r:

Allied Artillery
Wor d War Two
Ian V. Hogg

of

1)~CI
The Crowood Press

First published i111998 by The Crowood Press Ltd Ramsbury, Marlborough Wiltshire SN8 2HR This impression 200 I

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I 86126

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Contents

I Introduction: Setting the Scene 2 Field Artillery 3 Medium and Heavy Artillery 4 Anti-Aircraft Artillery 5 Anti-Tank ArtilLery 6 Coast-Defence and Railway Artillery Appendix: Data Tables Glosr ary Index

20
62 94 .132 162 191 198 203

1 Introduction: Setting the Scene

I.n 1919, the artillerymen fought in the 1914-18 contemplated Kipling's no end of a lesson ... '

of the armies conflict might line: They

which had well have

have taught

us

AA gun and the American 4.7in AA gun, <I.S well as curtailing the manufacture of many guns which represented the current generation of artillery. This purge was followed by financial retrenchment. The 'War to End All Wars' had been fought and won .. the butcher's bill was 1111 being argued over, and the demand for disarmament was heard in all corners. Any national finances that had survived the W<D' were in demand for social reforms. hot! ing and pensi.ons, and other spending promises that had been made by the politicians during the war, which now had to be honoured. The first target for financial retrenchment wa obvious: the armed forces.

THE END OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Artillery bad entered the war in .1914 as a small auxiliary to the field army, supported by an even mailer 'siege train'. They had ended it as a major component of every army - it ha been estimated
that, at one stage of the war, one-third of all the troops embroiled in the fighting were gunners armed with a colossal armoury of ani llery of types' not even contemplated four shalt years before. They had begun the war, in many cases, by firing over open sights at charging cavalry, in the best traditions of t.he Peninsular War, and ended it using aerial observation, predicted fire, fire-plans of immense complexity, meteorological corrections .. and self-propelled guns on tracked mountings. With the end of the First World War, it was time to take stock and analyse what had been learned. One of the first steps was to scrap a vast number of guns, principally those of pre-war origin, which had, of necessity. remained in service even though they were obsolete, In addition, large numbers of gun were sold off or donated to those Middle European countries that bad emerged from the war

ARTILLERY RE-DEVELOPlVlENT
Throughout world the 1920s, the artillerymen of the

analysed, planned, designed and argued, but precious little equipment or reorganization appeared. as a result of all their work, since this would cost money. At this time, the commandant of the British Alll1Y'S tank school was given the sum of fifty pound to cover one year's development of a new tank machine gun; even allowing for the purchasing power of the pound in the I920s, such a sum was unlikely to uncover any radical advance in technology,

discussed,

as independent states, incl uding Poland, Czechoslovakia, Latvia. Estonia. Lithuania and the Balkans. The abrupt cancellation of wartime contracts also killed off a number of guns in the
proces of deveJopmeot,uch as the British 3.6in

Even so. enough money wa. scraped up here and there for some experiments, including the British development of an IS-pounder self-propelled gun (the 'Birch' gun, named after SLr Noel Birch,
Master-General of the Ordnance). By 1927, a handful of these were provided for an 'Armoured Experimental Force'. and they proved to be

Introduction: Setting the Scene

and efficient weapon '. The guo was all the cha i and hull of the Vickers medium Lank and cou Id act a an anti-tank gun, a close infantry support gun, or a conventional field gun, a~r quired; it was even provided with receiver dials, which could be connected to an anti-aircraft predictor. converting it into an AA gun (with a maximum elevation f 90 degrees). 1-1 wever, the 1920s wa a time of bitter chi rn between the COl).. ervative and radical groups within the army; generally, the conscrvati ves wanted to adapt modern equipment to a conventional rrganizarion of forces, while the radicals were convinced that a complete re-alignment of the army around the tank W<L' the only way ahead. They aw no need for a elf-propelled gun where a uitabl armed lank could do the ame job, or, if they had to have a selfpropelled gun they preferred to form a 'Royal Tank "tillery" to operate it. eedless to ay, this idea did nor g down weU with the Royal Regiment of Arti llery, and somewhere along [he line - the truth ha ne er been uncovered ancl ne er will be - the Birch gun was removed from the e tablishrnents and scrapped. With the demise of the SP gun. the next question was the future of the J 8-pounder and the 4.5in howitzer, ancl then bow to replace the AA artillery, tbe 3in 20-cwt gun with something more powerful. A dedicated anti-tank gun was also being invesLigated; what would it be and who would operate it? While alt this was going on, there was abo the vexed question of the defence of the new naval base at Singapore, an on-off saga depending upon the political whim of the moment, ami. bedevilled by the 1922 Wa hington Conference on aval Limitation. filter alia, thi laid down restrictive clause .. forbidding the con truction of new fortification or defences in the Pacific Ocean area, so that Hong Kong's re-armament became questionable,

versatile mounted

orFFERENT TACTICS
The split between the con ervatives and the rad icals also extended to tactics. In general terms,

conservatives maintained lilac the trench warfare of 19 J 4-18 had been an aberrant form f warfare, that the more conventional mobile warfare would be seen in the future, and that the army's prime task. therefore. as to cia e with the enemy" main lorce and de troy it. For (hi, the conventional mix of infantry, arti llery and cavalrywith the tank playing the cavalry role - was the corr cr one. The radicals preferred the idea of avoiding headlong clashe and the resultant casualties, and wanted lO aim for 1ightning urgical : trike at the enemy's line of communication and supply, its headquarters, and its supply clumps. With the evering of these line, the 'nerves of a force would be se ercd; if the hea lquarters was crushed. the 'brain' of the force was crushed. With no brain and no nerves, the individual units would wither and die, a a tree di . if it r ot are destroyed and its trunk cut. Such a surgical. manoeuvre would be carried out by tank - lots and lots of them. With so many tanks. there would be no need for Jl1U h infantry or artillery. These radical theories may have been right, but lots and lot 0(' Lank. meant lot and lots of money, and up n that rock the radical ship foundered, the conservatives winning by default. The only army that could be afforded was one built along conventional lines, and the propo al for an allconquering all-armoured army did not hav a chance. With rhi hurdle cleared, the artillerymen now saw that their prime ta k was to look at the technology and technique that the First World War had produced. and adapt them to mobile form of warfare. ft wa one thing to produce a complex barrage plan when the gun, were in the same place that they had occupied for the past six months, and were certain to remain in them for the duration f the forthcoming battle; time was of little bject and the plan could be carefully plotted and worked out, with data provided for every gun inv led. However, in a fluid \ ar, the guns might not be in place for twenty-four h urs before being ordered to perform some fire plan, and in another twenty-four
the

10

Introduction: Setting the Scene

hours the opportunity would be lost. Ponderou 'siege warfare.' techniques needed to be trearnlined and simplified, 0 that results could be achieved in far le s rime and with far less manpower.

principally used by armed forces for wirele s telegraphy - the ending of mes age by Mor. e code. Speech radio as it is known today began to appear in 1918, after the invention of the thermionic valve, but it was some time before reliable and robu I radio sets, capable of being perated by the. imple soldier, were perfected.

COMMUNICATION
The final. and perhap the rno t important, problem to b faced was that of communication. The Fir r World War was unique in one re pect, in that it was a war in which the commander 10 t touch with the commanded as oon as the battle began. Prior to 1.914 warfare had been a matter of individual battles, small enough to allow a commander LO over ee what wac going on and, with a staff of rues sengers and perhap flag ignalling, to control what was happening. However. in 1915-18, once the infantry had gone 'over the top' and begun advancing towards the enemy, they were virtually incommunicado. There was no radio; telephones could not: be trung fast enough, and, even if they were, the lines would be cut within minutes by hellfire; runners attempting to go back with inf rmation or forward with rders were invariably killed or wounded or could not find their destination in the fog of war, and the rnu I an I shelled land cape. A a result, artillery fire was preordained; o-and- 0 would happen at such-anduch a time, ba: ed upon the as nmption that, by that time .. am pha e of the infantry's attack would have been ucce ·sfuJl.y completed. If, as generally happened, the infantry was held up, the artillery fire wa. duly delivered to no effect and with the foot oldiers receiving no benefit from it, If the infantry got ahead of their plans, there wa . the added danger that the artillery' protective fire might well land among them. Communication between the infantry and the iupporting artillery wa vital. as was lateral communication between the artillery units themselve .. The obvious solution to the problem was radio, but the wireless', as it was then known, was a somewhat del icate device in the 1920s. It was

1HE EARLY 1930s

An eminent French politician, at the igning of the peace treaty in Pari' in 1919, commented, 'Thi i not peace, this is a twenty-year anni tice.' By the early 1930s, the indications were that his estimate might be close to the truth. Th pace of military thinking quickened. Final as es ment of possible gun designs were appraised and choices made; theoretical organization. and techniques were tried on a small scale, modified, approved and adopt d. Mechanization of armies - in the wide st sense not ju: t tanks, but truck' and cars as well- wa pushed forward. Radio was perfected. its operation practised, and its impact upon command and control tested. One by one, the various blocks that go to build an integrated artillery force were ch eked and put in place. This wa: happening not only in Britain. In the USA. the process was much the same, although slower and less intense, since the army had been ruthlessly cut back in the immediate post-war y ar •. The US army had ample wartime equipment remaining, as did the British army: many wartime contracts for manufacture of artillery had been allowed to complete, if not to their original quanti tie , at least to quantities ufficient to provide th army with m re than it immediat Iy requir d.

THE WESTERVELT REPORT

On important rep in 1918-19 was the a ernbly of the aliber Board, more frequ nrly called the Westervelt Board, after its president, General William J. Westervelt (later to be Chief of Staff).

II

Introduction: Setting the Scene

Early days of mechanization: £1 British 6in/wII,in:er and tracked

ammunition trailer being ~~.,

towed by a tractor in India in the early 1930s. The tractor appears to be somewhat under-powered

The board was charged with conducting a wideranging enquiry into the weapons used by the Allies during the war, and making recommendations as to which weapons should be perpetuated, which discarded. and what new weapons should be developed. The board reported in 1919 and decreed that the standard field artillery piece should be a

a workforce. Mechanization bad also been put. in train (although the US Army was still relying upon horse cavalry for its scouting until 1940) which, as with other countries, had meant a hurried re-drawing of some gun designs, to equip them with pneumatic

lyres and suitable

1OSmm howitzer. that the contemporary

should be relegated ro a minor various other weapons should

75mm gun

position. and that be developed or

connections for towing behind trucks. The American arguments for and against tanks were similar to those in other countries, but much less intense; an Act of Congress
specifically equipment, in 1921 had directed that tanks were infantry and this meant that the argument did not impinge upon the artillery. Anti-aircraft artillery had also featured in the Westervelt report and its recommendations were taken up with alacrity, not only with regard to gun

improved. Since a wholesale re-armament was out of the question, the army set about a detailed examination

of the guns they intended

to keep. Jll order to see how they could be improved, A research and de ign programme began, and managed, by the late 1930s. at low priority and without very much money, to
produce sound designs for everything the Westervelt board had recommended. Not only had these guns been designed. they had also been

design but also in the matter of fire controJ. The idea of an electro-mechanical computer (called a 'director' in this application) was addressed qui te early in the 1920s, with the Sperry Gyroscope company being approached for its ideas. Once the gun received the data, the next stage of development was to fire the shells in the right direction. By 1931, the experimental staff at

carefully re-designed

engi neers, with drawings being prepared, so that production could commence at any time. The only delay would be the organization of the factories and the recruitment of

by production

12

Introduction; Setting the Scene

Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland were demonstrating a 4in AA gun with full remote power control, All the gunners had to do was load and fire it as fast as possible, the azimuth and elevation being set electrically by signals sent from the remote command post. It was not particularly accurate - no first prototype ever is - but it represented, DOne the less, a remarkable mechanical achievement It wa another twelve years before it was accurate and reliable enough to become part of a service equipment. The inventory of equipment held by the US Army, in service and in reserve, in June ]940 makes interesting reading. The anti-aircraft branch had eight 37mm gun, 807 3in and thirteen I05mm guns, The anti-tank branch had 228 37mm guns .. The field artillery had 4,236 75mm guns of several different patterns, ninety-one 7Smrn howitzers, fourteen 105mm howitzers, 973 155m.m guns, 2,791 155111111 howitzers, of which 598 had been adapted for high-speed towing, 475 Sin howitzers (ex-British) and 320 240mm howitzers. The greater part of this list was lying in stores covered in grease and had not been disturbed since J 919. Apart from the fourteen .10Sm.tll howitzers, the ninety-one 75mm howitzers and a handful of 155111111 uns, the g remainder were obsolete, (The army also had nowhere near the number of men necessary to man all these weapons ..) However, behind the scenes, the design offices and manufacturing plants were gearing up for the production of completely fresh designs in all categoric ,

provided, 2 more remain to be provided' appeared in the annual. reports of the Chief of Ordnance, and were considered va.lid justification for armament demands. The Washington Conferencei n the 1920s brought many changes. and caused the British and the Americans a few headaches; for the Americans, it forbade any improvement of the defences of the Philippines and other outlying dependencies. Fortunately, these defences had been completed as recently 3s1915, so immediate upgrading was not vital. However, the naval armament restrictions agreed by the conference meant that the US Navy found itself with a quantity of surplus l Sin guns: it decided [Q offer [hem to the Army for coast defence. This solution was maned by the fact that coast defence mountings would have to be made - they would be expensive, and there was insufficient money available. Having plenty of guns ... but no means of mounting them and nowhere to mount them, must have been frustrating, but this particular Impasse was overcome.

