Landships II

Tim R · Hero

Artillery Question What are they??????

Doggowitz · Lieutenant

The last one (6) has a small writing, reading: "Scheinbatterie" , wich means that it is a fake Artillery to distract the enemy.

1 and 3 appear to be Naval Guns used as Artillery by Germans.

Roger Todd · Legend

Tim, sorry to hear you're ill - get well soon, mate!

Meanwhile, according to my ancient 'Tanks and Weapons of World War 1' book, Gun 2, the hand-coloured one with the happy chappies sat on the barrel, is a Russian 25-cm coastal defence gun, going on to say that very little is know about the weapon. The picture, by John Batchelor, appears to have been drawn from your photo as the perspective is exactly the same - only the gun crew larking about is missing (shame!).

Tim R · Hero

Thanks Guys

I thought #6 looked a little wobablly!!!!

All the Best

Tim R.

Peter Kempf · Field Marshal

Tim!

No 1. is surely a German 15cm Feldkanone i.R. One of those originally Naval pieces that were given wheels at put into action on land. Check it out here: http://www.landships.freeservers.com/15cm_feldkanone_ir.htm

And no. 3 is, I think, the cousin of the gun above: the German 17cm Schnelladekanone i.R. Check it out here: http://www.landships.freeservers.com/17cm_schnelladekanone_ir.htm

Can I post them on the site?

Tim R · Hero

Of course Peter any thing I post is yours(and any body elses) to use.

All the best

Tim R

28juni14 · Hero

Well. Tim,... if you intended this to be a quiz you should be happy with the results.

All the pieces have been correctly identified; to include the 17cm SK L/40 affectionately known as "Samuel" when rail-mounted. (Originally casement mounted secondary armament on pre-dreadnought battleships. As information all capital ships had gun "spares" supplied to the shipyards in anticipation of replacement needs. Because of the corrosive powders used in the period, the normal tube life was about 100 fired rounds. In all about 60 of these guns were made available for land use over the long months of the war. According to my records about 10 ground ,and 16 rail-mounted pieces were still on inventory 31 October 1918.)

The two emplaced howitzer pieces were part of the Russian shore defenses at Riga.

SASH155 · Major

I of course have to add my two cents to this thread. Everyone has so far been largely correct, the two "mystery" guns (photos 2 and 4) are what primarily concern me here.

1. 15cm SLK i.R. L/45 (not the L/40, due to the extra steps in barrel, which here are barely perceptible).

2. This Russian gun is a bit of a mystery to me as it does not seem to show up in my Russian references. It is probably one of the 9 inch (228mm), 10 inch (254mm) or even perhaps an 11 inch (280 mm) L/35 naval/coast gun (the M-1887?). I have a copy of that old "Tanks and Weapons of World War I" illustrated with the sometimes uneven art work of John Batchelor, and I find the description of this gun in there to be inadequate, to say the least. I lean towards the larger and longer 10 and 11 inch weapons as this gun appears to be a bit too long and large to be just a 9 incher (228mm). I need to get Hans Mehl's book on coastal artillery which was just released in English and may or may not shed some light on this weapon.

3. 17cm K i.R.L. L/40 (aka. SLK i.R. L/40)

4. Captured Russian 6 inch (152mm) M-1904 gun. Note form of the old three-motion screw breech. These were used by the Germans to fill out their deficient heavy long-range counter-battery ("Flachfeuer") gun park in the early part of the war. Two of these guns that the French captured from the Germans during the war are at the big battle memorial that overlooks Verdun.

5. Russian 11 inch (280mm) M-1877 (licensed copy of Krupp) coast gun. There was an almost identical in appearance 9 inch (228mm) M-1877 weapon as well.

6. This fake gun may have been intended to appear from the air to be a 15cm K i.S. (aka. K i.S.L.) L/39 M-1907. This stands for "Kanone in Schirmlafette" and was originally a semi-mobile fortress gun to be used to reinforce the fixed defenses of Germany's then western border areas, sometimes using the local streetcar tracks to move them about (ie. around Metz etc...). The Germans had 12 of the guns in August 1914 and pressed them into service as long range field guns due to the above mentioned shortage of heavy guns. Some of these guns were mounted on specially built railroad cars for the above mentioned use of the streetcar networks. The others were either towed on a special wagon or slung from the peculiarly German "Lastenverteilerger�t", which was frequently used to move the other types of 15cm guns.

p.s.: Can anyone i.d. the tractor? From this angle it looks somewhat like a Podeus.

-- Edited by SASH155 at 01:11, 2006-01-05