Beehive anti-personnel round

Last updated

Beehive was a Vietnam War era anti-personnel round packed with metal flechettes fired from an artillery gun most popularly deployed during that conflict. It is also known as flechette rounds or their official designation, antipersonnel-tracer (APERS-T). Typically, artillery gunners fire using indirect fire, firing at targets they cannot see by line of sight, with information provided by a forward observer. However, during the Vietnam War, there was a demand for a munition that could be fired directly at enemy troops, in cases where an artillery unit was attacked.

Contents

History

The flechette rounds were developed under a contract administered by Picatinny Arsenal and let to the Whirlpool Corporation in April 1957. The contract was named the "Beehive Program" referring to the way the flechettes were compartmentalized and stacked, looking like the traditional image of a conical beehive. It was commonly assumed by users in the service that the term referred to a supposed 'buzzing' sound its darts made when flying through the air. [1] The first example was the 105mm howitzer M546 anti-personnel tracer (APERS-T), first fired in combat in 1966 [2] and thereafter used extensively in the Vietnam War. Intended for direct fire against enemy troops, the M546 was direct fired from a near horizontally leveled 105 mm howitzer [3] and ejected 8000 flechettes during flight by a mechanical time fuse. Green starshells were shot into the air prior to their use to warn friendly troops that such a round was being shot.[ citation needed ]

Men of Company "B", 5th Battalion, 7th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) setting the timing on a 106 mm (XM 581) Beehive round, An Khe, 31 January 1967 NARA photo 111-CCV-556-CC38290.jpg
Men of Company "B", 5th Battalion, 7th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) setting the timing on a 106 mm (XM 581) Beehive round, An Khê, 31 January 1967

The 105mm howitzer round was not the only artillery piece provided with APERS-T. Beehive rounds were also created for recoilless anti-tank weapons: the 90 mm and 106 mm mounted on the M50 Ontos. [4] APERS-T rounds were available for 90mm gun on M48 tanks and the 152mm gun on the M551 Sheridan armored reconnaissance/airborne assault vehicle. After the Vietnam War the 105mm tank gun M68 was also provided APER-T ammunition M494. APERS-T rounds in 40×46 mm were also available for the M79, M203, and M320 grenade launchers.

Subsequently, it was reported that the USSR had developed similar rounds for 122 mm and 152 mm artillery for use in indirect fire.

Beehive rounds became less popular in the United States following the Vietnam War, with low-angle air burst techniques such as Killer Junior supplanting the use of Beehive.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Artillery</span> Long-ranged guns for land warfare

Artillery are ranged weapons that launch munitions far beyond the range and power of infantry firearms. Early artillery development focused on the ability to breach defensive walls and fortifications during sieges, and led to heavy, fairly immobile siege engines. As technology improved, lighter, more mobile field artillery cannons developed for battlefield use. This development continues today; modern self-propelled artillery vehicles are highly mobile weapons of great versatility generally providing the largest share of an army's total firepower.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Self-propelled artillery</span> Artillery mounted on a vehicle for mobility and protection

Self-propelled artillery is artillery equipped with its own propulsion system to move toward its firing position. Within the terminology are the self-propelled gun, self-propelled howitzer, self-propelled mortar, and self-propelled rocket artillery. They are high-mobility vehicles, usually based on continuous tracks carrying either a large field gun, howitzer, mortar, or some form of rocket/missile launcher. They are usually used for long-range indirect bombardment support on the battlefield.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shrapnel shell</span> Anti-personnel artillery munitions

Shrapnel shells were anti-personnel artillery munitions which carried many individual bullets close to a target area and then ejected them to allow them to continue along the shell's trajectory and strike targets individually. They relied almost entirely on the shell's velocity for their lethality. The munition has been obsolete since the end of World War I for anti-personnel use; high-explosive shells superseded it for that role. The functioning and principles behind shrapnel shells are fundamentally different from high-explosive shell fragmentation. Shrapnel is named after Lieutenant-General Henry Shrapnel, a Royal Artillery officer whose experiments, initially conducted on his own time and at his own expense, culminated in the design and development of a new type of artillery shell.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Flechette</span> Pointed, fin-stabilized steel projectile

