untold-story-effort-save-death-black-magic-aka-emergency-boling

I'm an infantryman from the Vietnam War and have always been in awe of the redlegs and their ability to put ordnance "on target"....what they were doing I had a shallow understanding of but never doubted their ability....our maps and deflections were to me pretty crude but seem to be pretty good in helping to achieve accuracy....I operated in the Central Highlands, and sometimes the MR was on the other side of the hill but only 150 - 200 meters from where I wanted it, but difficult to .........if I did have a AFO with me the process of setting up defensive fires was easy as pie...he did it....we had 4.2 Mortars and the FDC to me was nothing like the 105's I expected....the job the redlegs did was superb, even if they were using so called "Black Magic".....and I could care less...the main thing was to get the stuff where you wanted it and they did that very well....should have had the FDC that the 8" Navy guns had...this stuff didn't even need a marking round...I don't know how they did it....was only able to get that kind of support when near the coast....again, thanks for the terrific support...all of us felt better knowing we had it to use when needed!

Never really heard of the term "black magic" during my tenure. However I may have on occasion practiced something similar...

Once upon a time as a 1LT in 18th FA Bde (Abn) at Ft Bragg, I was given an interesting mission. Take a brand new M198 howitzer and fire a demo at OP5 (a location frequently used for demos for various dignitaries). Goal was to achieve several White Phosphorous airbursts 800 meters high about 10,000 meters downrange over an adjacent impact area. Problem was there were no firing tables yet available for M198 - it was still a prototype weapon.  I was given a single piece of paper with some muzzle velocities from someone wearing a white coat. Go figure it out said the S3.

This M198 had Bearing sights not Deflection. This meant that the periscope on the sight rotated in the opposite direction - not Left Add, Right Subtract.  The Artillery community was debating at that time doing away with Deflection based FDC procedures.

I took a manual MET Form, used to calculate weather balloon corrections to firing data, and sort of "reverse extrapolated" firing data based on knowing a muzzle velocity for various charges; example Charge 5 Green Bag = 347 meters/sec or Charge 6 White Bag = 483 meters/sec. I needed charge, elevation and timer settings to achieve an 800 meter airburst at the desired range.  Gun was at center of traverse more or less so deflection was settled.

Was about to test fire some rounds and demonstrate whether I knew what I was doing when a driver requested permission on the range control net to go down one of the access roads between impact areas.  Range Control said: "I do not recommend going down that road. They have some new weapon up on OP5 and they are not sure where the rounds may go". Great confidence builder...

Fired the rounds. Achieved nice visible airbursts of WP Smoke over the desired spot. Kept my job too.  

You just never know when you may have to do something unconventional - something they did not teach you in some course.


 

What has happened to Rally Point ??? The title is supposed to be (The untold story about the effort to save and death of "BLACK MAGIC"​ a.k.a. Emergency Fire Direction Procedures)