Have a look at this:
http://youtu.be/lW9Akjbl2QU?t=8m1s (sorry don't know how to embed)
its from Theater of War (Storm of War seems to close for coincidence, probably been discussed long ago) as you probably all know this was developed by Maddox games, and I think shares a lot of the same ground models. Never played it, but always admired the simple animations it had. The part that I am directing you to is the loading the cannon animation, as with bailing animation this could be applied elsewhere in the game re using the same animations from TOW.
Just my thoughts