Hi everyone!

For those who regularly follow my builds: I am an armor guy with a love for artillery. I don't know why but artillery always fascinated me. The "God of War" has driven innovation in science and technology since ages. Over the years, I read several books on ballistics, including ones dating back to Napoleontic times. As a physicist, I was always fascinated by classical mechanics that actually govern the problem. When an unpropelled projectile leaves the barrel, only physics (or trial and error) tells you where it might land.

Cannons are understood as artillery pieces with flat trajectory that basically fire in a Line-Of-Sight (LOS) mode. Howitzers however allow for higher elevation and hence do not have LOS generally (when used as a cannon, one depicts the process as open sight firing). The problem of fire control of a Howitzer is much more demanding that that for a cannon and the emphasis on physics the more important.

In Vietnam, the main piece of artillery was the M102 howitzer at 105mm. The gun dated back from both world wars but directing it in Howitzer mode evolved over time. Section chiefs used to have a "booklet" with a lot of tables called firing tables. On a map, fire missions were designed by ruler and pencil and the firing table specified what elevation (angle to the horizontal) had to be used to reach a predetermined range and elevation. The fire control problem depends on a lot more factors however such as ambient temperature, moisture, wind speed and direction, type of projectile and number of propellant bags, earth rotation, etc.
One of the first "portable" computers was the FADAC (Field Artillery Digital Automatic Computer), specifically developed to solve the fire control problem and mainly for firebases in Vietnam in the sixties of the previus century. It was a digital computer specifically designed to solve complex fire control problem by step-wise integration of the projectiles' equations of motion.


The same principle of innovation actually took humans to the moon at the end of the decade. Actually, the first order placed in the Apollo program was an (amongst other things) ballistics computer ordered from MIT right after the program was started by JFK in the early sixties...

Fast forward to today, I wanted to model a recent State-of-the-Art howitzer. I specifically wanted to model an M777 which is still the main piece used by US Army and Marines in the US as well as other nations and recently Ukraine. The M777 is a fascinating piece of engineering, combining precision tooling and machining with lightweight design and ease of operation. The piece fires standard NATO 155mm shells for up to 40 kilometers (for GPS guided and boosted Excalibur rounds).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M777_howitzer

The M777 uses titanium parts to reduce weight while maintaning power and reliability. The result of these efforts by designes BAE Systems in the UK is a main 155mm howitzer weighing just 4200kg. The modern A2 version features an integrated and digital Fire Control System, including INS and GPS and is manned by 7 crew plus one section chief.

The loading is manual and in fact, an experienced crew at work on a M777 is almost like a ballet... See for yourself:

The kit:
There is - to date - no injection molding kit for an M777 howitzer. In general, kit manufacturers don't often turn to (towed) howitzers I find. There is however a chap in California, Luis Vargas is his name who designed a kit for the M777 based on 3D printed parts. I thought that was good enough and ordered one! Here is Luis' site
https://vargas-lg.myshopify.com/

Fun fact: Because the kit was ordered in the US, I had to have it pass by customs over air mail. The kit took twice as long for the final 80km from the airport to my model workshop than by plane from California to Belgium...

The kit is splendidly engineered, it is really amazing to see how the resolution on 3D printing via resin printers has improved. I have an SLA printer myself but that one has maybe a reolution of 0.2 mm but the pieces in this kit come in excruciating detal... The kit is not cheap but worth its money I find. It builds into a very fine model of the M777.

The build:
I started-off this kit yesterday-evening after finalizing my Korean project:

Freedom Is Not Free - Korean War Veterans Memorial in 1:48 (Scratchbuild)

The parts are very complex shaped but that is the main advantage of 3D printed kits: There is no mold requiring convexity in part design, the sky is basically the limit! Of course, the resin is very brittle so care must be taken not to damage parts when removing them from the base. Sanding is fast, I used 1000 grain stics for the finish. Resin requires CA glue. The instructions are included in the kit on a USB stick. But they are totally different from what I was used to. The build required a lot of dry-fitting as well as referencing to models and drawings of the models in 1:35 and 1:1 scale. Most features of the M777 are featured. The second part of the instructtions focuses on the hydraulic lines. The status after about 15 hours is that the build is complete and the piece dry fitted together. I will now give it a first shot of black primer when the weather allows. Then I will complete the next step on the hydraulic lines. I will keep you posted! A bit of an unusual model but very nice in fact! Happy modeling, Michel.