The artillery puff range

Artillery Puff Range MK 1

Puff the magic dragon a song by Peter, Paul and Mary in the hay days of the hippie era circa 1960s and 1970s. A very happpy tune and we all liked it for what the song represented. And each time the thought of the song came to my mind I think of our artillery puff range. I do not know why. Really I don’t.

The artillery puff range was an excellent and ingenuous British inovation for artillery fire observation training. Sometimes it is called a terian board. The artillery puff range should be awarded first prize for creativity. It was simple and easy to construct and had served the artillery regiments all over the world until the advent of the first simulation system INVERTRON and we of course went hi-tech by having one in the School of Artillery in Port Dickson.

I remember 1 ARTY had a purpose built puff range and so did the School of Artillery in PD. I am not sure if any other regiments had a puff range in the unit. Nor do I know why it did not have one when it should.

I first saw the artillery puff range in 1 ARTY in early 1980s when I was posted to the regiment as a BC. But to my dismay the puff range was converted for the QM (Gen) to use as his carpantery store. So much to be said of our COs in 1 ARTY then. We shall never never know what was in their minds. Sure a purpose built building for a puff range would also make a perfect storehouse as well.

The artillery puff range was essentially a large table/ platform top layout of a selected terrain constructed to scale 1:25,000. It was also very interesting that the scale fitted the observation of the range through the normal binoculors. The puff range was raised 6 feet above the floor so that gridlines were drawn in perspective to the OP position. The top platform was made of a wood and chicken wire, the surface was covered by the porous green hessian canvas cloth and painted with shades of dark colours for shadows, blue rivers and brown colour for roads and tracks.It was even able to replicate dead ground and precipies. It had of course bushes and woods; and toy models to make up the scenario.

I requested to reactivate the puff range in 1 ARTY and had used it on a monthly basis.

A  full OP team would sit at one end of the puff range with other trainees sitting on bench racks behind watching the shoot. The artillery puff range in 1 ARTY can accomodate a class of 20 personnel, seated in three rows behind the OP party.

Below the puff range were a team of TAMA and signallers to create the fall of shots. The team had a trollery and one corner was placed over the grid reference with a pointer pointing up to the terrain above.

Fall of shots were made by mixing sulphuric acid and amonia gas blown into a bottle to form white ammonia gas to be channeled up through the hessain top via a tube. The fall of shots were very crispt and clear to the OP. When we expired training grants to purchase ammonia ad acids, we got the TAMA personnel to blow cigarette smoke up the tube. Same effect. The TAMA sgt and TAMA assistants joined in to provide extra “rounds” during FFE and Regimental targets. Smoke shoots were quite exhausting even for the gleeful smokers. We always had adequate smokers in the BTY as most of us picked up smoking addiction when cigarettes were free issues in the 1960s.

Do we have artillery puff ranges nowadays? or the INVERTRON simulation (maybe a newer simulator) is available for all the regiments? I would think life firing in Asahan would be very restricted too. The artillery puff range is as real as it can get for OP training. Lets reinvent the wheel and not wait twiddling our tumbs for our annual training allocations to be at the Asahan range.

Allen Lai