RUSSIA
Russia was a special case, quire different from the other Allies. The Russians had elected out of the war in 19J7. and occupied themselves with a bloody civil war until 1921-22. Moreover, Rus ia's artillery manufacturing capacity was limited; in pre-1914 days, mo: t of its guns and howitzer certainly the better ones - came from Krupp of Germany and Schneider of France, sometimes being built under licence in the Putilov or Obuchov gun factories, After 1917. no suppli es came from abroad, and the output of the two factories was poradic at best. By the m.iddle I92.0s, the condition of the artillery branch of the Red Army was POOl', their guns being almost obsolete in design, as well as being worn out. One of the features of the between-wars years wa the periodic announcement by the Soviets of a 'Five- Year Pian'; the first of these, ordered by Stalin in 1928, announced his intention to build up

COAST DEFENCE
American coast defence artillery was governed by the decisions of two boards of enquiry. The Endicott Board of 1888 and the Taft Board of 1903 were milestones in history, and their decisions were still being quoted in the J 920s as the arbiter for the armament of a particular fort. Such remark astthe report of the Endicott Board, as modified by the report of the Taft Board, requires the provision of eight 12 inch gun in this work; 6 have been

13

Introduction: Setting the Scene

the heavy engineering indu try .0 that agricultural machinery could be manufactured rather than imported. The second plan, in 1933, provided for the manufacture of the agricultural machinery. However, for every factory making agricultural machinery there were two making tanks or artillery; the e Five-Year Plan were camouflage for heavy armament construction plant. As a re ult, by the early 1930., artillery was coming forward in large quantirie , Initially, the Id T ari t models were put back into production, but very qu ickly these designs were overhauled in the light of modern technology and production began again, By the time a sufficiency of these modernized weapons was on hand, the designer. bad produced drawings for new equipment, Production of the e began in about 1935-36, in time La provide ample artillery for the 1939--40 'Winter War', and for the 1941 invasion by Germany. A j frequently the ca 'e with oviet history. reliable, truthful and complete information on artillery doctrines, techniques and equipment is hard to come by, It i not possible to give a complete description or analysis, but One or two features stand out. Fir t, the Reel Army' attitude to the employment of artillery wa different from that or the Western all ie . Irres pecti ve of it tactical employment, title or 'job de cription'. every Soviet gun that could be depre sed to point-blank was an anti-lank gun a, ioon a' a lank appeared within its sight. As a result of this policy, every gun short of the really heavy artillery was issued with an anti-tank projectile. In the positioning of guns, the immediate support of local units was the primary facto]', The We tern concept of command of artillery being exerci ed at the highest possible level, with orders being passed down the chain, did not apply; there was a higher command, but the ab ence of oph.i ricated radio network precluded anything other than administrative command being exerci ed, Tactical command devolved upon, at the hi hest, a divisional artillery officer. An exception to th.:iswa the occasional formation or an 'Artillery Corps' or even an 'Artillery Army'. These were

unlike any other army or corps in the world, being and they were wielded as a massive reinforcement for setpiece battles. This. ort of formation allowed such concentration a the 32,143 guns and mortars that upported the Soviet attack aero the Vi tula river in January 1945. Thi. Y t m wa u ed becau e the only way to concentrate the fire. of thousand of gun wa to collect them together as tightly as possible under one hand; it wa: the communication problem once more, Tbe Soviet et-up did not permit: the u e of di persed artillery formations linked by radio and commanded on to a single target as easily as the British and American set-ups did. The gradual adoption of this . ystern wa. achieved by a whittling down of the clivi ional artillery trength ' by 1945, the artillery of the average infantry division numbered no more than ab ut forty gun' f all types and sizes, most of which were direct-fire infantry-accompanying weapons. The remaining guns had all been moved acres to the next higher artillery formations.

compo ec entirely of artillery regiment,

TECHNOLOGY
The technical feature of individual gun are di cu sed where relevant in the book; One or two feature. of technology were, howe er, common to many gun of many maker. and began to be u ed regularly during the Second World War. Among the most important of these was the autofrettaged (or elf-hooped, or cold-worked) gun barrel. During the First World War, guns were'bu:ilt up' or wirewound', the two technique. being CrO. s-linked. In a built-up gun, the barrel - the rifled tube - is relatively thin, and i urrounded by a succe ion of larger tubes, each heated and then, hrunk on to th previous one, until the complete gun body i made up of a number of tubes, the Dumber varying at different point on the barrel. The chamber area, subject to the greatest pressure, has more layers than the 'chase', the section of the gun in front of the trunnions ancl ending in the muzzle.

14

Introduction: Setting the Scene

A wire-v ound gun is similar in general construction, but the place of one of the tubes is taken by miles and miles of high-tensile steel ribbon wound in several tight layers around the tube beneath - u ually the actual barrel. This i, then held in place by another tube heated and shrunk v r it, and, sometime, more tube over the chamber. Both types of con. truction were designed to place the barrel in a state of compression, 0 that Lhe pressure of the explo ive force inside when the gun fired wa safely contain d, and the barrel wa prevented from expanding .. Both involved preci e and heavy machining, careful fitting and slow construction. A 15in naval gun could take almost a year to manufacture. During the Fir, t World War, Briti h and French cienti developed an entirely new method of constructing a gun barrel from one piece of tee I. The barrel was bored out and shaped internally, below its intended climen ions. It was then tightly plugged at both end and oil was pumped into the int rior of the barrel at very high pressure. This pre ure e panded the inner layers of steel beyond their elastic limit, so that, when the pres ure was released and Ole oil drained off, the interior was expanded to the correct dirnen in. The outer layer, however, had not expanded, 0 that. in effect, they were compre, sing the inner layer and doing the same j~b a the wire, tube (properly called 'hoops'

the normal recoil force that is pu: hi ng it back. A well-designed brake can redu e the recoil force by a considerable amount. The gun can either be given a more powerful propelling charge and fired afely, without wrecking the recoil ystem, or the recoil stem it elf can be made lighter. It has been demonstrated that a muzzle brake can be designed to absorb a, much a 65 per cent of the recoil force; unfortunately. it is neces ary to divert the gas well to the rear rather than simply to the side, which makes life unplea ant and even dangerous for the gun detachment. However, a 30 per cent efficiency j, g nerally possible without endangering the gunners. ot every gun ha a muzzle brake, ince not every gun need, one. Anti-tank guns, where lighrne _ counts. u e one so as [0 . ave \ eight in the recoil system and. carriage and yet till fire as heavy a charge a pes ible. Anti-aircraft guns do not 11 ually have one, since weight i le of a limiting factor. oviet field gun u ually had them, because the Sovi t designers tended to work to a lower factor of safety than British designer: consequently, their gun, are a good deal lighter than a comparable Briti h or American gun. Adding a muzzle brake reduced the, tre on th carriage and mad this lightnes acceptable.

or the additional
of U1e built-up

AMMUNITION
Generally, the British and merican artillerie ended the war II ing the guns with which they had begun it.. Mostly o1'l930s design, the e guns needed no serious modification to improve their performance. H wever modification to the ammunition were explored by all the combatants during the war. In the early part of the war, most of the effort wa directed towards cheaper and simpler ammunition production, resulting in ome frightening e perirnent with cast-iron hell, substitute explosi e , . teel cartridge case' and similar expedient. The e were gradually abandoned once it was realized that uch extreme policie were not neces ary (although

barrel. As a result of thi development, the manufacture of guo barrel be arne 11 much faster bu iness, and also used less : teel. Virtually every land service artillery gun manufactured in Britain, France and the USA after 1930 followed this autofrettaged pattern. The econd technical innovation was the gradual adoption of the muzzle brake. This i.s a device fitted to the gun muzzle, with hole' or slots on its sides. A the shell pa. ses through the brake, some of the propelling gas e .cape through the e hole or '1 ts and is directed ideways and lightly rearwards. S are ult, the ga e erts a forward thrust against the ides of the ho les or slots, to try and push the brake. and hence the gun barrel, forward, in oppo ition to

15

Introduction: Setting (he Scene

American troops or peacetime practice with lire 75mlll M 1897 A4 gUll (heir standard jield weapon

both the Americans and the German made highly ucce sful steel cartridge ca es). trempts were now geared toward' making the . hell more lethal. or improving the range of the gun by better hell design. Much work also went into studying methods of reducing the wear on the interior of the barrel that wa cau ed by firing hundreds of shell through them. propelled by powder which had a flame temperature ornewhar higher than the melting point of the bane] steel. 'Cooler' propellant oFfered a solution, but a cooler propellant generally produced less power than a hot one in the ame quantity, requiring a larger powder charge. If the gun was already using a cartridge ca e stuffed to the brim with a hot propellant, the loss of performance call ed by u ing the same amount of cool propellant was often unacc ptable. Anti-tank and anti-aircraft gun rarely benefited fr rn cooler propellants. Work was also clone Oil the search for a flashless propellant, since flash-spotting - the location of an enemy gun by eros -ob ervation of the flash of di charge - was a well-tried method countering enemy arti llery, A fl.a .hless propellant would make counter-bombardment les likely. The question of flashless propellant became something of a

or

compromise. however. The Royal avy once defined 'fla hie s' a 'that degree of Ila: h which will not attract the naked eye at 3,000 yard range' - sound enough in a naval context but less acceptable in t.he case of field guns. Moreover, fla hless propellants are automatically, cooler propellant, leading to the problem associated with these, and they are al au ually more. ensiti e to damp and generate more smoke. In addition. a propellant that was flashles in a 3in gun might often not be fla hles in a 6in gun. One noted explosive expert aid that the flash less, srnokele , noi ele explosive is usually powerle a well; it seems to be a valid point. The First Worlel War had shown artillerymenju t how fa t ammunition could be can umed by massed artillery firing for long period of tirne. For example. between noon of 28 September 1918 anti noon of 29 September 1918, the Briti h artillery fi red 943,847 hells, For the artilleryman. 1111 those shells had omehow to be got to the guns; for the . upplier , all tho hell had to be manufactured, and expensive methods of manufacture and ex tic materials were not acceptable. Generally . hells were de igned to be made from easily obtained material capable of being worked on ea ily

16

Introduction:

Setting

the Scene

obtained adoption

machinery. of '19-ton

In Britain, steel" as the

this

meant the tandard shell

material, an industrial grade of . teel that could be handled by virtually any engineering. bop. The drawback of thi material was that the hell had to have rather thick walls in order to withstand the acceleration in the gun a' it was fired, and thick walls meant a maller cavity for the explo ive and, hence Ie expJo ive. The high-explosive filling ill Briti h field artillery shells averaged about 8 per cent of their overaJ.1 weight. In the USA, 23-t.011 steel wa the indu trial norm: their shells had thinner walls, and the filling of TNT in the 105111111 howitzer HE hell, for example was 13 per cent of the total weight. Thi ' ga e a more fficient bur t, greater lethal radius a.nd, all in all, a bigger bang for the money'. The choice of tee I was reflected in the choice of high explosive. The Americans tended to use Composition B. a mixture RDX and TNT. wherea the British used straight TNT or Arnatol, a mixture of TNT and ammonium nitrate. Thi wa simply becau e 23-ton te I demanded a more violent explosive than 19-1011 steel did in order to hatter it into suitably ized anti-personnel fragments. Using RDXffNT with the lower-grade

steel would have shattered it into relatively harmless powder instead of lethal fragm nt . Similarly, using Arnatol in a 23-toll teel shell would have broken it into large fragments, indi idually highly lethal but incapabl of covering the greater area achieved by the more powerful explosive.

