Service
The M1 equipped 16 or 17 field artillery battalions in the Northwest Europe, where it was employed for corps support. M5 High Speed Tractor was assigned as prime mover. The weapon was declared obsolete in September 1945.
The gun had good range, nearly five km longer than its 155 mm howitzer sibling and longer than the 155 mm Gun M1918MI. It was out-ranged by another 155 mm gun, the Long Tom, but the latter was nearly three times heavier.
On the other side, the 4.5 inch gun was criticized for insufficient power of its high explosive shell. The shell was produced from low grade ("19 ton") steel, which necessitated thick walls. As a result, it carried only about two kg of TNT or substitute, in fact less than the 105 mm high explosive shell. Additionally, it was felt that having a small number of guns of atypical caliber unnecessarily complicated logistics.
Read more about this topic: 4.5 Inch Gun M1
Famous quotes containing the word service:
“The general who advances without coveting fame and retreats without fearing disgrace, whose only thought is to protect his country and do good service for his sovereign, is the jewel of the kingdom.”
—Sun Tzu (6th–5th century B.C.)
“The service a man renders his friend is trivial and selfish, compared with the service he knows his friend stood in readiness to yield him, alike before he had begun to serve his friend, and now also. Compared with that good-will I bear my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“His character as one of the fathers of the English language would alone make his works important, even those which have little poetical merit. He was as simple as Wordsworth in preferring his homely but vigorous Saxon tongue, when it was neglected by the court, and had not yet attained to the dignity of a literature, and rendered a similar service to his country to that which Dante rendered to Italy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)