Royal Ordnance L9 is a British short-barrelled gun used for

combat engineering A combat engineer (also called pioneer or sapper) is a type of soldier who performs military engineering tasks in support of land forces combat operations. Combat engineers perform a variety of military engineering, tunnel and mine warfare task ...

, particularly the demolition of defences. Initially called Ordnance BL 6.5" Mk I, it was later renamed 165mm L9 Demolition Gun. The gun is capable of firing a

High Explosive Squash Head High explosive squash head (HESH) in British terminology, or high explosive plastic/plasticized (HEP) in American terminology, is a type of explosive projectile which uses a plastic explosive that conforms to the surface of a target before detonat ...

(HESH) demolition projectile distances up to . The HESH shell contains of C-4 explosive. The L9 gun was mounted on

Royal Engineers The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually called the Royal Engineers (RE), and commonly known as the ''Sappers'', is a corps of the British Army. It provides military engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces and is heade ...

AVRE versions of the

Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from 1 ...

and

Centurion A centurion (; la, centurio , . la, centuriones, label=none; grc-gre, κεντυρίων, kentyríōn, or ) was a position in the Roman army during classical antiquity, nominally the commander of a century (), a military unit of around 80 ...

tanks after the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. The gun's primary purpose is the clearing of obstacles such as walls, fences, roadblocks or bunkers, and the destruction of buildings.

Variants

M728 Combat Engineer Vehicle woodland from right

*L9A1 - improved version *The American

M728 Combat Engineer Vehicle The M728 Combat Engineer Vehicle (CEV) is a full-tracked vehicle used for breaching, obstacle removal, and pioneering operations. Production commenced in 1965 and ceased in 1987. A total of 312 of all variants of these armored engineer vehicles w ...

variant of the

M60 Patton The M60 is an American second-generation main battle tank (MBT). It was officially standardized as the Tank, Combat, Full Tracked: 105-mm Gun, M60 in March 1959. Although developed from the M48 Patton, the M60 tank series was never officially ...

tank used the M135 gun patterned after the British 165 mm.

Notes

References

* US Army Field Manual FM 5-103 Survivability, Appendix A, Headquarters, Department of the Army, Washington, DC 10 June 1985 * Hunnicutt, R. P. ''Patton: A History of the American Main Battle Tank.'' 1984; Presidio Press. . {{Use dmy dates, date=June 2017 Cold War weapons of the United Kingdom Tank guns of the United Kingdom 164 mm artillery