How to fire artillery salutes
Ceremonial artillery is a precise endeavor

I think that at every arrival and departure points of Ronald Reagan's remains during his funeral week there was a 21-gun salute fired by either Army or Marine gunners.


The salute battery of the Military District of Washington at the ready outside the Capitol on Friday. The guns are M101, 105mm towed howitzers of World War II vintage.

When I was a battery commander in 3d Armored Division in Germany, my battery was the division's salute battery. We did a number of salutes for V Corps Headquarters, so we might have been the salute battery for the whole corps, too.

My battalion was equipped with M109A3, self-propelled, 155mm howitzers:


Not suitable for firing ceremonial salutes!

Because salutes fire blank rounds (duh!) separate loading ammunition - the propellant and the projectile are separate - cannot be used. With no projectile, all firing bags of propellant in the M109-series guns would do is shoot a mass of flame out the muzzle. Not only is this dangerous to everyone around, it endangers the crew and wreaks havoc on the interior of the barrel.

Salute rounds are really a kind of firework - brass cannisters with a special charge inside designed to make a loud noise, a bright flash and produce lots of white smoke (tactical artillery ammunition is practically flashless and smokeless).


This salute was fired as President Reagan's casket left the Capitol for the National Cathedral

In Germany, my battery was assigned four 75mm pack howitzers to fire salutes. These date from 1927. Pack artillery, designed to be broken down and carried on muleback, was first used by the US Army in the 1830s. In WW II the 75mm pack was used by Army mountain and airborne units and Marines. It was towed by a jeep.



These guns haven't been manufactured in decades, so getting spare parts for them was always a challenge! My mechanics were very creative in keeping them ready.

Accurate counting is everything in firing salutes properly. Different persons being honored take different numbers of rounds fired. Heads of state get 21 rounds, lesser lights get fewer, according to a protocol worked out over about 200 years. We never fired 21 rounds, but we did fire 19 on one occasion. I don't remember who was being honored.

Of course, salute firing was an extra duty for my battery. We always had to perform our regular mission. Although my battery was the salute battery, manning the four pack howitzers required only a fraction of the soldiers under my command:

Other personnel:

– a chief of battery, a staff sergeant or a sergeant first class, who supervised the firing line and ensured the equipment and soldiers were ready for each salute. He also trained the whole team.

– an officer in charge (my XO, not me) who exercised actual command of the salute battery when performing ceremonies. (Although the artillery battery I commanded had salute battery duties, I assigned the salute sections to be commanded by my XO.)

– a smart NCO to count the rounds fired. For the 19-gun salute the counter signaled the end was near by about-facing at round 17 and loudly announcing,"Seventeen!" to the chief of battery. On the next round the chief of battery faced about and announced, "Eighteen!" This signaled the XO to order one more round fired. The same procedure was followed with salutes of other numbers of rounds.

– a timer, equipped with a stopwatch, whose job was to ensure the correct interval between rounds was maintained - five seconds for funerals (we never did a funeral) and three seconds for all other occasions. After each round, the timer called, "One, two, three!" and on the word, "three," the XO signaled the next gun to fire.

We also took along several artillery and automotive mechanics who hopefully would have nothing to do. Alas, they were always employed.

Before the salute began, each chief ensured his gun and crew were ready, then faced the XO and raised his right arm straight up. When all guns signaled ready the XO raised his arm likewise. This signaled the ceremony commander (aka, "commander of troops", COT) that the battery was ready.

During the ceremony, the COT would present the ceremony's troops to the honoree by rendering a hand salute. When the XO saw the COT's hand approach his headgear, he would drop his arm at gun number one, which was the gun farthest to the XO's right. The section chief would drop his arm and the gunner would fire the gun. (In actuality, we just had the gunner fire when he saw the XO drop his arm.) Once the gun was reloaded and ready, the section chief would assume the raised-arm position, signaling the XO the gun was again ready.

With three-second intervals, each section had 12 seconds to reload, recock and assume the ready position that visually informed the XO gun in action. For a well-trained crew, 12 seconds is plenty of time to do that and for the section chief ensure all is proper. But when something on the gun broke during the firing sequence, which happened with distressing frequency, the pucker factor went up real fast. The section chief's race against the clock was relentless because the precision of the interval had to be kept!

If the chief decided the gun was out of action, he instantly would order all the crew, including himself, to kneel on one knee, facing the XO, and fold their arms across their chests. The chief of battery, who continually scanned the line, would notice and announce to the XO, "Gun One [or two, three, four] out of action!" the XO would know to skip it and proceed immediately to the next gun.

So each section knew they didn't have 12 seconds to get ready to fire, they really had only nine. So the crews were very busy. There was one salute we fired with four guns beginning and two guns ending! It was, shall we say, exciting!

Occasionally the gunner would pull the lanyard and the round would not fire. Rare, but it did happen. (The ammo was as old as the guns.) When that happened we told the gunner, who would realize the misfire first, instantly to announce loudly, "Misfire!" The gunner of the next gun would hear and immediately fire with no further command. Three seconds between rounds was all we had!

A misfire always put a gun out of action because misfire procedures required 10 minutes to elapse before the breech could be opened to minimize the chance of a "cookoff" in which the propellant might be burning but not yet exploded. Extracting a misfired round was always very dicey but fortunately they were rare and caused no injuries.

I was especially proud of my salute crews because not one of them was an artilleryman. I assigned mechanics, cooks, supply clerks and other support soldiers to salute-gun duties. They performed magnificently, and at ceremonies the commander of troops and the honoree were always amazed that the salute was not fired by real artillerymen! The only actual artillerymen there were the XO, the chief of battery and the counter.

Not long before my command tour was over, the division-artillery commander reassigned salute duties to another unit on his own kaserne in Hanau. Since we were stationed near Giessen, 55 kilometers away from division headquarters in Frankfurt, the move made a lot of sense, and frankly, we shed no tears to give the salute duties away.


This salute was fired by US Marine artillery at the Reagan Library after President Reagan's casket was laid to final rest, using the same model howitzer as the Army in Washington, the M101, 105mm. Much to my future-Marine son's dismay, Fox News sluglined the Marine firing batteries as Army. To which I say, "Heh!"

by Donald Sensing, 6/12/2004 08:24:32 PM. Permalink |