The Virginia Army National Guard recently conducted an extremely unusual artillery exercise involving firing a 105mm M119 howitzer from on board a U.S. Army landing craft. The combination effectively provides a mobile fire support system for amphibious operations and during missions in riverine and other littoral environments. Between Apr. 24 and 25, 2019, elements of the Virginia Army National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 111th Field Artillery Regiment conducted the waterborne artillery exercise, nicknamed Operation Gator, at the U.S. Marine Corps’ Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. The active duty 11th Transportation Battalion, part of the 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary) based at Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia, provided a number of Landing Craft Mechanized Mk 8s (LCM-8) for the drill. The 11th is part of what is often described as the “Army’s Navy,” an obscure, but important array of different watercraft, which you read more about in detail here and here.

The units “received and carried out their fire missions from the Intracoastal Waterway running through Camp Lejeune along the Atlantic Ocean,” a statement from the Virginia National Guard public affairs office accompanying a series of photographs from the exercise explained. “It was the first waterborne artillery mission for the 111th since D-Day during World War II, nearly 75 years ago.” What was then known as the 111th Field Artillery Battalion took part in the historic Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France on June 6, 1944, landing with other elements of the National Guard’s 29th Infantry Division at Omaha Beach in Normandy. The unit has undergone a series of organizational changes over the years and today 1st Battalion, 111th Field Artillery is a composite unit with both 105mm M119s and 155mm M777 howitzers. Only the 105mm weapons took part in Operation Gator.

Virginia Army National Guard Members of the Virginia Army National Guard emplace an M119 howitzer on board an LCM-8 during Operation Gator in April 2019.

Virginia Army National Guard Members of the 1st Battalion, 111th Field Artillery Regiment fire a 105mm M119 howitzer from an LCM-8.

The most obvious advantages of emplacing a 105mm howitzer on an LCM-8 are mobility and a reduction in time it takes to get the gun into action. In a more normal concept of operations, the landing craft would bring a truck towing the weapon to a beach. Afterward, the gun’s crew would have to find a suitable position ashore and get the gun ready to fire. What the 111th demonstrated at Camp Lejeune is how the LCM-8 could beach itself with the gun fixed in place already and then immediately begin providing fire support. This arrangement also means that the landing craft and howitzer could more readily move to another position as friendly forces advance. That same mobility gives the combination a shoot-and-scoot capability that could improve survivability against countrerattacks, too.

Virginia Army National Guard An LCM-8 assigned to the 11th Transportation Battalion carries an M119 howitzer and other elements of the 1st Battalion, 111th Field Artillery Regiment.

Virginia Army National Guard Four LCMs in a row during Operation Gator. The other boats would have been available to carry additional ammunition and act as command and control centers to recieve incoming fire support requests.

In addition, the LCM-8 provides a stable firing platform regardless of the terrain in the target area. Riverine and other littoral environments often consist of marshes and soft sand that are entirely insufficient to support an artillery piece. The combination of landing craft with mounted gun offers a way to provide immediate artillery support from a landing site no matter what the terrain looks like when forces go ashore. As the Virginia National Guard’s public affairs office noted, during the landings in Normandy, the Army employed a variety of landing craft-mounted artillery weapons to provide exactly this sort of support during the initial stages of the operation. The U.S. Marine Corps and the Army also made use of similar tactics in the Pacific Theater during World War II. Amphibious vehicles with large caliber guns, either in purpose-built turrets or improvised mounts, were also used for fire support during amphibious and other waterborne operations during the war and in the years that followed. But after the Korean War, the Army steadily withdrew from the amphibious warfare space, in general. During the Vietnam War, the idea of waterborne artillery came back into vogue within the Army because of South Vietnam’s extensive networks of rivers and canals and due to the difficulty in find terrain to support firebases deep within the Mekong Delta. Elements of the 9th Infantry Division, which provided the bulk of the U.S. manpower to conduct riverine operations in the Mekong region notably used landing craft with 105mm howitzers in virtually the same way the 111th did just recently at Camp Lejeune.

US Army US Army soldiers fire an M101 howitzer from a landing craft in the Mekong Delta.