Landships II
| Post Info | TOPIC: Chew on this y'all: Mysterious French field gun | ||||||||
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I know what some of you are going to say: oh its just a 155mm gun or something like that. This photo was an autochrome (converted to B&W) in Hew Strachan's "The First World War" from 2003 that he said was of a 155, which it is patently not. It is certainly a Schneider carriage and cradle, and seems to be that of the 155mm L17S, but check out the long fixed cased ammunition (more typical of QF naval guns) and the size of the shell. Also take a good look at the form of the breech ring and the form of the barrel, which is fairly long and has a distinct step just ahead of the large shield. I know for a fact that the French took some 100mm mle. 1897 naval gun barrels and mounted them on old rigid 155mm mle. 1877 de Bange carriages without any recoil mechanism of any sort. Some of these were later bored out to 105mm in order to take standard 105mm ammunition from the L13S, which this gun is not either, since it is obviously too large, the breech ring is the wrong form, and the L13S did not fire fixed ammunition. Does anyone know if they also put a few 100mm mle. 1897 naval barrels on Schneider L17S carriages and attached them to the recoil mechanism of that type in order to produce a better long range gun in the 100mm to 105mm class? Or could this conceivably be the rare, and rather unillustrated, Schneider "Canon de 120mm long L/28", which was exported to the tune of 24 examples for Bulgaria and 16 for Serbia? Probably not since these guns likely used separate bagged ammunition from the old 120mm de Bange mle. 1878, not a long fixed round as seen here. Any help with this would be very welcome; I have speculated upon and sleuthed this one for two years now, ever since I first saw the photo, the caption of which I knew instantaneously was completely wrong. Have fun!
I love you! I have been looking for more photos of these guns for years now! Thanks so much for the prompt response and the photos are wonderful; I have never seen a wz. 1878/09/31 with modern disk wheels and pneumatic tires, since most still had their old iron tire shod artillery wheels. I suppose that the tractor is a Polski-Fiat C-4P with a coupling for semi-trailing guns (the 155mm C17S was often towed in this way without a limber as well). As far as our mystery gun goes, nice try, but unfortunately no dice. The wz. 1878/09/31 and wz. 1878/10/31 were actually not Schneider produced weapons at all, even though they shared certain characteristics with them; in fact they were built in Poland from elements from three different weapons. Their carriages and cradles came from redundant Russian 152mm field howitzers, and therefore are too small for our purposes. They also lacked the platforms on the trail for the gunners as seen in the photo of our UAP (Unidentified Artillery Piece). I was already well aware of the Polish 120mm wz. 1878/09/31 and wz. 1878/10/31 field guns, of which 32 and 8 each were built respectively. These guns were completely unique to the Polish artillery park and were indigenous Polish designs produced at the Starachowich arsenal (however, Schneider may have helped the Poles in producing these with engineering advice, machinery etc...) between 1931 and 1934 using the carriages and cradles of, respectively, the Russian Putilov 152mm M-1909 g. field howitzer and the Russian Schneider 152mm M-1910 g. field howitzer, stocks of both of which Poland held in storage after the First World War and the War with the Soviet Union in 1919 and 1920. They removed the original 152mm ordnance and then upon the remaining carriage and cradle they mounted the ordnance of the old rigidly mounted French "Canon de 120mm mle. 1878/16 (de Bange)", 54 of which Poland had in 1931, linking the ordnance to the recoil system of the redundant howitzers (no doubt increasing the strength of these in order to accept the recoil stroke of the more powerful 120mm gun). The original French modified mle. 1878/16 involved simply the addition of an improved suspension to its carriage to facilitate towing by tractor and did not imply any modification of the ordnance itself. The designation of these new Polish field guns reflects the use of the different elements enumerated above and their design and start of production in 1931. These new Polish 120mm guns were created to improve the performance of the old French guns and they were the heaviest counter battery field guns the Poles had at the time of the German invasion of Sept. 1, 1939. They used the same separately loaded ammunition suite (not fixed as with our UAP) as the mle. 1878 and the breech ring and breech block seem to have remained largely unaltered from the original. They were used in the same heavy artillery regiments that employed the 220mm Skoda vz. 1928 (wz. 1932 in Polish service) heavy howitzer. The Germans do not seem to have retained any of them for their own use after capturing most of the guns intact in 1939 (were they scrapped?) I will attach a photo myself of a 120mm wz. 1878/10/31 (identified by its genuine Schneider carriage and the form of its shield; compare with your photos of the wz. 1878/09/31 gun based on the Putilov M-1909 g., which had a distinctive shield that curved in an almost flowing manner over the carriage wheels.) By the way, could you send me copies of these photos, and any others you have of this gun, as it is extremely rare to see them photographed (with attribution please)? 
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