M100 Artillery Track

**Key Features** | »» 240mm howitzer»» Crew compartment (cramped)»» V4 engine (overworked)»» Coordinate relay radio»» Speed stripes (ineffective)

*"They ain't never gonna forget this."*

- Continental M100
## Tactical Analysis

* **Guns of the South**: Another vehicle dating back to WWII, the M100 is a powerful 240mm howitzer, capable of lobbing devastating high explosive shells into bases at a steady rate, and from considerable range. This makes it the go-to choice for base razing.

* **Bigger Stick**: Generally, a barrage of 240mm shells is enough to make short work of most targets. However, when even this isn't enough, M100 crews can load and fire a "super shell", an explosive projectile packed with even more explosives than the M100's regular HE shells.

* **Slow and Steady**: However, such power comes at a price. The M100 suffers from a very slow top speed, poor armour, and minimum range, so it is best to escort it with other units.

* **Drop the Hammer**: Continental resonance technology allows some M100 crews to use shells that act as scaled down, but still very dangerous, version of the Resonance Jackhammer. However, they only fit weapon on veteran artillery crews, fearing that newbies might accidentally shake their vehicle to pieces. Crews are also given hull mounted machine guns to defend themselves if enemies get too close.

## Operational History

 File:ArtilleryRender.jpg  A product of Canadian arms factories, the **M100 *"Husky"* Artillery Track** combines a 240mm howitzer with a sturdy, wide chassis to create one of the most devastating conventional mobile artillery pieces ever developed. When it was developed in 1948, it was originally intended to be accompanied by ammunition carriers, freeing the chassis to carry merely the gun and its five man crew; however, Allied High Command changed the requirements during development, requiring the weapon to carry a large number of rounds with it. The extra weight and space requirements increased the weight above the original target, leaving the loaded road speed of the Husky a pathetic 16 kph.

At first, the Husky was unpopular with its crews, so much so that the title became associated with military command's incompetence in both military circles and civilian media. In addition to the extremely slow speed and rather thin armour, it had a painfully slow turning speed, and most damning of all, the inclusion of the internal ammunition reserve had meant shifting the weapon so that the three-man loading crew had to leave the vehicle in order to reload the howitzer.

 File:M100Upgrades.jpg
However, while civilian scorn remained, all complaints among military personnel vanished the moment the M100 howitzer fired its first shot. The 240mm howitzer earned a fierce reputation as the strongest artillery weapon of the war, capable of destroying structures, crushing bunkers, destroying tanks and basically any other destructive feat imaginable. Batteries of M100s would flatten entire tank divisions from beyond visual range, and the reload times of the howitzer put the Soviet V2 launchers to shame.

As the Allies began to advance, they began to encounter Soviet "SAM Sites", hardened underground complexes that were practically immune to conventional attack. To counter this, a new "super shell" was developed for the M100, using an experimental high-yield charge to breach these structures and destroy their interiors. Nearly 9,000 of these vehicles were deployed during the Second World War and more would be built later, though it was phased out after 1955 in favour of the UKM-13 Eclipse 100mm howitzer, which despite having a much smaller calibre was ultimately considered the superior weapon due to its greater ammo storage capacity and a greater rate of fire.

The Continentals use a small number of M100s, as their slow speed makes them unsuited for hit-and-run warfare. They've taken to calling the vehicle the M100 after the American manufacturing designation.

## Behind the Scenes

* You should have worked out that it's the Allied Artillery from RA1.

* The fluted end of the M100's howitzer was inspired by the classical image of the blunderbuss, and the general shape resembles the Basilisk Earthshaker artillery from Warhammer 40,000, while the gun comes from the T92 artillery weapon.