A flechette is a pointed, fin-stabilized steel projectile. The name comes from French fléchette, meaning "little arrow" or "dart", and sometimes retains the acute accent in English: fléchette. They have been used as ballistic weapons since World War I. Delivery systems and methods of launching flechettes vary, from a single shot, to thousands in a single explosive round. The use of flechettes as antipersonnel weapons has been controversial.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Recoilless rifle</span> Type of light artillery gun

A recoilless rifle (rifled), recoilless launcher (smoothbore), or simply recoilless gun, sometimes abbreviated to "RR" or "RCL" is a type of lightweight artillery system or man-portable launcher that is designed to eject some form of countermass such as propellant gas from the rear of the weapon at the moment of firing, creating forward thrust that counteracts most of the weapon's recoil. This allows for the elimination of much of the heavy and bulky recoil-counteracting equipment of a conventional cannon as well as a thinner-walled barrel, and thus the launch of a relatively large projectile from a platform that would not be capable of handling the weight or recoil of a conventional gun of the same size. Technically, only devices that use spin-stabilized projectiles fired from a rifled barrel are recoilless rifles, while smoothbore variants are recoilless guns. This distinction is often lost, and both are often called recoilless rifles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Weapons of the Vietnam War</span> Weapons used in the Vietnam war

The Vietnam War involved the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) or North Vietnamese Army (NVA), National Liberation Front for South Vietnam (NLF) or Viet Cong (VC), and the armed forces of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), United States Armed Forces, Republic of Korea Armed Forces, Armed Forces of the Philippines, Royal Thai Armed Forces, Australian Defence Force, and New Zealand Defence Force, with a variety of irregular troops.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Canister shot</span> Class of ammunition used by artillery

Canister shot is a kind of anti-personnel artillery ammunition. It has been used since the advent of gunpowder-firing artillery in Western armies, and saw particularly frequent use on land and at sea in the various wars of the 18th and 19th century. Canister is still used today in modern artillery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">M67 recoilless rifle</span> American type of recoilless rifle

The M67 recoilless rifle is a 90 mm anti-tank recoilless rifle made in the United States and later in South Korea. It could also be employed in an anti-personnel role with the use of the M590 antipersonnel round. It was designed to be fired primarily from the ground using the bipod and monopod, but could also be fired from the shoulder using the folded bipod as a shoulder rest and the monopod as a front grip. The weapon was air-cooled and breech-loaded, and fired fixed ammunition. It is a direct fire weapon employing stadia lines to allow simple range finding, based on a typical tank target bridging the lines once in range.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Air burst</span> Detonation of an explosive above a target for increased pressure wave damage

An air burst or airburst is the detonation of an explosive device such as an anti-personnel artillery shell or a nuclear weapon in the air instead of on contact with the ground or target. The principal military advantage of an air burst over a ground burst is that the energy from the explosion, including any shell fragments, is distributed more evenly over a wider area; however, the peak energy is lower at ground zero.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">M40 recoilless rifle</span> Recoilless rifle

The M40 recoilless rifle is a portable, crew-served 105 mm recoilless rifle made in the United States. Intended primarily as an anti-tank weapon, it could also be employed in an antipersonnel role with the use of an antipersonnel-tracer flechette round. The bore was commonly described as being 106 mm caliber but is in fact 105 mm; the 106 mm designation was intended to prevent confusion with incompatible 105 mm ammunition from the failed M27. The air-cooled, breech-loaded, single-shot rifle fired fixed ammunition and was used primarily from a wheeled ground mount or M92 ground mount. It was designed for direct firing only, and sighting equipment for this purpose was furnished with each weapon, including an affixed M8C .50 cal spotting rifle.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">120 mm BAT recoilless rifle</span> British recoilless rifle