TECHNIQUES
oft-iring a gun 0 as to hit an unseen target remained un hanged from 1918; the angle between unidentified point and the target wa measured on a map, the sight line di placed by that angle, and the sight turned on to the aiming point 0 that the gun barrel pointed at the target. However, in order t be able LO [ire a collection of dispersed gun batteries at the arne target, all the gun had to b preci ely located on a common map grid system; picking the gun's po ition by sixfigure grid reference off a one-inch map wa not go d en ugh, particularly if orne gun were n different map from others, and the maps were foreign and of doubtful Accurate surveying accuracy. had to be done rapidly, as

The actual technique

or

American coast defence:

(I

J4ill gun in the Philippines being loaded

17

Introduction: Setting the Scene

soon a the guns were in place; before it was done. they could do nothing but fire observed hot for their own observer, To achieve sufficient accuracy, military engineers provided surveyed points close behind the front line, fermi ng part of a theatre-wide grid system, The gunners us d the e points to originate thei r own survey ystem and produce co rdinates for each' pivot gun, the right-hand gun of each individual tr p of four or ix guns, or, in the case of heavy guns for each gun, Once this was done. these points were plotted at a scale of I:25,000 (2~in to n mile) on a blank gridded heet of paper. Targets could now be plotted on the . arne grid system, based on grid reference, deduced by forward ob ervers, and by firing data (azimuth and range). With ever gun and every target n the arne grid, ordering a grid reference to widely spaced guns now meant that there was a far greater chance that all their shells would fall in the same

spot, ' ince they were all measuring from the same data. (The e detail refer to the British sy tern; the American, French and Ru sian y terns were sirnilar.) The raw data had then to be corrected to take into account wind, temperature, air den. ity, and other phy ical changes that could affect the flight: of the hell. These had been analy ed and measured, and correcti ns had been e, tablished on experimental firing range' in peacetime, and tabulated in books of data known as firing tables or range tables. The information about wind speed and air den ity wa determined by ending up balloon every four hours and tracking them. deducing data and then circulating it to every artillery unit. This allowed 'predicted fire' to be employed: opening fire u: ing data based upon the map and then corrected gave an even better chance of hitting the target with the fir t hot and, thus, of surprising an enemy, Th

The IVaI' clouds gather; A British 3;/1 AA gun Bridge during the Munich crisis oj J 938

011

a Peerless lorry of First World War vintage, emplaced on Westminster

18

introduction: Setting the Scene

normal procedure - firing a ranging hot, correcting, firing another, correcting, and finally bringing in the remaining guns - alerted the enemy. so that, by the time the 'fire for effect' arrived, he was ften ina deep helter drinking coffee and playing card . Predicted fire could catch him in the Opel] and. do substantial damage. Shrapnel shell had become a thing of the pa t, except in orne odd corner of the world and in some odd applications. Much to the relief of many gunner, the mind-boggling art of determining the correct fuze etting to bur t the hell thirty feet above the enemy's head and some hundred yard or so in. front of him, so a. to drive the cone of shrapnel ball d wn at the right lethal angle, was relegated to hi tory. In order to fulfil the need t trike down from the sky at men and equipment hiding behind cover, the time-fuzed high explosi e 'airbur: t' hell came into use in place of hrapnel.

The fuze erring till had to be worked out, but it wa far less critical than the fuze setting for shrapnel shell. (incidentally, nobody has been wounded or killed by , ihrapnel' for more than fifty year, although the word is till much used by newspaper reporters.) In September 1939, the gunner of variou armies went to war and began to put into effect the techniques and tactics learned in peacetime. The next six years witnessed the fulLest flowering of artillery power that th world ha ever, een. And iL is likely never to see it again. The rna sive concentration of artillery used in J 939-45 could not last in the face of modern weapon and the whole technique of artillery changed irnmen ely after J945. A study of the Allied artillery of the Second World War i. > however, a study of artillery at its most powerful pha e in history.

19

Field Artillery

'Field artillery' is a phrase that mean s different things to different armies. Generally, it describes the artillery which i part and parcel of the infantry or armoured division, acting as that division's immediate divisional fire support, commander. and Other ub ervient to the artillery may be

attached, for pecial operations or to provide heavier support, and remains under the hand of a higher command. 'Field artillery' can al. 0 be used to describe the lighter forms of artillery that can be easily and quickly manoeuvred 111 upport of tactical operation. In another context the phrase can be used to draw a line of limiting weight or calibre. This book deal more with the equiprnents than with the administration or organization, 0 for its purposes, and for organizational convenience, 'field artillery' encornpa es all calibres up to and including 127111111/5in for guns and I50mm/6in for howitzers.

began rapidly to decrea e. The arrnie were faced with either taking up hor e-breeding as a fulltime occupation, or embracing mechanical traction. A few might well have welcomed the former option, but fortunately common ense prevailed, and mechanization gradually began. (It is, however, a little-known fact that the only completely mechanized army that went to war in 1939 was the British. The French, German and Ru sian armie: till relied very much n hers e draught for their arti Ilery and for much of their dayto-day tran port in garri 'on ,and the US Army was still deploying horse cavalry a late a. the summer of 1940.)

INCREASES IN CALIDRE
The econd major factor for change, which links itself to the first, was the realization that the 75176mm tandard calibre of the Fir t World War was no longer absolute. Most field piece were of lhi calibre because of the weight" it wa impossible to build a gun of a greater calibre without a heavier carriage and recoil y tern to with. tanel the rres and tim with a dramatically increased weight. With less weight re triction, the designers could can ider larger calibres, which meant more effective shell . As Lt Col A. Brooke RA (later Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke) wrote 111 1925, in a series of articles on the artillery Ie son of the 19 14-18 war, I n peace the cry is for mobility, in war for weight of shell.' A heavier gun meant a heavier shell with a greater de tructive power.

MECHANIZATION
Field artillery underwent

con iderable

change

ill

the J 919~39 period a a result of experience gained in 1914-1918. Prior to 19J4, the ruling factor in field-gun design was the pulling power of a. ix-horse team. If the finest gun in the world was too heavy for six horse to move, it would not be adopted. This attitude began to change in the late 1920s as the motor vehicle took a grip on the civilian population, and the number of hal' es available for requisitioning to pull artillery in the event of war

20

Field Artillery

A heavier gun could also mean longer range. giving "the gunners more leeway in sel cling their gun positions; once In position, they could cover a greater area, and the number of guns needed to cover a given stretch of front could therefore be reduced. Reducing the Dumber of guns meant reducing the number of gunner. leaving more men to pare for manning new and unfamiliar devices such a anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns. Mechanization was certainly to have orne far-reaching effect.

- about 300-350 to a 75mm shell was a good average figure - and were fuzed to bur t in the air just above and in front of the target The hell discharged it bullet, hotgun-fashion down into thetarget area; if the target wa. a body of marching troops, the subsequent carnage was terrible. By the middle of 19]5, trench warfare had arr-ived, with dugout " bomb-proof helters, pillboxe and steel hel met, all intended to mitigate the effects of the hrapnel hell. (The reel helmets were, in fact, originally called' hrapnel helmets' .. ) To deal with these protected troops the high explo ive 'hell wa nece sary, but to reach troops hiding in trenches or behind cover the high explo ive bell had to be dropped quite steeply down. The pre-1914 gun, de igned for shrapnel hooting, had a maximum elevation of about 15 degree, and simply could not drop shell' steeply enough. That was the job of the howitzer, a shortbarrelled gun which fired the hell into the air on a high trajectory 0 that iL fell almost vertically. Posed the post-war que tion 'Do you want a gun or a howitzer?' mo t armies would an wer 'Both',

TRENCH WARFARE AND THE HOWITZER

Another important factor was the change in the face of battle between 1914 and 1918.111 1914, soldier marched in orderly columns: towards the field of battle, sent out kirruishers formed up in line, advanced in cornpanie and, in gen ral manoeuvred in the open for much of the time. To counter this, field artillery was attuned to tbe rapid firing of hrapnel shells: these contained lead ball

5011iField Battery RA show ofIiheir /lew Morri

tracror and 18125-pr gun ill 1937, after their mechanization

21

Field Artillerv

but finances decreed otherwise in most cases. The solution wa a compromi: e: the gun-howitzer. This weapon could fire at relatively high velocity and low trajectory in the gun role, but could also elevate high enough to act a a howitzer. It also had a cartridge system that was adju table. to aLlow a selection of trajectories at lower velocities, 0 that the desired steep angle of de cent at the target could be achieved at variou range. Sometimes the weapon wa. called a gun (for example, the British 25-pounder). ornetime it was called a howitzer (like the American I 05mm MJ); sometimes it was described. as a gun-howitzer (as with the Russian 152J11111 MIO/37), but the name does not seem to have become pan of any official terminology.

In 1933, Adolf Hitler became Chancellor Germany, repudiated the Versaille Treaty,

of and

began re-arming, A new German Air Force began training, and warships and tanks began to be built. Gradually, a these activities became apparent, the democracies began to attend to their armament. FieJd artillery wa Iowan the list of priorities. The pre- 1939 bogies were air raid and poi. on gas so air defence seem d more important. Eventually and, a event proved, barely in time - field artillery began to appear from the factories. However, a great deal of equipment left over from 1918 remained in ervice; it had been paid for, and those who held the purse strings intended that it should be used a' long a' possible.

NEW DESIGNS FOR ARTILLERY

A are ult of the e variou: changes, armies began in the arly 1920s to contemplate the replacement of their artillery. Designs were drawn. argued over, di carded, and re-drawn, and minor experiments were carried out, but behind all this was a universal shortage of money. The combatants of J 914-18 had wrecked their treasurie: to pay for the war believing that they were fighting the war to end all wars - and in the p r-war year, ocia! and commercial requirements had continued to make demand on funds. The ea ie: f place to make economies in the aftermath of a major war i in the defence budget. Plans and drawings might be made. but the purse tring are kept very tight. One favourable outcome of these financial restrictions was that the armies did not accept the first designs; they dissected and refined each one, and a a re ult the de ign that appeared in the 1930 were generally excellent They also gave them el e time to attend to the detail that ften get overlo ked. Fuze, fire-control in, truments and communications were all examined were perfected, prototype were designs tared away. Tactical hammered out, tested on paper and then modified and adopted. clo ely, design built and the theories were on the ground,

BRITAIN
Britain ended the First World War with a collection of field gun and howitzers, orne of which dated from the Boer War. The first get rid of the weapons that useful life. This left only the 13-pr and 18-pr guns, and the post-war task was to were well past their 60-pollnder gun, the 4.5i[1 and 6in 26-cwt

howitzer' as ervice weapon .. There was enough of them to allow some of the nrplu to be old to such emergent European countries a' Latvia, Lithuania. Poland and tenia, to outfit their newly f rmed armies.

The Search for a New Gun and Howitzer

Within three years of the war's end, the Royal was considering the replacement for the 18-pounder and the 4.5jn howitzer. Ideally it wanted a new gun and a new howitzer, but a realistic assessment of the rri ngent financial ituati n pointed to a ingle weapon capable of filling both roles. Also can idered was a light field gun to arm new light batterie for the direct upport of infantry. The development of the 3in mortar, and it. issue to the infantry, ended the idea of the light. field gun. Since almost all available money and design

Artillery

22

Field Artillery

The 25-pr Gun Mark 1 (or J 8!25pr) with ammunition trailer carrying 'he traversing platform. This picture is rather odd. because a split-trail carriage did /JOI really need a platfonn facilirie were being pointed in the direction of not much came out of the field gun/howitzer di cu. ion either. In 1925, the cJe igner were told that f r future design they might contemplate mechanical traction, and exceed the long- tanding weight limit linked to the u e of a six-horse team. On the other side of the coin, they were also asked to produce a gun with a range of J 5 000 yards (13,760m), with a plit-trail carriage, to give the gun a wide ate of fire for anti-rank defence. There were e en ugge tion that 80 degrees of elevation would be useful, so that the gun could double as an anti-aircraft gun. Vicker produced a rather pedestrian cJe ign for a 4.5il1 was 100 much for the Treasury to wallow; one of them would have to go. The idea of the 'gunhowitzer' began to be een orne time in 1928. After reviewing the various designs that had been offered and prototype guns that had been teo ted, the Director of Artillery Maj-Geu B.A. Lewis put f rward a propo a! for a new 3.7in (94mm) gunhowitzer to fire a 251b (1 J35kg) hell. After this came discussions with the General Staff, in which thi. '25-pounder' gun was proposed a the future s lc armament of field regiment. (of which Dille had guns and Some had howitzer )_ An agreement having been reached, in September 1934 the Director of Artillery ordered construction of the fir. t prototype. Finance was still scarce, modified [0 use as much
0 the design had to be existing equipment as

Singapore,

105mm howitzer tiring bag charge' and with a box trail' this was a sound enough weapon hut it was 110t a 15,OOO-yard bun with wide traverse and all the bells and whi tles, so it was refu ed. The Royal Gun Factory came up with a de ign for a IOOlllm gun, which promi ed only 11.900 yards (1 O,920m), so that was not accepted either. Then there was a change of pol icy.

