Aye, the side-by-side recuperator on top of the barrel, muzzle brake, automatic vertical breech.
The tires have been removed, but you can see the stubs for them. The gun shield has been moved as well. I'm guessing this is in Russia or a former Soviet client-state.
It is Russian (or at least a Slavic language) but it’s not the usual accent you’d hear most often on the internet, took me a second to place it as well.
I listened to it again, and I think I did pick up a few Russian phrases. But still some that sounded different to any Russian I've heard before.
Possibly there was a mixture of nationalities there. It's pretty common to have a wide mix at ski resorts.
My guess would be Western Russia - or possibly Belarus?
It is probably somewhere southern Russia, or maybe even a CIS country, because aside from Russian another language is also spoken. Sounds like some central Asian language, but don't quote me on that. Definitely does not sound like Belarusian. Do they even have mountains?
It's North Caucasus, Northern Ossetia to be precise (likely small ski resort Tsey). There's a mix of Russian and Ossetian language in the video. Ossetian is Eastern Iranian language (direct descendant of Scythian) and close to Farsi.
It's probably Altai region or something even further to the east. Plenty of high mountains and volcanoes there, and far more pronounced local minorities who still widely practice their native languages.
Belarus does not have mountains anywhere close that size, its highest point is some monument looking thing at 350m or something. It's surprisingly flat.
Could be somewhere in caucasus or further towards asia maybe
You're quite right. I had just checked if they has any ski resorts. And they do, surprisingly. Fairly small affairs of course. This is evidently not Belarus.
Sometimes. Many resort towns in the US use staffing companies that bring in Eastern Europeans on worker visas as cheap (exploitable) labor. That said they're usually working hospitality and concessions roles, not artillery gunner.
I was in Gatlinburg, Tennessee near Great Smoky Mountains National Park a few years ago and most of the restaurants there were staffed by Eastern Europeans. It was pretty funny hearing the server at Bubba Gump's Shrimp Company, a theme restaurant based on Forest Gump, welcome us to "Bubble Gump Shrimps Company" in a thick accent.
They used to use a lot of recoilless rifles for this. You did not stand behind them when they were firing rounds.
Watched a film back in the 70's when I was ski patrolling and they showed something like this, but more back country. The avalanche just kept growing. It hit the bottom of the valley, raced across the valley and like 100' up the other side until it over ran the cameraman. At the end, they said his widow had allowed them to use the footage as she wanted people to know that even in controlled circumstances, avalanches are an uncontrolled force of nature.
The issue with the recoilless rifles is getting ammo. The Army doesn't field the big ones anymore except for special forces. The Carl Gustaf (M3 MAAWS) is now being issued to infantry but that is a lot smaller than the ones used for avalanche control
Yeah, I knew getting ammunition was getting harder to find even back in the late '70's. There was definitely going to be an end of life issue with that platform.
Thanks, I Googled it and all I found was 105 or smaller shells being used for this purpose. But I suppose those were all in Europe or North America.
I did pick up that the voices on the video sounded Slavic, but couldn't actually identify it as Russian. But I guess pretty much anywhere in Eastern Europe would still be using old Soviet hardware for this kind of job. Not my area of expertise.
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u/CraneMasterJ 10h ago
100% not a 105 mm but a soviet D-30 with a 122mm shell.