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Thursday, July 22, 2010

Long Tom







Here are some images of AR.V Club's 1/35 scale M59 155mm cannon "Long Tom". From Wikipedia "

Before entering World War I, the United States was poorly equipped with heavy artillery. To address this problem a number of foreign heavy artillery guns were adopted, including the Canon de 155 mm GPF. After the end of the war development work began in the United States on a design to improve upon the existing models of heavy gun and carriage. A number of prototypes were produced in the 1920s and 1930s, but the projects were put on hold due to lack of funds. In 1938 the 155 mm Gun T4 on Carriage T2 was finally adopted as 155 mm gun M1 on Carriage M1.

The new design used a barrel broadly similar to the earlier 155 mm GPF, but with an Asbury breech. The new split-trail carriage featured four roadwheels, each mounting two tires. The wheels could be lifted, allowing the gun to rest on a firing platform. This made the gun very stable and thus accurate.

The gun was developed into M1A1 and M2 variants. After the war, the United States Army re-organized, and the gun was redesignated as the M59.

2 comments:

Pat Tillett said...

I've seen photographs of it. This model looks exactly like them.

-Warren Zoell said...

Yes it's a high quality kit.