The Gun-Howitzer It had been increasingly obvious that a new gun to replace the 18-pr and a new howitzer to replace the

po sibLe. One economizing idea was to put the new gun barrel on top the existing modernized 18-pl' carriages, but in 3.7in calibre it was irnpos ible. The calibre wa therefore reduced to 3.45in, and this allowed the manufacture of a barrel which would fit into the jacket of tile old J 8-pr, accept the 18-pr breech fitting and mechanis In, and could thu be fitted on to the old carriages. However, at the same time as accepting this compromise.

or

23

Field Artillery

General Lewis al 0 made sure that the designer. were worki ng n a totally new carriage for future production when money became available, The new equipment was formally introduced int service a, the Ordnance, QF 3.45in Mark I on 26 Augu t 1936, the gun. being fitted to either the box-trail Mark 3 or split-trail Mark 5 I8-pc carriages. In February 1938 the nomenclature was official! changed to 'Ordnance QF, 25-pr Mark I', but no one ever referred to them in that way. To the gunners, they were always the 'eighteen/twentyfive pounders'. Just over one thousand of them were built.

Carriage Desian
The de igners of the new carriage produced a surprising collection of advanced ideas, including a three-legged platform allowing all-r und traver e. a four-wheeled carriage in which the wheels turned inwards to allow it to traverse quickly and easily, and a plit-trail carriage. urnerous idea were mocked up and tried, but eventually the Royal Gun Factory and Vickers both produced split-trail solutions. Prototype were made and supplied for trial, but the re p nse to both from the gunners wa not fa curable. One of the drawbacks of a split-trail design is the length of the trail leg. The working length of a box- or pole-trail - the distance from the axle to th .pade - is calculated to resist the turning moment around the pade cause by the force of the recoiling gun. If thi . is, say, seven feet, there i a seven-fool trail. With a split trail if the measurement from the axle to the pade with the trail open is seven feet. when the trail is .wung and the two legs are closed for travelling, the trail will be about nine feet long. Those extra two feet of steel add weight and length, and upset the balance about the axle, making the gun hard to manhandle. The gunners objected to the split-trail design because of it clumsiness, weight and general inconvenience in operation. An appeal was made to the Superintendent of Design, Major-General Macrae, for a fresh design to be drawn up, but

Macrae realized that this would take up valuable time when Will' clouds were gathering. In order to provide an alternative design, he proposed to mount the 25-pr gun on top of the box-trail carriage that Vickers had designed for their abandoned 105mm howitzer. Beneath it there would be a circular platform, devised in 1918 for the 18-pI gun, which would allow th whole gun to be swung rapidly around in the hunt for tanks. Thi concept was rapidly put together and early in 1938 a comparative te t of three carriage designs was carried out at the School of Artillery at Larkhill in Willshire. After the weapons had been demonstrated to an audience of enior gunner officers, a conference wa held and, on a show of hands, the box-trail de ign was chosen over the split-trail. The Mark 2 25-Pounder The completely new design of gun - the same gun barrel but with a new breech mechani 111 - was officiaJly introduced as the Mark 2 25-pounder in December 1937. The new carriage had to be properly re-de: igned after the hurried make-over that had been u. ed as a demon trator, and it was not approved until late in 1939. At the outbreak of war there were only seventy-eight guns and no carriages. The Briti h Expeditionary -orce went to France with the I8f25-pounder, and a Canadian regiment, the 8th Army Field Regiment RCA, received the first Mark 2 2S-pounder issued in April 1940. The only major modification ever made to the 25-pr gun was the addition of a muzzle brake in 1942: until then, the AP sh t had been fired with the super charge alone. With the adoption of a muzzle brake, a 'super increment' could be fired. since the brake reduced the tre s on the recoil system. This gave that extra bit of armour-defeating performance that was vital against German tanks. (The All tralians and New Zealanders did not fit the muzzle brake. ince they c ul I deal quite effectively with Japanese tanks without the extra boost.)

24

Field Artillery

A I05mm howitzer developed by Vickers in 1930: when file sp/iHraiI25-pr trail and piatformfrom this design which became file 25-pr carriage

design was disliked by flu! users. if was (lie

One q( tlu: suggested designs for the 25-pr gun

25

Field Artillery

The wooden muck-up ofthe split-trail carriage 25-pr gun

New Carriage Design

With the introduction or air transportation, it was soon di covered that, while the Dakota aircraft could lift the 25-pounder.its wheel track wa too big to allow [he gun to be loaded through the ide d or and turned into the fu elage. It was nece sary to remove the shield and axle and lift the cradle and gun so that everything could be lifted and shoved aboard by manpower. The Canadian developed a Mark 3 carriage. with a shorter axle (the arne track width a a jeep and therefore a convenient ize for jeep towing in jungle trails), and a hinge in the middle of the trail. which allowed the trail to be dropped to give the gun another ~O degrees of elevation. A . mailer hield and smaller platform, and a pecial .ight brack t. completed the de ign and it was po nble to load thi traight into the door of the Dakota, tum it into the fuselage and lash it down.

The All tralian , faced with the worst terrain in tbe world - the New Guinea mountains and jungl developed Ule'2S-pr Short Mark T (Au tralian)'. The object was to produ 'e a pack-transportable weapon, and thi entailed radical urgery. The trail was a greatly simplified girder structure, the wheel were maller, there wa 110 shield and no platform but a massive spade, and the trail had a castor wheel to help in manhandling. The gun was drastically cut down to ju [ under SOin in length; when it Will' fired. the muzzle fla h burned the r cis of the recoil system as the cradle moved back. ,0 a conical fla, h shroud had to be attached to the muzzle. The gun was much lighter than standard, and it could not be fired with. uper charge, a it would recoil too fa t and build up excess ive pre' ure in the recoil y tern. Charge Three wa. the maximum, giving a range of 10,800 yard: (9,910m). The equipment could be broken down into 14 mule load.

26

Field A rtillery

Ordnance,

QF, 2S-pr Gun Marks 1, 2 and 3

In post-war analy ..es of les 'OnS learned through the First World War, the Royal Artillery decided that both their uandard field gun, the 1 -pr, and [he field howitzer, the 4.5-in, should be replaced with new weapon. A number of po.. ible designs were studied during the I but eventually financial tringency sugges ted that a single weapon would have La replace both. and the idea of a gun-howitzer was approached, This appeared in prototype form in 1934, but the prcce was further cornpttcar d by the demand that the design houlcl use a many existing part of the I8-pr as possible. The final design was II 3.45in gun barrel slipped into the ex isting jacket ofthe 18pr gun. It was introduced as the 25-pr GUll Mark 1 in February 1938. The Mark 2, a completely nev design of sun and carriage. took time to perfect and get into production, becoming general i ue towards the end of 1940, The 25-pounder was a cia sic design: it was enormously robu l. and, if anything ever did go wrong. it could be repaired in (he field with the, implest of tool, It was light enough to be manhandled by six men, yet powerful enough to range to I .400 yard .. The ammunition wa: separate-loading - the hell was loaded and rammed, rhe bras -cased cartridge loaded. behind it, and the vertical sliding-block breech manually closed. The cartridge ca e held three bag of propellant and could be fired with one, two or three bag, to give Charge One, Two or Three; this 'zoning' of the charge gave the weapon irs howitzer characteri: tic.. allowing i~to fire on a high trajectory to clear hills or other ob tacles and drop hells teeply intO place. a pure gun could never reach. In Italy and other mountainous countrie , . incremental charge' were introdu eel. The e were mall bags of propellant, which could be used with charges one and ~wo 1.0 give Charge J~, Charge 211and Charge 27<:Above Charge Three-came Charge SUl er, but this was non-adjustable and provided the 'gun' element the performance. a fixed longrange charge. Finally. an incremental charge CQuLd be added to Charge Super, to gain a linle extra velocity when firing the armour-piercing shot which, since it weighed 20Ib instead of the normal 251b, could be given a more powerful charge without exceeding the 'ate pressure limits. The muzzle brake was added to reduce the recoil impulse when firing AP Shot at Super-plus charge, and it naturally had a good effect with every other charge, making the gun very table. The Mark 3 carriage was hinged in the middle of the trail. liO that an extra 30 degree. of elevation could be achieved, LO give even greater Ilex ibil ity in the howitzer role and permit 'upper register' firing (thelerlll at the time for firing at angles greater than 45 degrees). (For the 'Shorr 2S-pr', see pag 26. 1t was also pr po ed, at various time. as a submarine gun, a shore bombardment gun for light naval raft. fitted to a Bren gUll carrier as a self-propelled weapon, and as the primary armament for the All iralian ' entinel' tank. It was a most ver: atile weapon, and j still in use, in India and Paki [an, in 1998.

nos,

or

D T : (Mark 2 Gun on Mark 2 Carriage)

Calibre Weight of gun and breech Total weight ill action Barrel length Rifling Recoil ysrern and length Breech mechanism Elevation Traverse Shell weight Muzzle vel city Maximum range Type. of projectile available 3.45in (87mm) lOewt Oqr 41b (51 Okg) with muzzle brake and counterweight 3,9681b (1.800kg) 97.47in (_.47mJ: 106.72il1 (2.71111) with muzzle brake 26 grooves. right-hand twist, one turn in 20 calibre Hydro-pneumatic variable, 20 to 44in 508 (0 I, 1l7mm) Vertical liding block, manual; percus '.iC.JIl Gring -S to +40 degrees 4 degrees either sid of zero 251h (ll.34kg) 1.700ft/sec (5181111. ec) 13,400 yards (l2,2.-2lU) Charge Super 1-1 E; HE with tracer; AP hot; BE 'In ke, coloured moke, coloured flare, illuminating uar, incendiary, radar echo, chemical. propaganda leaflet

27

Field Artillery

Ordnance,

QF. 2S-pr Gun Marks 1 2 and 3 continued

Painted and polished In perfection, C/ 25-pr gun 0/'1Mark _ carriage; note rheJ1ring platform and the 'banana box' under the spade 10 prevent it digglng in when fired all the platform, This is a post-war picture: the re,flec/or all tile shietd ~I'erenot seen before the 1950s

Bur/or the headgear; this could be

CI

wartime pic/lire; anti-tank. practire

011

Salisbur» Plain, J 953

28

Field Artillery

GUJ/S ill war are 110( quite such C/ picture ofperfection as gUf1S in peacetime; here. a 25-p1' detachment wends its way IIII'OI/gh Italy in 1943. Note the dragropes 011 the shietd. camoujluge nets 011 the trailer; and the worldly goods on (he

hack of [he tractor

The 25-pr Mark 3 carriage in use; 'he hinged trail CQn be seen, toget he r will! the pit necessary /() permit the [ull recoil stroke. since the automatic adjustment was 'f-ooled' by the additional elevation

29

Field Artillery

The 'Short

Or

'Baby' 25-pr

gUll.

without the caster wheel

011

the trail

From lIiew ofthe Short 25-pr g!J)I, showing the use of 'jrrill.g segments' below the axle 10 take th« firing shock ojfthe tyres

30

Field Artillery

The 25'pr MARC - Mobile A rmoured Revolving Carriage - was a Canadian idea, which amounted (0 a mobile pillbox. /1 \,·a. 1101 pursued

Having tudied thi weapon, the British produced a imiJar design, but with modification La the recoi I system to permit firing Charge Super, It was officially approved as the Mark 4 in May 1945, by which time it had become obvious that there \ a. no real nee I for it: only one or two were made and it was declared obsolete in 1946.

The 4.5in Howitzer The 2S-pounder had replaced the [8-pounder

in the
also J t,

field-gun role. The intention was that it should replace the 4.5in h witzer in the field howitzer.

but ill the early days production was slow, and everal batteries 4.5in howitzers went to France in 1939 and fought the 1940 campaign, Other were used in the Eritrean campaign and in U, We. tern

or

hipbuilding and engineering companies led by William Beardmore & Co in a bid to break [he duopoly of commercial gun-making enjoyed by Vicker and Armstrong. heir original intention was to break into the naval gun market, but they were JUSt in time to reap the benefit of the po rBoer War armament programmes .. After cutting their teeth on production of component for the IS-pr gun, they had a major success with the 45in howitzer and went n to do more u: eful work before collapsing in the between-war" lump, lnits original form, with wooden wheels, the 4.5in looked rather Old-fashioned, but between the war it appearance wa con iderably improved by the fitting of teel wheels with pneumatic tyre . This was, in fact, tbe only major modification ever made to it: the original design had been right in that it did what it was asked and did it reliably. There was no room for improvement without major r -design, so the howitzer it elf saw no change. It fired a 35lb (J5.6kg) hell to a maximum range of only 7,000 yards (6,675m) and was also provided with shrapnel, parachute tar and two type of smoke hell, but Ole lack of range told again, t it and wa Ole principal rea 'on for its retirement.

