Comments by "Anders Juel Jensen" (@andersjjensen) on "Japanese Type 96 150mm Howitzer (Guadalcanal)" video.

@stanislavczebinski994 It is a hypothesis that it was overkill and that lesser means could have done the trick. It is also a hypothesis that the Japanese would have held out for a considerable amount of time and that famine and decease would have cost a lot more than 200k before they gave in. We will never know for sure as the arguments for both ways are pretty sound.
18
With shells as heavy as a 150mm you lower the gun, place the shell on the ramp, ram it, shove in the propellant, close the breech and insert the primer, elevate the gun and go boom. The M109 can also elevate to heights where the loading ramp can't be extended, which also means you can't get the hydraulic rammer behind the shell, so the only viable option is to lower the barrel between shots.
6
@gwtpictgwtpict4214 Cannons of this size don't use "cartridges" like that. You load the grenade and the propellant separately. For reference a 155mm standard HE grenade weighs 47kg/104lbs alone and the maximum charge is some 1.5x longer than the grenade. Imagine how heavy and unwieldy that would be if you also added gigantic brass casing. The whole thing would be as tall as a short soldier.
4
@damirblazevic4823 Former artilleryman here: Most mortars only have one charge size, so if you want to hit something nearby you point it at the sky. Most modern large caliber howitzers use variable charge sizes for different distances, however, sometimes you want to come in at an acute angle due to terrain features or buildings being in the way of the optimal trajectory. And then there are the modern GPS guided stuff like Excalibur rounds. Those are "artillery glide bombs". So you fire at an agnle like 78 degrees to get them to max altitude, after which they de-spin themselves and glide to target.
3
Probably has something to do with his field of expertise...
2
You wouldn't think that if you were on the receiving end... You can feel a 155mm hitting the ground 2 km away if the soil is moist, so while WWII Japanese artillery was a bit behind on casting an explosives I think it's a fair assessment that you would have browned your kegs the first time one of these lands within 500m of you.
2
@gwtpictgwtpict4214 They are. But as I said, that is expected and the workaround comes at the cost of reduced firing speed. But that is not as much of a biggie as it sounds like unless you're just doing harassment fire. If you want to actually train on a target your rate of fire is limited by air time. For reference the air time of a 155mm at 24km is roughly 90 seconds, but a good crew can easily keep up 4 rounds per minute (at non-extreme elevations) for extended periods of time even without any kind of auto-loader aid. That is of little use when your spotters can't get back to you with corrections in anywhere near that time. Even if you have to lower the barrel to reload, and raise it again to the previous position, you still have ample time to scratch your butt and get a sip of water until the spotters tell you that you are on point, after which it's just a matter of repetition as fast as the system will allow until the target is deemed destroyed.
1