The form etc suggests an 1870's or 1880's piece. I am unaware of any commercial or political deals for armaments between the Ottomans & Tsarist Russia. It might have been captured in the 1877/78 war if it is Russian?
Otherwise if it is 120mm (not sure it is from photos) then suggest a heavy field piece - the so called 9pdr (ie of the calibre of a 9lb stone shot)??
That's what I thought initially but the barrel seems to be of Turkish manufacture. The markings on the top of the barrel are very similar to a C73 at Camden, NSW. The script is an old Turkish script which very few people can read today. For the Camden gun, a translation of the script indicated that barrel was manufactured in Turkey. It would seem reasonable that this gun's barrel was also manufactured in Turkey. This would seem to be strange behaviour for a trophy gun but reasonable if the Turks had a manufacturing licence for the gun.
I haven't read anything about a manufacturing agreement with Krupp. The however is that the Turks would have had the capacity to manufacture field gun tubes.
Turkish 1870's & 80's FA was Krupp in origin, though generally the more reccent models than the Russians who had difficulties transfering to steel from bronze.
Brennan wrote:Otherwise if it is 120mm (not sure it is from photos) then suggest a heavy field piece - the so called 9pdr (ie of the calibre of a 9lb stone shot)??
Sorry - a little off topic perhaps - but wouldn't 9lb stone shot indicate something more like 150mm? Or is "stone shot" actually lead-encased stone shot? Just going by density, allowing for the ball being a little undersize.
I haven't read anything about a manufacturing agreement with Krupp. The however is that the Turks would have had the capacity to manufacture field gun tubes.
Turkish 1870's & 80's FA was Krupp in origin, though generally the more reccent models than the Russians who had difficulties transfering to steel from bronze.
It seems that the Turks were quite capable of manufacturing steel gun tubes. I picked this up from the Axis History Forum.
"According to GENELKURMAY HARP TARH BAKANLII : Türk Silahli Kuvvetleri Tarihi III Cilt, 6 Kisim (1908-1920), Ankara : Basimevi 1971, p. 444, in late the Turkish Arsenal (Tophane) manufactured : 450 - 7,5cm L/13 GbK 130 - 8,7cm L/24 FK 100 - 12cm L/11,6 FHb 20 - 15cm L/14 Hb 12 - 7,5cm L/30 FK 16 - 7,5cm L/14 GbK
Thanks for that, thought they did given the quantity of reconditioning & repair for service that was done, just had no confirmation. Suspect that other sites were also capable of manufacturing to.
One one of the biggest inter war projects of the Turks was reworking & recarraiging 18pdrs (both captures & purchases) into 105mm howitzers - the outcome was apparently very successful & much cheaper.
It is hard to get calibres for the older pieces given stone shot designations but the light field / horse artillery piece was "4pdr" stone shot & was basicaly 9cm (8.7cm I believe). Think the 150mm calibre probably was the heavy piece / light siege piece thev 24pdr (again a "shot" weight but not specified as stone).
Assumming consistant densities & true spheres the ratios of the relationships would be:
8.7cm = 1 so if this was 4 pdr
12.0cm = 2.624 then would be approx 10 pdr
15.0cm = 5.125 this would be approx 21 pdr
This assumes full diameter spheres , any "windage" would count most in favour of the 15cm.
The other issue is how precise the 12cm & 15cm are, if the 15cm was say 15.5cm then the ratio is 5.655 or approx 23pdr.
The final "tear the hair out" is the "Stone Shot" comparisons are old standard measures & suffer seriously from who's pound are we actually using. At that point don't dig too much as even by the start of the 1800's with much standardisation & consdolidation the list of "commonly accepted" lbs was 20 or so, with more than 100% variation between the lightest & heaviest.
... The final "tear the hair out" is the "Stone Shot" comparisons are old standard measures & suffer seriously from who's pound are we actually using. At that point don't dig too much as even by the start of the 1800's with much standardisation & consdolidation the list of "commonly accepted" lbs was 20 or so, with more than 100% variation between the lightest & heaviest.
"Flippy neck," as the man said - no wonder Ian Hogg referred to the earlier history as "The black art". Seems he could have extended the timeline on that a little. Thanks - can't really get such insights from the popular references.