De err in 1940-42. It wa not until the end of the North African campaign il11943 that the 4.5in howitzer wa withdrawn from field formations, after which it was r rained olely as a training weapon until all it ammunition had been II ed up. That happened in the run-up to D-Day, and ihe
howitzer and all irs stores were declared September 1944. ob olete in

The 4.5il1 howitzer had been iruroduced in 1909, after a erie of trials of de j sns fr0111 variou gunmakers, The sel cted de ign had been produced by the Coventry Ordnance Works, a c nsortium of

The 6in Howitzer

The heaviest Briti: h howitzer in this class was the 6in 26-cwr weapon; [he addition of the barrel'

3J

Field Arrillery

Sea-going artillerv; a 25-pr mounted em a DUKWamphibious another idea thatfailed 10 gain manyfollowers

truck as

all

offshore bombardment

support weapon -

32

Field Artillery

Rear l'il'II' (II the -+.5ill howitzer: apart [nnn file wheels and pneumatic tvres. it was the same ill 1939 (1.1" if had heel! ill 1901)

From vie!>' of the 4.5117 howiiter: revealing

ttie suspension had 10 be modi/red accommodate the smaller wheels

11011'

10

33

Field Artillery

The 60-Poundcr weight [0 the name was a reminder that there had been two other howitzers of this calibre but of different weights at the time of it introduction. Even [hough these were long obsolete. the identification remained part of the name. The 6in 26-cwt had appeared in 1915 and rapidly became one of the 1110st useful guns in the army, with over 3.000 being made before 1919. II was modernized in the 1930., by the filling or a nex axle with steel wheel: and pneumatic tyres, and it tired a lDOlb (45kg) . hell to 9.500 yards (8.71 Om) or a lighter 86Jb (39kg) shell. to 11,400 yards (I 0,460111).This had been considered a good performance ill 1918 but by J 939 it wa fall ing behind in the race; although those in servi e saw some use in the African campaigns. they were gradually replaced by the 5.5il1 gun. The 6in howitzer was retained as a training weapon. and finally declared ob:olete in October 1945. The other First World War veteran to be etas. ed a. a field weapon was the 60-pounder (Sin/127mm calibre) gun which had first appeared in 1.904. A cumbersome weapon by modern standard , it wa considered obsole cent by 1939 and was scheduled to be replaced by the 4.5in and 5.5in gun. A with everything else, production was slow and the 60-pr stayed in . ervice. Many were converted to 4.5in gun Mark I (see page 35), but a number were left unconverted and u ed in U1c N rrh African campaigns. In common with the 4.5in howitzer. the end of the campaign in North Africa saw the 60pounder's retirement from active service and it' relegation to a training role until its stock of ammunition wa u ed up. IL was declared obsolete on 8 June 1944. The 60-pr went through a series of modifications during its early wartime Tife and by 1918 the tandard was the Mark 2 gun on Mark 4 carriage. It

The oill 26-1')1I(hawitzer

was another

Firs' Win·hl Wor

I'H'l/POIl

that had been 'pneumatized'

in tire 1930s

34

Field Artiller»

Highland games: a Scottish Territorial regiment 1II drill with their Sin howitrers in 194_. This ritual was the easiest and quickest way 10 get the ranuner hack to the gWI Number alle.\O fhat Numbers Five and Six tstanding ill the frail) could gel it out o] the way, and rem()!'!! the loading travfrom the cradle

was a two-wheeled carriage with a large box-trail. imilar in . ome re .pects to that of the 25-pr gun but can iderably larger. The gun sat on a top carriage, slung in a cradle. For travelling. the trail end was upported on a two-wheeled limber. and the gun and recoil sy stern were pulled back in the cradle, to eli tribute [he weight between the four wheels and reduce the length of the equipment. For mechanical traction it had large steel and wood wheels with olid tyres. It f red a 60lb (22.25kg) she! I to a range of 16,400 yard (L5,045m) and used a nonadjustable bag charge. In 1922, it was proposed to improve the 60-pr gun by removing the barrel and putting a 4.5il1 barrel i.n it place. This, with a modem streamlined hell was expected to improve the range. Given the financial strain. it i. no surpri e that the pr posed re-design eventually meant re-lining the barrel to 4.5in calibre. A prototype was tested 'in 1937 and gave a range of 20.000 yards (18,350111), and the

was approved. It was then discovered that there were no more than severuy-: ix 60-pr gun available for conversion, which wa: scarcely sufficient to equip the peacetime army, let alone an expanded wartime force. In 1938. the Director of Artillery. on his own responsibility, ordered the de ign of a completely new 4.5in gun. dimensioned to fit the carriage then being prepared for a new 5.5in weapon. The design was prepared and approved on 3] Augu: t 1939, but no production wa po sible UJ1Li I late in 1940 and the fir. t guns were issued early in 1941. Except for its barrel. the 4.5in gun Mark 2 wa: identical to the 5.5il1 Mark 3, with the same carriage and breech mechanism being used on both. The 4.5in fired a 55lb Crkg) . h II to a range of 20,500 yards (18.800m). LI. ing a three-increment bag charge. It wa a reliable gun, but generally thought to be too much gun for 100 little heU, and the extra range was not really sufficient
c nversion

35

Field Artlllerv

Deadly earnest: a 6in !1O\I'iI:er ill action on the Western De tert ill !9.J I. Note the Number and the nex! shell on the loading IfOy 011 the rear end ofthe trai!

011('

holding the rammer

Olle ofthe lost 60-pr gun:

ill

action

III

Tobruk. 1941.

1'17WJlled

by Alls/roliall

gunners

36

Field Artillery

The 4. -in BL gun shared the same carriage will! tile 5.5ill; oniy the barrel length is dillerenl

compensation for the lightweight shell. The Mark I guns (tile converted 60-pr weapon) were obsolete in April 1944; the Mark 2 gun lingered until late 1959, but it wa entirely a training weapon in postwar year, The 3,7in Howitzer The last of the British field equipment wa the 3.7in howitzer, variously called 'mountain' or 'pack' although neither word featured in the official nomenclature. This gun had been developed by Vicker in ,1910, Ht.the regue t of the Indian government. Shortage of money led to it being helved until 19]6. when it went into production to replace a variety of eJderly 'screwgun' being used by Indian Army mountain artillery batteries. The . crew-gun' of which Kipling wrote was properly known as the 'Ordnanc , Jointed, Rifled Muzzle Loading, 2.5in' and was invented in 1879 by a Col Le Mesurier, RA. He took the idea to Sir William Armstrong and the gun was developed.

The aim was 'imply to obtain a u eful length of barrel, within the constraints imposed by mule carriage: a mule would carry up to about 200lb (91 kg) ill weight before balking. so the weapon had to dismantle into 200Ib piece. barrel f rea enable length was more than 2001b. so by breaking the gun in t\ 0, you could arri e at a 400lb (181.8kg) gUll without breaking the mule', back. The barrel was divided about halfway along its length; the rear end carried the breech mechanism and the front end carried the 'junction nut, which screwed the two parts together. The idea proved to be a success and the principle wa: refined and improved through a series or weapons of which the la twa the 3,7il1 of 1916. The J,7in carriage wa: the first plit-trail pauern to be adopted by the Bri.ti h. and it gave the howitzer a wide traversing arc without the need to shift the trail bodily. A. most OriLS work was on the north-we t frontier of India, it had a sizeable shield to protect the gunners; it had a modern hydropneumatic recoil system. and in the between-wars

37

Field A rtillery

.... -::.
It-' •
~

'~
I·
1i ~

.i..

,.. ..
• -

'

....

".~

...
•

...

-rJ~~ ~,

..",

, ..1'1
~

,l'

~ Jr.'·· •

.... Ii'"
'lI

,. .
to" .'\...~~. • to

-~-:,: :~~ .r .. ~ !-. ... __

'. ". '?
:". >If .. "i~,1o.~ '. ..

.ti;

J"f'•• ~'"
,.'

Loading a 4,5;11 gun, Normandy. 1944. Note No 6 waiting with the bag charge. Nos I, 4 and 5 ramming. No 21(Jadiltg thefiring lock. lIJI(I No 3 standing clear until the gun i.I' loaded before returning to his siglusfor a quick check. The contorted figure Oil/he right is an Army Film Unit cameraman recording the action. Tlii. wartime picture has fwd the badges ondfonnation 8i.~IIS 011 {he unifonns painted (Jill

period it wa given pneurnatic-tyred wheels. The howitzer fired a 20lb (9kg) HE hell to a rna: imum range 01' 4.500 yard. (4, 130m); when shrapnel was in vogueit fired a 20lb (9kg) shrapnel shell LO 6 000 yards (5,500m). In the 1939-45 period it was mostly used in the Far East, with numerou: mountain batteries being deployed in Burma; it al '0 appeared in the more rugged parts of East Africa and North Africa. and

Italy. It was also adopted by airborne formations (although these later adopted the American 7Sml11
howitzer, which was lighter). Perhap its lea tknown employment was \ ith the Royal Marine. as a landing gun for .hore dutie . The 3.7 remained ill service after the \ a1'. but its days were numbered. In m id-1944, a specification was i sued fora .in howitzer firing an [81b (8,2kg) shell La replace it, and the

38

Fteld Anillei»

3.7illlllOllllWill

iwwif::;er complete with its rareiy

S('('1t

ammunition trailer: oulv used with motor transport

The 3. tin howirzer ill action: note {he substantia! shieid and the spades, which could he driven ill with sledgehammers

Field Artillery

Indian mountain gunners ofthe j 4th Army with their 30lin howit;er ill Burma, 1944

development of this occupied the Canadian Army on and off unti I the middle 19505, before it was finally dec.ided that there was no modern requirement for it. The 3.7in was finally declared ob aide in February 1960.

THE USA
The Westervelt. Board
Para. 14:2. A Board of Officers to consist of Brig Gens William I. Westervelt. Robert E. Callan. William P. Ennis, Cols James B. Dillard. Ralph !VIeT.Penell, and Lt Co Is Webster A. Capron and Walter P. Boatwright, US Army, is appointed to meet at APO 706, France, at the earliest practicable date .. [0 make a study of the armament. calibers and types of materiel, kinds and proportions of ammunition and methods of' transport of the artillery to be assigned to a Field Army ... By order of the Secretary of Will' Peyton C. March, General, Chid of Sta1l"

(Extract from US Army Special Order 289-0. December 1918.)

ll

This special order was the genesis of the 'Caliber Board', as it was called at the time, or the 'Westervelt Board', as it even wally came to be known. It was a well-selected board. Of these officers. Westervelt became Chief of Staff,

Boatwright Chief of Artillery, and the others distinguished themselves equally in their various fields, They assembled at' Chaumont on 12 January 1919, visited French, Italian and British headquarters and ordnance factories, returned to (he USA to visit factories and artillery establishments, and submitted their report on 5 May 1919. The report runs to thirty-eight pages and there is scarcely one superfluous word. First. the report considered what the artillery of a field army was supposed to do. then it laid out an organization capable of doing it, and then it detailed exactly what XOl1 of weapons were needed to doit, The Westervelt Board was convened so that the development of the field artillery arm over the next twenty years could be planned. The US Army's field artillery had been a minority arm until 1917. IL then had to undergo massive expansion. and in doing so found that 'its equipment was not capable, in terms of both q uantity and quality, of providing U1e support the army needed. As a result, al.I but a handful of its guns were provided by Britain and France. and its art; llery doctrines were almost entirely dictated by the French Army. Once the war was over, the US field artillery set about taking control of its own affairs: prior to 1917. it had such minor status that the Ordnance Department told it \ hat guns it was going to have, and r nfantry told it what to do with them. The wartime expansion gaveji a Chief of A rti 1.1 cry,

40

Field A rtillery

General Snow. with. efficient clout to argue for it in Washington. Regarding equipment, (he board reached the conclu ion that what was needed wa a light gun of about 3in175mm calibre, tiring a 151b (6.8kg) shell to I 1,000 yards (I 0,090m), backed up by a howitzer of about 4in/105ml11 calibre firing a 25- to 30lb (lJ .35-J3.65kg) shell to a range in excess of 10,000 yards (9.200m). A 'medium field gun' with a calibre omewhere between three an I si: in hes wa al a can idered nece sary, the board pointing to the British 60-pounder and similar French and German weapons ..For a medium field howitzer, the French 155mm Schneider was considered perfectly atisfactory, and it continued in service as the M 1917. A heavy field gun of about 6in and a heavy howitzer of about 9.5in wer next on the list of requirements, which ended with four major-calibre support weap ns: an Sin gun firing t 35.000 yards (32.110m); a 14in gun firing to 40.000 yards (36,700m): a l Zin howitzer firing to 25,()OO yards (22,940m); and a .16in howitzer with a range not less than 27.000 yard (22,770m). Thislatter group were :1111:0 mounted on railway carriages. be The light field equipmems were then considered in more detail. The 'ideal solution' for the howitzer was described <L follows: 'A weapon of about 105111111aliber n a carriage permitting a vertical c arc f fire from minus 5 degrees to pin 65 degrees, and a horizontal arc of fir of .... d grees. The 60 projectile should weigh about 30 to 35 pounds and should. include shrapnel and hell. A maximum range of 12,000 yard. will be satisfactory. Semifixed ammunition and zone charges should be used.' For the Iighr field gun they reque 'red 'a gun of about Jill caliber on a carriag permitting a vertical arc of fire of from minu: 5 degrees LO plus 80 degree and a horizontal arc of fire f 360 legrees; a projectile weighing not over 20 pounds, shrapnel and high explosive shell; fixed ammunition; srnokele s, Ilashle s propelling charge: time fuze for shrapnel; bore-safe, super-quick and elective delay fuze for shell, .. Two propelling charges should be furnished, a uormal charge for about

yards range and a super-charge for range. A maximum rate of fire of 20 rounds per minute is deemed sufficient.' These were the ideal solutions .. The 'practical' solutions were simple - continue to u e the war's leftovers unti I the research departments came up with th ideals - and that was exactly what
maximum hap: encd.

