After a disastrous diplomatic phone call (rfr: 'Best Girl incident') North Korea unexpectedly decides to support NATO in the Ukraine.
YOU have been given command of an entire company of 12 3x370mm SP recoilless rifles I.E the forbidden back blast. .
How do you use them? Artillery? Assault guns? Hilarious AT? What is your hearing protection policy?
Seriously though, how the hell would these be used if someone insane enough to use them? 12 would effectively be 3 battleship broadsides hitting the enemy and 3 TOS barrages to your immediate rear area..
>probably have disgusting CEP
Wouldn't use them unless I were planning to level Belgorod or something, otherwise I'd just be fucking my own country's infrastructure and farmland for nothing
12.5 mile range, it is recoilless so you can direct fire.
It can do direct fire, presumably you can fire one barrel at a time in case the target needs a follow up shot or if it is using the USS Iowa as cover.
>It can do direct fire
I use it as a front line assault vehicle.
>370mm=14.5 inches
>14 inch naval shell: 1125+ lbs
Would you want to use it like the Ontos in Vietnam, you could blast out an half ton of canister shot/flechettes assuming you had a loading vehicle.
Which brings up another question; extrapolating from the 106mm M40 the shells would weigh at least 400-500 lbs. Maybe they didn't pursue it because it would have required a separate loading vehicle?
Unfortunately no, it would be film as it was tested in the 1980s. They made a few for test purposes, stress tested one to the point of destruction (RIP brave KPLA guys) then decided not to pursue it and put one in a museum. I would dearly love to see the back blast.
Probably not dangerous at that range but you would certainly feel the air move.
The weird thing is they were intended as artillery and were rejected because of the short range, it seems they never had the idea of having a battalion of 3-4 dozen them just obliterating entire towns that were in their way as assault guns. I honestly think it's a missed opportunity in terms of retarded destructive technology. They would make hilarious assault guns with some kind of HESH charge, they could probably cut a skyscraper in half with direct fire.
How far can you depress the barrel? I want to use them as a tank destroyer
I shoot them at Russian ships in the black sea
will it miss? yeah. will it cause a lot of sailors to shit themselves? yeah
If you had 12 and could see the target you might very well hit it. It is equivalent to a 14 inch naval shell so just one should do it against a modern ship.
What even is the purpose of such a weapon?
DPRK was fucking around with weapons ideas, decided to try out putting the equivalent of a battleship turret on a tank. In theory it would be better than things like the TOS for utterly fucking up something at medium range if not for the back blast issue.
The idea is sound and it apparently did work however it was so batshit crazy that they just put one in a museum I'd have made a battalion just for shits and giggles.
>Get ambushed on the road at close range
>Barrels depress
>Wait, why are they pointing the REAR of the guns at us
>OH FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU--------
>106mm recoilless rifle: 188 decibels
>Three 370mm recoilless rifles? ALL the decibels
>100 meter danger area for the tiny 127mm Javelin 'kicker' charge
>370mm equals a blast area slightly under 9x the blast of a javelin's danger area
>Javelins kicker chare is a fraction of what a recoilless rifle would use
>At least 10x probably more like 20-30X the charge
>The fucking thing probably knocks leaves off of trees a kilometer behind it
And that is why even the North Koreans decided to no deploy the worlds most hilariously destructive fuck off SP gun(s) even for the lulz.
Although i mean no disrespect: Kneel Ontos-kun.
Does any video of it firing exist?
Back blast: 2km.
I will just point them in a general direction over russia and start shooting.
Crew them remotely, back up towards enemy emplacements and just let the back blast alone rip them apart. Don't even need a real projectile.
Back it up into a main street and have the back last serve as a literal street sweeper. Like a giant portable flamethrower
Or have it drive up to a trench line, park parallel over it and fire away
How would that even work?
Shrink wrapped man loadable plastic bags of 15mm steel balls loaded into a steel canister carrier shell until there was half a ton of of steel buckshot in each barrel then a few bags of propellant in each barrel then *BANG!* and you shotgun a few city blocks?
It seems technically feasible but unless it was loaded before the assault it would be a real pain in the ass to load. Not saying 3x370mm canister shot couldn't be done even by hand, it just would be VERY heavy to load and take a while. But if you really wanted to do that it would be pretty awesomely destructive.
Even if it was 'only' 500 lbs of steel balls per barrel a squad (four) would throw 2 tons (500X3X4=6000 lbs) of 15mm steel balls somewhere between Mach 1.5-2. They would loose velocity pretty quickly but they would shred brick or cinderblocks. It would not kill the crew of a tank if it was buttoned up or even reliably wreak its tracks but it would wreak if in terms of combat ability.
Maybe everything for 300-500 meters is effectively destroyed? You are proposing the largest shotgun in human history besides the Yamato's AA rounds.
I was suggesting something far more stupid, but your post is BRILLIANT. I don't care how logistically challenging it is, I want to see the world's largest shotgun literally deleted a city block or 4 in the most awe inspiring blast of death and destruction ballistic weaponry has ever produced.
Also at 370mm you could probably get away with multiple stacks of flechettes for extra range and horror
I think it could be used like a meteorit
to clarify
as a large payload mortar not for mine clearing
That is the most rational way to use it i can think of. It is going to make a huge mess (on both ends) so use it in a place that is already destroyed.
All fantasies aside it seems like it would be best used as a specialist siege weapon, when you absolutely need a specific thing or location destroyed immediately. Meteorit has done very well, while this thing would not clear out a line like Meteorit it seems like it would be far more destructive, especially if you were ruthless enough to deploy numbers of them without caring about collateral damage.
I feel like it wasn't cost effective/useful when it was first made but a good case could be made for revisiting the idea in the current era of protracted urban combat. I am quite sure that if they were available Assad would have paid his left nut to have a dozen or so a few years back
Four of them would be the roughly equal to a battleship broadside at point blank range, despite the back blast and loading issues i think i'd much rather have these things than something like TOS-1s in my arsenal. .
>especially if you were ruthless enough to deploy numbers of them without caring about collateral damage.
Clarification: No one who would even consider making them cares about collateral damage so in a hypothetical conversation that isn't even a issue. .
That's some wargame red dragon campaign materiel right here
Can’t really answer without knowing concrete capabilities but seeing how it has three barrels odds are it is intended to be used like unguided rocket artillery. If accurate enough I suppose you could fire each gun in rapid succession for more accuracy, three rounds hitting within a couple seconds of each other. Either way it would probably be terrible for saturation fire, just shoot and scoot.
Stage a North Korea invasion of the Russian far east, using wave after wave of North Korean conscripts to overwhelm the lightly manned defenses.
Donbabwe and Luganda. Those children have it coming. Snake Island would have been a good target. Possibly the isthmus.