Every time a gunner pulls his trigger in a tank and fires the main gun, the turret is split in half as the gun recoils--stopping just a couple of inches before the rear of the turret.
As the gun snaps back into place, the spent shell pops from the breach, a nearly yard-long cylinder of hot aluminum that bounces from the back of the turret to the turret floor.
I was thinking about that black cannon cutting the turret in half and the clattering cannon shell bouncing in the turret because I am reading "Master and Commander" by Patrick O'Brian. This exciting book about late 18th Century sea battles explains gunnery at sea in considerable detail, including the injuries common when firing a battery of muzzle-loaded cannons on a ship at sea. Crushed feet, burned faces, smashed arms, bodies trapped between guns, all these injuries happen frequently enough for Captain Jack Aubrey to say during a long fight, "The guns are as deadly to the crew as to the enemy."
It reminded me that I could not remember anyone who was injured by our 105mm cannon snapping back in a black blur of recoil then spitting a spent shell as it returned to its lethal place. I am sure many armor crewman have been injured in a tank turret in the hundred years since tanks debuted on the battlefield, but it did not happen in my tank.
I am glad to have dangerous fiction and safe reality.
In 1967 we had a guy forget to lock the breech operating handle in the upright position. When the breech went into counter-recoil it snapped back up as he was getting the next round out of the ready rack. Kind of rearranged his nose.
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