I need information about a Howitzer at a garage sale

[postcards]

@mangeorge

What you probably don’t want to do is google “WW11 artillery”.
Unless, of course, you want to take your story in a whole new direction.

I think by the time World War Eleven rolls around Howitzers will be quaint.

[CloudClever]

@mangeorge

What you probably don’t want to do is google “WW11 artillery”.
Unless, of course, you want to take your story in a whole new direction.

Good god, why did I have to google that? The first seven results were okay, but gaak, the rest, my eyes I’m glad I didn’t try an image search for that

[Boyo_Jim]

@mangeorge

What you probably don’t want to do is google “WW11 artillery”.
Unless, of course, you want to take your story in a whole new direction.

Crikeys! That’s a whole new kettle of fish. Naked, gay fish…

[Johnny_L.A]

A friend of mine … did have a neighbour who outfitted his balcony with a small cannon, used to fire blanks… at (of course) Sweden. (I can’t explain why this would make perfect sense to a lot of Danes, but it does…)

[Dr. Stig Helmer]
Danish scum!
[/Dr.SH]

[PaulFitzroy]

I’m about 99% certain that Federal law requires that an decommissioned artillery must have its barrel plugged before being sold. So depending on how accurate you want your story to be, I’m not sure how it would be possible to be mistaken about whether there’s a big plug of lead in there.

Incidentally, I’d addressed this issue already:

The proprietor of the yard sale, a bearded man who looked like Jon Voight and wore a blue silk shirt, lay his hand on Meredith’s back and lowered his head to his ear. “It’s decommissioned,” he mumbled, pointing to a thick piece of hunting-orange foam rubber stuffed into the barrel. “You can take it home for a grand. I don’t have a truck to haul it.” He then walked away as quickly as he had appeared.
My pal Meredith glanced over his shoulder, then fingered the foam piece and yanked it out of the cannon. “Decommissioned hell. This is in full working order.” He stuffed the foam back in. “It’s just old. At least 80 years. World War I.”

The idea is that somewhere down the line of the thing being ‘decommissioned,’ someone didn’t do his job properly (deliberately or not.)

But then, it’s super unlikely that they’d be selling live shells with the howitzer either.

As it is later revealed, the guy with the yard sale was also the owner of a military surplus store and had all kinds of crazy shit lying around…