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I've heard that the Army has destroyed the 8 - 4.5 inch M1 Guns located at Aiming Circle Hill, Fort Sill. By my count that leaves 9 left in the world. Seems the Army could have found a Legion or VFW that might liked to have those.
If any of you know anything different than this let me know?

Ugh.

So where are the nine? I've seen three in Indiana and there's one at the Ft Sill museum.

KL

Kurt,
Madison IN, New Braunfels TX, North Little Rock AR, Osgood IN, Sapulpa OK, Sellersburg IN, Vevay IN, Woodville OH and 1 at Fort Sill. We might wake up one morning and find the Army has gotten rid of that old stuff that used to be at Knox and Aberdeen. Its old and its in the way.....

Sad ain't it....

Unless someone ponies up the money, that's what is ultimately going to happen.

Back when I was a young, working adult, the ex-German battlecruiser Goeben (by then known as the Turkish Yavuz) was being scrapped by the Turkish Navy, and an attempt was being made to raise money to purchase it and preserve it. As my grandfather had been in the Kaiser's navy, and as I didn't want to see one of the last remaining dreadnought era ships pass into history, I put up $100 of my money towards the preservation attempt.

It came to nought (the Turks didn't want to sell then, and later when the Turks were interested in selling, the FRG didn't want to buy), and the money apparently went towards preserving a U-boat instead. But, I was still bummed out by the whole experience.

With a number of the collections in private hands breaking up (Ropkey, Littlefield) and the US government not too bothered about dealing with their collections (which have mostly been put in the hands of "foundations" these days, right?) rust and decay may put an end to most of this stuff in the next fifty years. If the US government was willing to let the historic USS Olympia to go to pot, they're not likely to worry about a few old artillery pieces.

I was talking with the folks at the Artillery Museum at Ft Sill today and asked about the 4.5 inch guns that were at Aiming Circle Hill. The answer is that they are still at Ft Sill. Just a year ago, probably two the guns were moved to a new location to the west of Fort Sill Blvd where they have been in use ever since.

Hope this helps.

R/

Ralph Lovett

Thats good news, a friend was there a week or so ago and whoever he talked to said they were destroyed, glad to hear he didn't know what he was talking about...thats good news.

Thanks AJ, I didn't know about Vevay or Woodville.

KL

Kurt........woodville 41°27'5.83"N 83°21'46.08"W

vevay 38° 44.820'N 85° 4.094'W

Found 'em. The one in Vevay is a few blocks from those coordinates at the corner of Main and Liberty, in the Courthouse square.

Thx,
KL

Kurt the coordinates (38° 44.820'N 85° 4.094'W ) seem to be ok here, I copied and pasted them in Google Earth and they took me to the intersection of Main and Liberty...

I found the problem: If you you put them into Google Maps, it places the pin in the right place, but if you put them into Google itself it's three blocks east. Odd.

KL

Yes that is odd, thanks for letting me know, I do make mistakes....I just download Google Earth and always use it. On Google Earth I'm able to put placemarks for each gun locations.

If anyone is in the Camp Mabry area, check out two guns off of Fairview Dr on post, near the TXANG HQ. Next to a M60A3 are what I thought were 2 4.5"guns. The tubes looked too long to be 155mm howitzers. I was there about 3 weeks ago but only saw them as I was leaving post to go pick my wife up at the airport so I didn't have time to get pics.

those 2 are 4.5's are will be moved to the front gate at sometime in the future, Good find