The L2 BAT was a 120 mm calibre recoilless anti-tank rifle used by the British Army. It was also produced in the MOBAT version without a gun shield, and the ConBAT version with a new spotting rifle attachment. The L6 Wombat version was greatly lightened through the use of magnesium alloys hence the name. The Wombat was used by mobile units such as paratroopers and marines. the Wombat was also issued to some TA battalions such as 5th Battalion, The Royal Anglian Regiment

<span class="mw-page-title-main">M3 howitzer</span> Light Howitzer

The 105 mm Howitzer M3 was a U.S. light howitzer designed for use by airborne troops. The gun utilized the barrel of the 105 mm Howitzer M2, shortened and fitted to a slightly modified split trail carriage of the 75 mm pack howitzer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spotting rifle</span>

A spotting rifle or ranging gun is a small-calibre rifle used as a sighting device for artillery. The ballistics of the spotting rifle are matched to those of the artillery piece, so that if a shot from the spotting rifle lands on the target, it may be assumed that the main weapon will also do so.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">8 cm PAW 600</span> Anti-tank gun

The PAW 600 was a lightweight anti-tank gun that used the high-low pressure system to fire hollow charge warheads. In 1945, it was used operationally by the Wehrmacht in small numbers. Only about 260 were produced before the war's end.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">KS-19</span> Anti-aircraft gun

The KS-19 100mm anti-aircraft gun is a Soviet anti-aircraft gun that also features efficient capabilities against ground targets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">M18 recoilless rifle</span> Recoilless anti-tank weapon

The M18 recoilless rifle is a 57 mm shoulder-fired, anti-tank recoilless rifle that was used by the U.S. Army in World War II and the Korean War. Recoilless rifles are capable of firing artillery-type shells at reduced velocities comparable to those of standard cannon, but with greater accuracy than anti-tank weapons that used unguided rockets, and almost entirely without recoil. The M18 was a breech-loaded, single-shot, man-portable, crew-served weapon. It could be used in both anti-tank and anti-personnel roles. The weapon could be both shoulder fired or fired from a prone position. The T3 front grip doubled as an adjustable monopod and the two-piece padded T3 shoulder cradle could swing down and to the rear as a bipod for the gunner. The most stable firing position was from the tripod developed for the water-cooled Browning M1917 machine gun.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle of Suoi Tre</span> Part of the Vietnam War (1967)

The Battle of Suoi Tre occurred during the early morning of 21 March 1967 during Operation Junction City, a search and destroy mission by American military forces in Tay Ninh Province, South Vietnam. After being challenged heavily to begin with, the Americans gained the upper hand and completed a convincing victory over the Viet Cong (VC). They claimed to have found 647 bodies and captured seven prisoners, while recovering 65 crew-served and 94 individual weapons. The Americans losses were 36 dead and 190 wounded, a fatality ratio of more than twenty to one in their favour.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ordnance QF 95 mm howitzer</span> Howitzer

The Ordnance QF 95-mm howitzer was a British howitzer built in two versions during the Second World War. The tank howitzer version was accepted for service use, but the infantry version was not.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Direct fire</span> Weapons firing with line of sight on target

Direct fire or line-of-sight fire refers to firing of a ranged weapon whose projectile is launched directly at a target within the line-of-sight of the user. The firing weapon must have a sighting device and an unobstructed view to the target, which means no obstacles or friendly units can be between it and the target. A weapon engaged in direct fire conversely exposes itself to direct return fire from the target.

References

  1. Eitan Barak, ed. (2011), Deadly Metal Rain: The Legality of Flechette Weapons in International Law, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, p. 40
  2. Major General David Ewing Ott (1975), Field Artillery, 1954-1973 (PDF), Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, p. 61, archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-06-29, retrieved 2014-06-16
  3. M546 APERS-T 105-mm
  4. ONTOS mounting six 106mm recoilless rifle, the world's biggest shot gun