I 1,000

Both the light field gun and the howitzer were to have 'a horizontal arc of fire of 360 degrees'. and the gun was La ha e a maximum ele ati n of 80 degrees, whereas the howitzer would only reach 65 degrees. As far as the howitzer was concerned, the 360-degree pan was fairly rapidly abandoned, since it mu t have become obvious that a carriage capable of all-round fire would be excessively heavy in ihat calibre. The two figure quoted for the gun gave rise to a long and fruitless pursuit of the all-purpose gun, the '75111111 Light Divisional Gun'. This had a threelegged trail carrying apedestal-mounted 75mll1 gun with a very long barrel; the general effect was all anti-aircraft gun capable of operating in the ground role rachel' than a field gun capable of anti-aircraft fire. It is not clear exactly when and why this idea was finally knocked on the head; it was certainly being illustrated in military magazine in 1935, but in 1938, Hayes' Elements of Ordnance, the official West Point text on art iIlery, said 'the. o-called allpurpose mounts. designed for several classe of fire r quiring . e eral types of materiel. have not pro ed uccessful or practicable.' This seems LO suggest that the light divisional gun had been abandoned. However. while thi: wild goose chase was in progress, a great deal of more substantial work had been done. The 75mrn Howitzer The 75rnrn Gun M 1897, the original Fren h 75 adopted in 1917, bad remained the tandard field gun ever since. and it had been slightly modified over the years. By 1939, it had reached the M 1897 A4 model of gun and the M2A3 carriage. The gun bad the muzzle rollers removed unci the

41

Field Artillery

The 75mm Light Divisional Gun ill 1935. W;rh u third trail leg added under the barrel, and the wheels removed, this b caine a field gun will! 360 degrees of traverse lind <'15 degrees ofelevation. which could double (IS (In anii-aircra]: gun. 1! was a good theory. hili 1101 so good ;11 practice, so if \i'as dropped breech-blo k altered 10 give a I 56-degree opening and losing movement. in, tead of the original 120 degrees, and the carriage had been changed into a split-trail with tee I "he I , pneumatic tyres. a mall shield and some minor modifications to uit the improved gun, The weight of the equipment had gone up from 2,6571b CI.207,75kg) LO 3.22Slb (L466kg), but the maximum range had gone from 9,200 yards (8.440m) to 13,950 yard (12, OOm) with a 14.71b (6.7kg) hell. Thi was Fairly close to the Westervelt's ideal gun and the army seems to have been quite happy with it. The 7511111111 witzer had been de ign d during the 1920 to meet a requ irement put forward by the We stervelt Board for a mountain and pack gun as an urgent necessity, The urgency wa: met by producing the first pattern in 1920, hutthis proved too ha: ty and a Fr sh de 'ign appeared in 19_2. After SOI11 minor change. thi: was tandardized as the 'Howitzer. Pack, 75mm lion Carriage M I'. in 1927. It wa: an ingenious design which stripped into four mule-loads and could fire the arne hell as the 75mm field gun, to a range of 9.600 yards (8.810111). well in e cess of the range required by the board. In its original 1'01'111. it had the L1 ual wooden wheels of the period, but when the US Army began contemplating airborne troops. a new carriage with steel wheels produced as the M8. and pneumatic

tyres was

The perf finance of the 75111111howitzer wa so good that in the late I92(lc' it was decided to produce a non-dismantling carriage and i ue it a a cavalry support gun. Thi became the Howitzer M 1 on Carriage M3, The carriage had a split-trail, a firing jack to support the axle. twin balancing springs and a shield - a very luxuriou product. Howe er, very few appear to have been made; by the time the design was standardized, horse cavalry was looking into tanks, and their accompanying artill ry into self-propelled guns.

The 'Ideal' Field Howitzer

Development of the Westervelt Board's ideal field howitzer began in 1920 with the production of four pilot models of the Howitzer. 10SmlTI MI920 on Carriage M I.920E. They all had slight differences, but common to all. of.' them was a 22-calibre long gun with horizontal sliding breech-block, a 'pl it trai I ,3D-degree elevation and 30-degree traverse.

There

W<1

al '0 a

arriage M I921 E, which wa a

b x-trail, giving 51-degree elevation and 8-degree traverse, The Field Artillery Board looked at all these .. tested them, and threw out all the M .I 920E

42

Field A rtille I)'

75mm Gun M1897 Thi French gun was adopted by the US Army in 1917 as an expedient, pending the development of its own M 19'16 design. In the event, the M.1916 was a failure, and the MI397 became its tandard field piece. It hould have been rapped after 1918, but by that tim the wartime manufacturing contracts were only ju I beginning to produce gun, so the army had little choice but to perpetuate iL in service. The development of the 105mm howitzer proves that they realized the correct solution, hut no army could afford to throwaway guns in [he lean years between 1918 and 1939. The M 1897 was constantly being worked on, with small improvements being added as and when they could he afforded, uf,l!iJthe basic design had been exploited as [ar 11 po &i·pl.e;he result t was a weapon far uperiorto the French one first. seen in 19'17. The M 1897 gun w the riginal French de ign, with a muzzle velocity of 529m/sec (1,735fLI ec) and a maximum range of 850 111 (9,295 yds), The M J 97 I wa the 'arne, but made in the US . The M 1897 A2 did away with the jacket and had an autofrertaged one-picee barrel: the breech rnechani m was altered s that the handle and. crew rotated through 156 degrees instead of J 20 degrees, which gave better leverage for extracting sticky cartridge cases ..The M [897A3 was the same a the A2, bu; wirh .ome slight modifications to wit it to the I I897Ml A.2 carriage. Finally. on the M 1897 A4, the muzzle-rollers (which engaged in the cradle and mpported the muzzle weizht during recoil) were removed, and replaced by [eel rails and bronze trips. The Ml897 carriage was the original Fren h two-wheeled pole-trail de. ian. an I the MI.897Ml was the American-made ersion, with some small hanger for producti n convenience. The 11897A2 was an Ml 97 fitted with a traver ing hand pike (why the French never u. ed one L a mystery), and the M 1897M 1 2 was the American carriage with hand 'pike added. The M 1897 A3 was 110tadopted, and tile de ·ign has been forgotten. The M 1897 A4 wac any previous carriage fitted with the 'high-speed adapter'. in other words. rubber-tyred wheel. alld drum brake .. Then carne a completely fr h de ign of. plit-trail carriage. the M2. This had pneumatic tyre , a firing jack under the axle, no shield, and a new recoil system giving variable length recoil according to the gun's ele auon, The M2 I had the shield put back and orne changes to the brake. and me M2A2 made more changes 10 the axle and brake. 'Finally, the M2A3 went back to a ($011 uanr-lengtb recoil system, firted a pivoted axle, shortened the trail by 19in, and removed the firingjack, replacing it by 'firing segment'. which were wedge-shaped steel pieces that revolved on the axles and, when dropped down, look the weight off the lyres. and made llle gun more . tab] . The final combination wa [he M 1897 A4 gun on the M2 3 carriage: the various weapon improvements, allied to improvements ill shell de ign and propellant charges. had improved the muzzle vel cityto 396m/sec (1.955fUsec)., and the maximum range to 12,756 metre" (13,950 yards). D TA (iVf1897A4 Gun on Carriage alibre Weight of gun and breech Total weight in action Barrel length Rifling Recoil sy tern anti length Breech rnechani: III Elevation Travel e Shell we'ight Muzzle velocity Maximum ~ange 1Yr of projectile available 12 3)

75mm 2.95in) 1,0351b (47Dkg) 3,6751b (I ,667kg) I07.13in (2.72rn) 24 grooves, right-hand. one tum in 25.6 calibres Hydro-pneumatic. onstant. 44.9in (I ,140mm) Nordenfelt eccentric crew, percussion firing -9 degrees IS' LO + 49 degrees 30' 30 degrees left and right of zero 14.6Jb (6.62kg) 1.955ft/sec (596m/~ecJ 13.950 yards (12.756111 HE: WP Smoke: PII-IE apped

43

Field Artillerv

7.5mm

GUll

M1897 contiaued

s-: _-"_, .. M}~ how Jato' 'III! grown! Twem~' years ofimprovemeni prot/aced the MJ897A4, all Carriage M2A3, the ultimate 'French 75' for the US Field Artillery

44

Field Artillery

The 751'1U11howitier M2, intended for lise with file cOl'alry beneath the barrel

had

(I

split trail

017(1

afiring pedestal. seen herefolded

lip

carriages as bei ng too cornpl icaied and heavy, More work produced tile Howitzer M 1925E on Carriage M 1925E, a econd box-trail design, ill

re ponse to the Field Artillery B ards ideas, Rock Island Arsenal had ideas of their own, and produced tile Howitzer T2 on Carriag Tl. another split-trail

The 75mm howitzer M I ,vas the pack artillery version, with lightweigiu box trail and wooden wheels

45

Field Artillery

The 75111111 howitzer 111/8 WlIS the rubber-tyred version. used by airborne artillery in b011lUS and British formations

design. Thi .0 impressed the FA Board that the M192SE was dumped, and the T2 was standardized a the Howitzer Ml on Carriage MI in January 1928. It u. ed a seven-zone charge and fired a 33lb 15kg) shell to 12,000 yard' (II ,000m). Very few MI equipments were buill: no sooner was the design standardized than it wa: frozen.

imply because there was no money available to build it. The design was prepared for production, and put away in the safe. At about thi: time, the US Army began thinking about mechanization. which meant. among other thing, re-de igning gun carnage for high- 'peed towing. The 105ml11 howitzer carriage was

Till! 105mm howitzer Mi. with wooden wheels for horse draugln. The spring balancing apparatus beneath 'he cradle can he seen quite clearly

46

Field Artillery

The I05mnT howitzer M J at maximum elevation

cheduled for re-de ign in 1933, but it did not get on to the drawing board until 1936. When the de iigners began to contemplate modifying the M I carriage, they soon real ized it would be easier to tear up the drawings and start afre: h. ThL led to tile T3, T4 and TS carriages, the last of which was standardized as the M2 carriage in February 1940. Meanwhile. the gun had been modi lIed a' well. It had been designed with semi-fixed ammunition, where the . heU could be remo ed from the cartridge ca e in order to adju t the charge, hut replaced ,0 as to be loadedinto the gun as one unit, In 1933, it was decided to make the shrapnel round fixed and non-adjustable; this meant that some minor changes to the internal contour 0[' the gun

chamber had to be made, an I the reo ult wa standardized as the 'Howitzer lOSmm M2' in April 19"4. A year later. the approval was rescinded, as the shrapnel hell was no longer classed a. the primary projectile, its place being taken by the high explo ive : hell. Nevertheles " the M2 remained the standard, and, ill the course or adapting the gun to fit the TS/Ml carriage .. orne more man change were made, so that the final de ign wa standardized as the Howitz r M_A I in March 1940. Production began immediate! and 8.536 were built during the war years. There were some very small modifications from time to time, and, in revised form. it has remained the standard field artillery piece of the US Army ever since.

47

Field Arrillery

l05mm

Howitzer

!l2Al

Although it is generally ..and rightly, sald thai the Americanl 05mm howitzer owes it,~ existence to the Weslervelt Board, the idea of a J 05mOl weapon goes back further, In 1916, Colonel Charles P Summerall of the US Army was sent to France by the Secretary of War, Newton Baker. He was required to observe and report [lilt the development of military equipment by the European armies, in order to guide future American weapon design and procurement pelicy. One of Summerall's recommendations was that the 75mml3'in clas of field gun wa now out-dated, and no longer powerful enough, and lhaL the future US field artillery weapon should be of l051run calibre, AllMltime. the Ordnance Department still made final decision OV0J" artillery equipment, and Summerall was 'ignored. However. it is a fair assumption that [he 'Westervelt Board. got hold of Summerall's report during their deliberations, and saw UUt! his idea made sense. The development of the I05rnm Howitzer M I is derailed. elsewhere. The howitzer itself was EI. simple and straightforward design, using semi-fixed ammunition: the eartridge contained a seven-port charge in seven cloth bags. The base charge was secured to the bottom of the cartridge case ..and the other bags were attached by twine, so that the unwanted bags could be snapped off and discarded .. HE and WP Smoke were the two Qrigilml projectiles, shrapnel having been abandoned in 1935. but in 1941 a base ejection smoke shell appeared, copied f1"Ot~l the British :25-pnunder shell, Then came a shaped-charge anti-tank shell, coloured smoke, and a canister shot round, which was found particularly useful in the South Pacific for shredding the undergrowth and tree-tops The carriage was a two-wheeled splu-trai I pattern, arid the gun was U·~II1l)iOl1ed far back as possible so chat as the breech would not strike 111e ground at high angles of elevation. This demanded a balancing spring; ami il was very ingeniously fitted. between the axle-tree and the end of the cradle; lhisspring ill tension balanced the weight of [he barrel. There was a small shield. The only drawback was tile length. of the trail legs, which tended to make the gun very trail-heavy when being manhandled; one man of the detachment usually draped himselfacross the muzzle. while the remainder lifted the trail to book it to the towing vehicle,
lO

Hush out Japanese snipers.

