Now that's a serious error. I've just looked up the range on Google Maps and a round landing 300m from the railway line puts it way outside the range boundaries. See: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Pat ... 2da2ed8d50
The highlighted white area is Patney (well, according to Google it is). The dark green line running east-west is the railway line. The range itself is to the south.
Incidentally, I see both the BBC and the Western Daily Press are trying to p**f up the "could have killed millions of innocents travelling on the railway" angle even though the round landed a fair way away from the line.
But don't you just love the accuracy of the report...
The Beeb wrote:And on Wednesday, an AS90 self-propelled gun capable of firing shells with nearly half a tonnes of explosives up to 15 miles (24 km), was due to be operating in Tilshead, Chitterne and Shrewton triangle.
All I can say is, crikey - how they've grown! And if they're suggesting that half a ton of HE would leave a mousehole like the one pictured, well... :roll:
Just the latest in many stray rounds over the years... there are one or two outside the range every decade or so. IIRC in the past they've actually managed to hit something (a 5.5" into a farm building?).
Quite a hard feat these days, since guns normally use the short-range low charges. Hence my accomplishment (rather, my ultimate responsibility as CPO/GPO) was dropping a 105mm round about 20m behind the OP party that was directing the fire...
(It turned out that one of the gun No1s was deaf as a post, and he had been mis-hearing the elevation commands from the Command Post. As the guns in this particular shoot were dispersed somewhat, it wasn't possible to do the normal GPO's (gun position officer) safety visual check to see that all the gun barrels were aimed in parallel with each other.
As the guilty gun could not be detected by a visual check, the Battery Commander in the OP took the brave method of ordering "Battery right" - firing the guns one by one on the same data until another rogue shell landed. Sure enough, another shell dropped just a few metres behind the OP party.... LOL I doubt they'd be allowed to use that risky method today, but at the time it was just considered normal regimental "panache" to call fire on oneself in this manner!)
With platforms like the AS90 delivering niceness to the enemy up to at least 30km in my recollection its not too surprising that a miss calculation can send a round someway off course. However this is the first incident I am aware of and although there are presumably a few more, I'd be surprised if its a serious problem, both in scale or in any threat posed.
I remember many years ago one of the Canadian artillery batteries destroyed a cottage on Black Bay in Northern Ontario when a round left the Defence Area. Turned somebody who was supposed to remove two charge bags missed doing so on one round, and it fired on Charge 7 instead of Charge 5! Fortunately no casualties.
