.....I know you are sooo confused. Just remember the word gun is a no-no except when referring to very specific instances or weapons.

Rounds Complete!!

SSoooooo. whan is it a barrel? (IE the weapons barrel overheated after extended firing)

OK....though barrel and tube are interchangable...in practice a "barrel" is normally used for small arms, M2 machine gun, up to ` 40mm. A "tube" is the big boys...the 120mm tube on the M1A1 or the 155mm tube on the M109A6.

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Very interesting.

I Think ive learned enough of what i want to know about explosive projectile weapons for now. Im not a huge fan of them. Could be just because i dislike loud noises. Ill be going bow hunting in the near future. when i buy a bow.

It's not about the "BOOM"...

Heh, Even veteran Redlegs'll jump now and then (if they don't hear the preparatory commands), lol...

 It's about the smell...  The combination of burnt propellant and Break-Free... Love the smell of wolf-puzzy in th' mornin'...

'Course, there's some fun to had too.. With a really hot FDC working the data and enough illumination rounds for the guns, we can put our own constellations up in the night sky...

Hah, ill admit, watching tracers at night is pretty epic. But yeah that whole gun smell is a bit off putting for me. I prefer burnt kerosene. (Air-force brat) Although the one thing i cant stand about aircraft is the unique cockpit smells to each aircraft. A mix of leather conditioner. Musty canvas. Grease and farts. 

I won't get into the smells inside an M109... Suffice to say it's mostly  "feet and azz", multiplied by five... Add a steady diet of MREs, and you can mag a gaggot..   

Hans von Hammer

I won't get into the smells inside an M109... Suffice to say it's mostly  "feet and azz", multiplied by five... Add a steady diet of MREs, and you can mag a gaggot..   

Ahhh....the memories   just the thought could make for at least two hours discussion at a reunion. 

I know.....we are drifting......I now return you to your clean, non odorus, quiet,styrene world...

Rounds Complete!!

Scorpiomikey

Hah, ill admit, watching tracers at night is pretty epic.

Yeah.. Pretty things as long as they go away from me... I was referring to illum round though, which are essentially parachute flares... They're "Base-ejecting Projectiles), and when we fire them, they've been set with a time fuze that, when it functions", the flare is kicked out the back of the joe, and the joe just keeps going on down-range... Hopefully, it hits a bad guy or something too... But it's just a chunk of steel at that point, although it's going pretty fast and can break things... I even picked one up and brought it home from NTC... Got some bases from 80mm illum mortars too..

But a few times we had too much of the stuff, so we'd fire them in patterns.. Like when I was in Battery C, we fired them so they made a big "C" that hung in the night sky...