8in Howitzer M1

The 8in Howitzer M1 was a very accurate weapon that was developed from the British First World War era 8in Howitzers Mk VII and Mk VIII and saw service with the US Army in the Second World War, Korean War and Vietnam War.

After the US entry into the First World War, their new allies provided the US army with a number of different artillery pieces. The British provided a number of their accurate 8in Howitzer Mk VII and Mk VIII, which were already being built in the United States to a British order. As a result it was possible to provide American produced 8in Howitzers to the AEF, and 96 reached Europe while the war was still in progress. By June 1940 the US Army still had 475 of the British designed howitzers.

These howitzers impressed the US army with their accuracy, and after the war work began on producing an updated American version of the gun. This work was inspired by the Westervelt Board of 1919 (which studied the state of US artillery at the end of the First World War), and progressed very slowly. The new weapon wasn’t standardised until 1940! The first design, the M1920 Howitzer, was soon abandoned. The programme was revived in 1927, producing the T2 howitzer, which had a centrifugally cast barrel, then the T3, which had a forged and auto-frettaged barrel.

It was the T3 that became standardized as the 8in Howitzer M1 in 1940, but even then production didn’t get going until July 1942. Eventually 1,006 were built - 132 in 1942, 152 in 1943, 554 in 1944 and 178 in 1945.

The long barrel was carried on a cradle that was about half its length. Two equilibrator cylinders were mounted diagonally on each side of the barrel, running from the front of the cradle back to solid bars mounted above the trunnions. The barrel was longer than on the British original, and this combined with the improved carriage to make the 8in Howitzer M1 even more accurate than the already impressive British weapon.

The M1 was carried on the same M1 carriage as the 155mm Gun M1, although the two weapons couldn’t easily be swapped between carriages (this needed the traversing system, recoil and balance systems all changed). The M1 carriage used a heavy split trail, with road wheels at the end of each of the trails. There were also eight wheels at the front of the carriage (on two axles). The gun was carried on a pivot located just behind the road wheels

At first the M1 fired the same 90.7kg shell that was used by US 203mm coastal defensive guns. This was later replaced by the M106 high explosive shell, which was the same weight as the earlier shell, but increased the howitzers range to 16,596m.

The 8in howitzer entered combat in Italy in November 1943, where it gained a reputation for accuracy and power. It was used as corps artillery, equipping 59 artillery battalions - 38 in Europe and 3 in the Pacific. The Marine Corps also planned to use the type, but hadn’t taken it into service when the war ended.

Britain received 610 8in howitzers under the lend-lease programme.

The M1 was followed by the very similar M2, which used a different method to attach the breech ring.

After the Second World War the M1 became the M115 202mm Howitzer. Self propelled versions were produced, including the M110 self propelled howitzer, which is still in use in some countries. The same is true of the M1/ M115 itself.   

155mm Gun M1 ‘Long Tom’ and 8in Howitzer in WWII and Korea, David Doyle. A photographic history of the closely related 155mm Gun and 8in Howitzer, two key pieces of American artillery during the Second World War and in Korea. Includes a brief history of the gun, a section of detailed pictures of parts of the guns, a chapter on the machines used to tow and supply the guns, while the largest chapter, filling half of the book, looks at the two guns combat record in the Second World War and Korea (Read Full Review)

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