DATA (Gilln M2AJ

on Carrlaga

M2A2)

Calibre Weight of gun and breech Total weight in action Barrel length

I05ml11 (4,131n) I,0641b (483kg) 4,9801b (2,259kg) IOl.44in (2.58m) 34 grooves, right-hand [wist, One turn in 20 calibres Hydro-pneumatic, constant, 42:io (1.066mrn) Horiznmalsliding block, manual; percussion ruing A degrees 45' to +66 degrees 13' 23 degrees right and left of zero 331b (14.96kg) 1.5S0fl/sec (472ll1isec), Charge 7 :1 2.205 yards (1 [,160111) HE; HEAT: WP Smoke. BE Smoke, BE coloured smoke, chemical, canister

Rifling
Recoil system and lenglh Breech mechanism Elevation Traverse Shell weight Muzzle velocity

Maximum range
Types of projectile available

48

Field Artillery

l05mw Howitzer M2A] continued

Prac~icefii"il'!g With the 105mm howitzer M2Alln

J942

Air Portability
In 1941, the US Army was looking to set up ill1 airborne formation and asked for al 05ml11 howitzer which could be carried in the C-47 'Dakota' aircraft. A maximum weight of 2,500lb (I, J36.35kg) and a range not Less than 7,000 yards (6,420m) were the only guidelines. The M2AI howitzer barre! was cut down by 27in, with the breech being len exact.ly as it was; this allowed the firing of the tandard lOSrnm ammunition, but with a specially reduced five-zone charge wi.th smaller powder grains, so that the powder would be entirely consumed inside the short barrel, An ingenious designer realized that the near-redundant M3 75mm howitzer carriage could easily be modified and that the recoil system of the

75rnm M8 howitzer carriage, suitably beefed up, would join the two together. Thus, the 105ml11 Howitzer M3 on Carriage M3 was born. The conversion was a little weak in spots, and a fresh design, with new, tronger, trail legs, appeared as the Carriage M3AL Althoughit was produced with a.i:r portability in mind, other divisions of the US Army viewed the M3 covetously. In 194.1-42 the idea of .Infantry Cannon Companies' provoked interest in variou quarters of the US Army, and the M3 looked to be the very weapon for these companies. It was given a shield, turning the carriage into the M3A2, and a number of companies were formed. They were used in the North African campaign of 1942-43, but the idea was not a success; the infantry had enough

49

Field Artillery

The reel! thing, Firing a l05mm howitzer in France. J 944

to do without trying to run their own artillery a well. The companies were disbanded in 1943. the shields removed, and the M3 remained a solely airborne equipment thereafter. It was made ob olete shortly after the war ended, A Medium Field Gun The last recommendation of the Westervelt Board relevant to this chapter was its demand For a medium field gun somewhere between the 105mm and 155mm calibres, The US Army did have a 4.7in field gun in small numbers during the First World War, and it was felt that thi was a good calibre. so a new design was begun in 1920. The 4,7in GUll MI920 on Carriage. 4.7in Gun and 155mm Howitzer M 1920 duly appeared; i.t was a split-trail design. but was unsatisfactory, and wa rep] aced by Gun M 1922£ on Carri age M 1921 E. This 42-cal ibre gun, firing a 50lb (22.6kg) shell to a maximum range of 20,500 yard (18,81 am), was con. idered suitable and was recommended for standardization. he formal decision was postponed 1'01' some small modi fications to be made. but in August 1928 the whole project was

placed 'in abeyance' for the usual reason=shortage of money. .[11 1939, the design was brought out again and examined. with a view to making, ome changes, to arrive at a gun firing ro 20,000 yards 08,350m) and a carriage built from a many parts of the 155111m Howitzer M I carriage as po ible. A de ign was drawn up and wa recommended for standardization in early 1940. At this point there was a strange and interesting occurrence. In 1939, the Briti h Army bad decided up n a 4.5in gun to fit 11 the same carriage a the 5.5il1 medium gun. the idea being to replac the 60pounder. In some unrecorded way - there is no mention of it in the Proceedings of the Ordnance Board - the Briti h and the Americans got together and came 10 the conclusion that. ooner or later. Lhey were likely to find them elve fighting ide by side, In uch a ca: e, a measure of compatibility in armament would be useful, The American 4.7in gun was re-designed into 4.5in calibre. to suit the British 4.5in BL gun ammunition. and the A rnericans were furni hed with ammuni tion manufacturins drawings. At the same lime, arrangements were made for the manufacture of

50

Field Artillery

The /0511111'/ howitzer 1944

MJ was

C/

shortened barre/on

file carriage

ofthe

75111111 howiner M2, seen here in France in

orne of the American ammunition in Canada, In pril 1941, the 4,5in Gun M 1 on Carriage M I was standardized, The carriage wa almost the arne as thai the 155mm Howitzer MI. described el ewhere, It had 6S degrees elevation, 53 degrees traverse and fired

RUSSIA
When Russia excused itself lrorn the war in 19! 7, its artillery wa. a ragbag of weapon. from a variety
of ource - locally manufactured, licen: e-built French and German, imported French, G rrnan and British, In the Russians' favour was the fact that the poor and ancient designs bad all been weeded out by war; those that remained were good. sound pieces of equipment. This was just as well becau e it was de. tined to erve the Rus ian through their
OWl]

a SSlb

(2Skg)

:hell

to 21,125

yards

(19,380m)

range, The gun served throughout the war, largely as a training weapon although a few were used in northt Europe in 1944-45. Its pri ncipal drawback. according to the Americans, wa the hell, which, by their standards was inefficienr. like all British wartime. hells, it was de igned to usc 19-1on steel and carried only 4!tllb (2kg) of TNT. Americans

we

civil war, and well into the 1920s, before any thought could be given to replacing it. The first piece n w equipment [0 be de ignecl

under
robust

the Communi.
design which

regime
was

came

preferred 23-ton teet, which gave thinner wall and more c plosive capacity, but the number of guns in

76,2rnm infantry-accompanying

in J 927, a gun of simple and by the

manufactured

ervice did not ju. tify . euing up new manufacturing facilities, As a result, the gun was declared obsolete
in September 1945.

thousand, A box-trail two-wheeled gun with shield, it fired a 6.2kg shell to a, range of 8,550m. It was
widely used during the war, and hundreds were

51

Field Artitler»

us airborne
52

troops loading

a 105111111 owitzer M3 into a glider h

Field Artillery

The American 4.5in gun WGS on the same carriage as [he 1551111'1'1 howitrer and designed to fire British ammunition

captured by the Germans. who assirnilared them into their own infantry

promptly and even

found it profitable
them in Germany.

to manufacture

ammunition

for

Re-Designs of 1930
The successful design of this little gun proved the credentials of the Soviet artillery design bureau. In 1930. they began to overhaul the surviving wartime weapons and bring them up to date by improving their carriages and developing better ammunition, These weapons can be recognized by their nomenclature. with the original year of design followed by the year of re-design: for example, the Divisional Gun MfnJ30. The Divisional Gun M02/30 had begun life just after the Russo-Japanese War: designed by the Putilov factory, it fired a 6.6kg shell to 6,600m range. In common with most field guns of that. period, it had a maximum elevation of only 17 degrees, and the barrel was 30 calibres long. The 1930 overhaul increased the elevation to 37 degrees, put a 40~calihre barrel on it, added a shield, and came up with a gun firing a 6.4kg shell to a range of 13,000111, almost double its original range, The partner to this weapon was the 12.2mm The 4.5il1 gun at maximum elevation, showing thefiring pedestal which relieved the tyres ofthefiring. shock

53

Field Artillery

howitzer purchased

M I 0/30' origi nally a Schneider

from France in some numbers,

design and

but the carriage

wa

more

modern.

u ing rubber-

thereafter built in various Russian factories, it had fired a 23kg shell to 7,690m range. In this instance, the designers were unable to give the weapon more elevation without exce ive re-de ign, 0 they merely trengthened the carriage and overhauled the ammunition. This pro ided a more powerful propell ing charge •. 0 that, in the 10/30 form, it fired a 21.8kg hell to 8,900m. It war not so spectacular an improvement as that performed on the field gun, but quite a atisfactory gain for relatively little expense. A similar improvement was performed on the 122111m 1908 howitzer. originally a Krupp design. Its performance was similar to that of the Schneider of 1910; it was given a similar treatment. strengthening the carriage and boo ting the ammunition, and, in it 0 /30 form. had exactly the arne performance as the 10/30 howitzer. Similar improvement. were made to heavier guns, but for the time being the 1930 improved model formed the backbone of the Soviet Army's artillery, The designers were then put to work to produce fresh designs that would out-perform and eventually replace the 1930 school.

ryred steel wheels instead of wooden, and was thus in tune with the on-going mechanization proce s sweeping through the Soviet Army. 11 also had a maximum elevation of 75 degrees, in a Soviet attempt to field an all-purpose gun: the extra elevation wa. supposed to aJIOl it to fire in th antiaircraft role. By 1938, virtually all the MJ933 guns
had been replaced by the M 1936 design mass-produced by several Iactorie . which was

Like everybody el e, the So iets soon came to realize that 'all-purpo e' guns were actually nopurpose guns, and the secondary role of the M 1936 was quietly forgotten. However, one thing had made it elf obviou in their attempts at vertical firing - continuous Iire of the sort demanded by the air-defence role led to serious over-heating of the recoil sy tern. The de igner went back t th drawing board, and this time got it exactly right. The 76mm Divisional GllJ1 M j 939 wa new from top to bottom, The gun wa of 41 cal ibres, and WEI carried in a cradle which had the recoi I and recuperator cylinders above and below the barrel. where they were adequately cooled. The split-trail carriage generally followed the design of the 1933 model. but reo tricred the elevation to 42 degrees. with 57 degrees of traver reducing bore wear, the reduced, so that the 6.4kg e. In the intere t of charge was slightly . h II now went to a One important feature was brought down to easy to

The Ml936 and the Ml939

The fir. l new design to appear was still linked to the past; the 76.2mm Divi ional Gun M 1933 was a completely new 50-calibre gun in .ened into the carriage of the l22mm M I 0/30 howitzer. This. being much stronger than the normal 76mm gun carriage. allowed the gun to be more powerful, and the end result was a weapon l'iring the standard 6.4kg 76m111 shell to a range 02,480111) and having 43 degree Thi change seemed to prove or 13,600 yards of elevation. a point about the

rna imurn range of I3,300m.

was that th overall weight 1.484kg (3.270Ib). manhandle.

so that it was relatively

The

11941

The M 1936 and the M J 939 were the divisional artillery guns with which the Soviets met the Germans in 1941. They pro ed to be efficient and effective. but losses were in tbe thou ands; the German took the M 1936 and M 1939 gun. into (heir own service. as anti-tank guns. Production of guns was stepped up. and the de ignen looked hard at what they had in order to find some expeditious way providing even more guns. One method was

gun, and the next step was to design a completely new split tubular trail two-wheeleci carriage with shield, A few minor change. were also made to the gun, which lengthened it to 51 calibres. and the result was called the 76mm Divisional Gun M j 936. It had exactly the same performance as the M 1933,

or

54

Field Artillery

The 76ml'l1 /qfClI1tf), Grill M 1927. the first gun design to appear after the Russian Revolution

to use bits and pieces already in volume production; in this way, the next 76mm gun, theM194J, was born. The M194l was the M1939 gun, with a muzzle brake added, fitted into the carriage of the 57111111 anti-tank gun. The anti-tank carriage had been built with ample . trength, to withstand the violent recoil, andit could easily accept the somewhat lesser force of the field piece. especiallywhen damped down by a muzzle brake. Another benefit was that the weight came down to just over ],IOOkg. It proved successful, but in practice it was found that the 57ml11 carriage was not quite as strong as the designers had thought; and, because it was an antitank carriage, the maximum elevation available to the gun wa only 18 degrees, restricti ng the maximum range to about I I DOOm.A new carriage, re-designed to provide additional strength without increasing the weight by more than a few kilos, and

with more elevation on the gun, was produced; the result was the 76mrn Divisional Gun M 1942, which restored the maximum range to 13,300m. Field Guns as Anti-Tank Guns This group of 76mm guns did valiant work in 1941~3, and continued in service throughout the war and for many years afterward. However by the end of 1942, it wa seen that the 76mm gun was no longer the ideal choice; the shell was simply not big enough to make an impression. Henceforth, the 122:mm weapons would represent the bulk of tile supporting artillery, In their search for tong range, usinglong barrels, and powerful charges fired from guns with splittrail and wide traverse, the Soviets had, unwittingly, provided themselves with several thousand potential anti-tank guns. By late 1942, it

