[Mobhack]

Smoke and illumination was why ot was introduced, and why it probably hung on. Range was not great - 500m.

Early in WW2, a light mortar at the platoon HQ was a good idea with no platoon radio to call Bn mortars and the 3in mortar did not have great range, so coverage was low. Only cured with the post-war 81mm. Late war, platoons had radio and could call Bn mortars or arty so 2in less useful by then, but still handy.

The only task of the 2in mortar apart from night illum was to fire a smoke screen in the final assault phase of the standard textbook platoon attack. Most bns seem to have offloaded the thing to the pl Sgt, or reduced crew to one man, or even given it to whichever section was going to provide the platoon base of fire as an extra item to hump along with the extra ammo the reserve section had to carry. Finding a buckshee BREN and utilising the freed-up 2 riflemen in platoon HQ as a boost to the platoon's base of fire element (usually HQ + the reserve section) appears to be quite common.

But it was hardly ever used as an HE chucker, though on rare occasions it did find some use as such. Given that it had no ranging sights, just a white line for directional pointing, thus would need circa 3-5 rounds expended merely for ranging before any sort of fire for effect, that is understandable. The white line was fine for smoke use though since near enough is good enough for that.

So the 2in may have hung on to the 80s, but more as a curiosity that permanently lived in the armoury (like the brass Very pistols also did, the Shermuly flare discharger replaced them both for illum) than as any sort of useful piece of kit.