Late 70s 3/35FA Note

3/35FA was my first assignment following graduation from West Point and the FA Basic Officers’ Course at Ft. Sill.  I arrived in March, 1977 and was assigned as the Fire Direction Officer of B Btry.  At the time we computed firing data with “charts and darts” and the Field Artillery Digital Automatic Computer (FADAC).  This was a 150-lbs box the size of a small refrigerator, which was powered by a 3KW generator which rode on top of the M577 Command Post Carrier next to the 4.2 KW generator.  To compute firing data for the first round of a fire mission FADAC required about 2/3 the time of the physical time of flight of the round.  A reasonable chart operator could beat the FADAC on the first round, but if the corrections on subsequent rounds was under 400 meters, the FADAC could spit out new firing data in only six seconds.  The FADAC could also automatically calculate meteorological data and apply MET corrections to firing data.  As I was leaving the battalion in March, 1981 a team from Ft. Sill arrived on post and replaced our FADACs with a TI-59 handheld calculator.  I was astounded that less than one pound of equipment could replace the mighty FADAC, and perform all of its tasks faster.

We initially had firing batteries of four M110 howitzers.  In the summer of 1978 we got six more howitzers and their crews from Ft. Riley, KS.  These were good soldiers, and the firing batteries then each had six howitzers.  Sometime in 1979 we were re-tubed to become an M110A1 unit.  A few months later we received the muzzle brakes, and became an M110A2 unit.  These new tubes were approximately six feet longer than the old tubes, and had to be retracted about four feet to the out-of-battery position for driving.  Even so, on our first trip to the TBB local training area, one of my guns put its muzzle brake through a second story window of a house along a curve in the road.

I have tons of fond memories of my time in 3/35 FA.  I used to love the load-out alerts because I liked to bet on which battery’s mess truck (a deuce and a half with a large wooden home-built shelter on the back) would ram the archway while driving down to the battery areas to load up their gear.  I remember some alerts that required us to go out behind post to the ammo supply point and manually load up our battery’s 80 tons of ammunition basic load.  At six rounds to a pallet, these 1,250-lbs pallets were rolled up ramps consisting of huge beams into the backs of our 5-ton trucks and M548s.  This always took several hours of backbreaking labor.  I would like to tell the story about returning from Graf one day, taking the guns to the wash rack, pulling back the canvas off of the loading tray, and finding a live 8-inch round.  Somehow this round was returned in a POV to the Graf ammo supply point’s amnesty box at about 0300 hours the next morning – but first I have to do some research into the statute of limitations of ammo offenses.

Jim Wooley