https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/Gv2cQIrnvZC1
TL;DR, it has 370m/s muzzle velocity so it can be used for indirect firing! If anyone has any information on the M2 charge, I would greatly appreciate it if you would send it here as I suspect that it is even less powerful than the M3 charge
If you’re referring to the “dummy charge M2” mentioned in your 4th screenshot, I think that is a completely inert charge used for training. See Section “(f) Dummy propelling charge M2.” on 2-127 (PDF page 191) of your TM 9-1300-203 source.
oh… sad!
Do you know if its possible to further split the charges to get even lower muzzle velocity?
Probably. On page 2-131 of TM 9-1300-203, it says that the 1230 fps (375 m/s) is the “maximum muzzle velocity”. Page 2-127 says that the M3A1 charge (which is similar to the M3 charge) is divided into a base and four increments, so firing with less or no increments might allow for a lower mv, but the document doesn’t seem to have data on this.
Standard Ordinance Items Catalog, 1944, Vol. 3 contains such a data table for the M107 fired from the M1 howitzer (my copy had the internal page numbers cut out, but it’s page 104 in the PDF):
As you can see, firing with just the M3 base charge produces a mv of 680 fps (207 m/s), which would be very good for indirect firing. However, the maximum mv in this table with full increments is only 1220 fps, slightly slower than the 1230 fps described in TM 9-1300-203. I’m not sure what is the cause of this discrepancy, since TM 9-1300-203 says that their data applies to all M1, M1A1, M45, and M126 howitzers. Maybe differences between WWII and post-war charges?
Can you perhaps attach those in a comment in my bug report?
