Gaiaterra: Elysea's Conflict/M55 "Husky" Artillery

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The M55 "Husky" Artillery. This unit is planned to be voiced by Keith Szarabajka

History
"I survived because the fire inside burned brighter than the fire around me. I fell down into that dark chasm, but the flame burned on and on."

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A product of Aquilan arms factories, the M55 "Husky" Artillery Track combines a 203.2 mm M47 howitzer with a sturdy, wide chassis to create one of the most devastating conventional mobile artillery pieces ever developed. When it was developed in 1952 V.C., it was originally intended to be accompanied by ammunition carriers, freeing the chassis to carry merely the gun and its five-man crew; however, the Aquilans 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 armor, 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.

However, while civilian scorn remained, all complaints among military personnel vanished the moment the M55 howitzer fired its first shot. The 203mm 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 M55s would flatten entire tank divisions from beyond visual range, and the reload times of the howitzer put the Voshkod ISU-152s and even the new V2 launchers to shame.

As the Aquilan began to retake their home, they began to encounter Voshkod "SAM Sites", hardened underground complexes that were practically immune to conventional attack. To counter this, a new "super shell" was developed for the M55, using an experimental high-yield charge to breach these structures and destroy their interiors. Nearly 9,000 of these vehicles were deployed during the Great Voshkod-Aquilan War and more would be built later, though it was phased out after V.C. in favor of the M107 and M110 Howitzers. Giving all of their remaining Huskies to the New California Commonwealth who might find a better use for them.

The Minutemen use a small number of M55s, as their slow speed makes them unsuited for hit-and-run warfare. They've taken to calling the vehicle the M55 after the Aquilan manufacturing designation but had upgraded its howitzer to 240mm, seeing as how it improves its power and made little impact to its already ponderous speed.