55

Field Artillery

The Russian 76.2111111 Divisional GUll M 1939: this had been captured by the Germans.fitted with a German muzzle brake, and taken into use (IS the 'Pancsrabwehrkanone 39 (r)' anti-tank gUll: if II'as then, as seen here, captured by US troops ill Tunisia in 1942

was obvious that anti-tank guns were a vital nece aity, and a new strategy was introduced, Shooting at tank wa no longer the ole prerogative of the anti-tank gunners' union, Anybody \ ho saw a tank wa: required to shoot. at it. Anti-tank ammunition was issued to all Soviet artillery capable of firing at zero elevation. but 1110 tly to the 761111TI guns, which were now primarily anti-tank guns, and secondarily field guns. The M 1942 wa i: sued with an armour-piercing hell. which would defeat 64mm of armour at 1,00001. a haped charge shell capable of holing 70ml11 of armour at any range, and. later. a tungsten-cored arrowhead shot that could dcfeal9'-11l1ll of armour at 500m. Two further field guns were developed during the war years - the 85mm Divisional Guns M 1943 and

M 1945 - but, like the 76mm gun, they became prirnari.ly anti-tank weapons. The Russians had introduced 1:111 85ml11 gun in 1902. but it appears not to have been ery sue essful and wa ob olete by 1914. However, the calibre had jts attractions principally, a good combination of hell weight, range and gun weight - and. in term of the antitank rol . the idea made, ense. because the barrel of the 85mm AA gun M 1939 was already being adapted to use a a rank gun. It was now co-opted into a split-trail carriage ba ed on that of the 76mm M 1942. This produced the 85ml11 M] 943, which could fire a 9.Skg shell to 16.600m (15.230 yards). an APIHE shell to defeat 9 J rnrn of armour at 500111. or an arrowhead hot to defeat 113111111 of plate at the same range.

S6

Field Artillery

7.62mm Divisional

Cun M1942

The 3in field gun had been the standard divi 'lanai support gun of the Rus. ian armies since the model of 1900, and th . list of replacement. i. long and complicated, a de Ignen strove for perfection, The wartime guns began wirh the M 1936, which was probably the last appearan e of the 'dual-purpose' weapon. ince it had the ability (Q reach 75 degree or elevation, and wa intended to function as a forward-area ann-aircraft gun. This idea wa. soon seen to be useles ... and tile next. aucrnpt was the Model 1939, which could reach 45 degrees elevation, and 111so split the recoil system above and below the barrel. 'Both these guns were produced in some numbers and put to u .e in the war, and both were captured b_ the Germans and modifiedinto very useful anti-lank gun .. Next came [he Model .l941. which used the 1939 gun on a light girder split-trail carriage. which it hared with the 57mm anti-tank gun .. This proved to be too light and very few were made (of either gun) before a replacement came along - the Model 39/42, the M 1939 gun on another split-trail carriage. Again. it was not a uccer , and the designers !lOW produced a split-trail carriage with tubular trail. which wa strong enough to . land up to the conditions 011 the Eastern Front. The carriage was adopted by the 57mm anti-tank gun. and the barrel of the M 1939 76.2mm gun was placed upon it, [0 form the ~ 1942 clivi ional gun. The equipment was designed by the V.R.Gnlbill Design Bureau In Artillery Arsenal No. ]. In Gorky, and this time they had got it right; th result was an outstanding field and anti-tank gun, which was produced in va t numbers. It wa. LO remain in . ervice with Warsaw Pact countrie well into the 1970 . and is till In u e in several African and Eai tern countries, The gun was also u. ed in the T34 medium tank and, after the war, in the P1'-76 amphibious tank.

or

The 76mm Divis ional GIIIl M J 942. with Russiunmuzzlc

brake, here on di play at Aberdeen Proving Ground,

USA

57

Field A rtillerv

7.62mm Divisional DATA

Gun M1942 continued

Calibre Weight of gun and breech

Total weight inaction Barrel length Rifling Recoil system and length Breech mechanism Elevation

Traverse
Shell weight Muzzle velocity Maximum range

76.2.111111 (3.00il~) c. 620kg (I ,3661b) J .200kg (2.646Ib) 2.983n1 (117.4Sin) 32 groove. , right-hand. one rum in 25 calibre Hydro-pneumatic. ariable, 673mrn to 750rnm (26.5 to 29.5in) Vertical sliding block. semi-automatic: percus ion firing - 5 degree \0 + 37 degree
27

degree' right and

len

of zero

6.20kg (13.67Ib) 680mJ iec (2,230rVscc)

13,290m (12,152 yards)

Types of projectile available

Anti-armour performance

HE: WP Smoke; shrapnel; incendiary, AP/H.E, HEAT; HVAP Shot AT> hot: 69/500/0 : 61/1000/0; HVAF Shot; 921500/0 : 58/.1000/0; HEAT shell: l20mm at all ranges

As the anti-tank role gradually became more important than the field role, the M 1943 was slightly re-designed. In its original form, it had 40 degrees of elevation; by cutting this down (0 35 degrees, the gun could have a somewhat lower silhouette. This became the 85mm M1945 gun: it had the arne antiarmour performance, but the maximum range with an HE hell was reduced to J5,SOOm. 122rnm Weapons
The place of the field gun wa now taken by the 122ml11group of weapons. This calibre (48 lines in old Ru 'sian measure 4.8i 11, and actually ] 21.9mm in practice) has been a peculiarly Ru sian calibre . inee the late nineteenth century and the first 'modern' weapon was a 1904 howitzer. Prior to the First World War. Krupp ~U1d chneider howitzer were bought in thi calibre: they had actually been de igned by thei r maker' in I 20 1TI11l , but were bored out and re-rifled to suit the Russian s. One of the Russian de igners' first task i-n their 1930s overhaul was to update two of the old-pattern howitzers.

M193 Once that was done, the next job was to produce a modern replacement, and this appeared as the 122mm Howitzer M 1938. Thi weapon mu t, surely be the most prolific piece of artillery in history. It was produced continuously from 1938 until well into the 1960s, wa the principal divi ional artillery weapon of the S viet A rmy and the Warsaw Pact armies, and was supplied by the thousand to an one who could raise d1e price, anywhere in the world. There are hundreds of them still in u e, and it will be well into the twenty-first century before the last of them goes to the

scrapyard.
The M 1938 howtizer was approved 111 epternbcr 1938 and began reaching troops in the summer ofl9_ 9.lt was de igned by the F.E Petrov Bureau of rtillery Factory 0.172 at Perm; con. (ruction began at Perm and oon pread 10 a number of other factorie . It wa i lied on a generou. cale: thirty- ix to a Motorized Rifle Divi 'jon in two battalions each of three batteries with six guns, and fifty-four to a Tank Division in three battalions. It was a simple and robust design

58

Field

rtillery

tt« 122111111 HOII';/:::.er M 1942, showing the sfJring suspension and

the lower ends ofthe spring balancing units

of split-trail two-wheeled carriage with .hicld. the gun moving in a ring cradle, with th recoil buffer below and the recuperator above. A. with mo. t So iet gun of its era, the tyres were rubber, filled with sponge rubber, fitted to di c wheel : this y tern has continued to the pre. ent day, Post-war licence-built Bulgarian and Chinese howitzers use the same type of lyres. The Ml938 fired a 21.7kg (47.8Ib) . hell to a range of I !,800m (12-900 yards), and is remarkable in that its performance is still exactly the. 31Tle; 110 improvement lO ammunition or any other feature have been made in an attempt to extract mor range from it. Another unusual point is that it is pos .ible. and perm is. ible, to fire the howitzer without opening the trail legs. the only drawback being that the a ailable traverse is severelytimired to 1.5 degrees. It. was originally provided with the usual option of high explosive and make bells. and the e were augmented by shrapnel and illuminating projectiles, and, in late 1942. by a .haped harge anti-lank hell capable of penetrating 100111111 of armour.
M/93/

ranging divi ional gun. a the de ign bureau produced the 12201111M .1931 gun, a weapon to fire a 25kg h 11 to 20,875m (22,755 yards) - no mean performance for that period. A plir-trail carriag with two spoked, , olid-ryred wheels, it carried the gun in a trough cradle which extended well behind the breech in a manner reminiscent of the Schneider howitzers. Perhaps the most obvious feature was the two vertical balancing . pring cylinder' in front of U1e hield, supporting the cradle and barrel weight. This seems to be the first application or thi. method of balancing the barrel weight, and it . pread rapidly to everal countries during the next few year.
M /931/37

The

1938 howitzer

shared

its carriage

with

.152mm weapon. gun,

Although mo t of the 1930 weap ns were makeovers of pre~-1914 designs, one new de .ign appeared at this time, filling what the oviet Army saw a, a gap in their ann OLl ry. They had no long-

was extended the M193l/37, often described a a gunhowitzer. The arne barrel a. the M 1931 was now adapted to a carriage designed to carry either it or a 152mm gun-howitzer: at a casual glance there appears to be no difference between the M I 9"' I and early M J 931 /37 models. but very s on the 31/37 was given dual rubber-tyred disc wheel. It al a has a tubular strut on top of the folded trail, to wh ich the gun breech ring can be locked when it is pulled back in its cradle into the travelling position, The

and this form of rationalization wi rh the design of the next l22nun

59

Field A rtillerv

Soviet troops as practice M 1931 had

wit}: the 122111111 howitzer

11111942 A new 107111111 esign was called for in the late d 1930, re lilting in the 107111111 Gun M1940. This was an all-new cI sign with a 43.S-calibre barr I n a split-trail carriage with pneumatic tyres and a new recoil system, probably that of the 122mm Howitzer M 1938 suitably modified. It fired the same 17.2kg shell to a range of 17,450111 (19,000 yards). Very few were built: there is a number of theories as to why thi: was the case. On is that the initial German advances in 1941 over-ran the factory where production was ju t getting into it tride: another is that it was decided to concentrate on the 122111m calibre a standard, and reduce the number of calibres in service; a third, that the army bad second thoughts, considered it too much gun that the 122mrn Each of these theories seems logical. and the deci ion may have been the reo ult of a combination 0[' all three. Whatever the explanation, the ] 07mm M 1940 vanished in 1941.

maximum

elevation

of

45 degrees.

but the 31137 increased this lO 65 degrees to give it a h witzer apability: the weight of shell and maximum range remained the same.

107mm Weapon
Soviet field artillery also included lwo minority group. The first of these was another peculiarly Russian calibre - 107111111(42 lines or 4.2in) which had been adopted in the 1870s, In the early 1900s, two new guns, one Irorn Krupp and one from Schneider, both originally designed as lOSmm pieces, were purchased in relari ely small numbers. In 1930, the surviving Schneider guns were given a new longer barrel, to be re-modelled into the I 07mm Gun M 1910/30. Thi: allowed them to fire a 17.2kg (38Ib) shell to a range of 16.350111 (17.880 yards). (The remaining Krupp weapons appear La have been eli posed of to the Spanish Republicans during the Spanish Civil. War.)

for too small a

'hell, and decided

represented

a b tter combination.

60

Field A rtillerv

Mountain Gun. The second minority group was the mountain guns. Pre- 1914 Russia was always liable to drop everything in order to have at the Turks if the opportunity arose; the Ru o-Turki b border was largely mountainous, so the Russians' stock of mountain artillery was quite extensive. In the p t1919 P riod. the need was rnewhar Ie rs, but numbers of the. e guns were retained. By 1935, they were feeling th ir age. and in 1936 the Soviets purchased a small number of 75mm M36 mountain guns lrorn Skoda 01' Czechoslovakia, Using these as their prototype. the Soviets enlarged the bore to suit their 76.2mm standard, and then put the gun
into production as the 76.2mm mountain gun M1938. A box-trail carriage with pneumatic-tyred wheels and a hield carried the short 23-calibre barrel in a prominent jacket over a tubular recoil : tern. A. with all mountain guns, the M1938 came to piece.' for mule tran port, or c uld be towed by hal' es or trucks. Ir fired a 6h:.g (13.2Ib) shell t a range of IO.IOOm (11,050 yard), offering quite good performance for a mountain gun. It had a maximum elevation of 70 degrees, so that it could function a, a howitzer and the all-up weight was only 795kg (1,750Ib).

61

Medium and Heavy Artillery

.HEAVY ARTILLERY OR THE BOMBER?

Heavy artillery was in an invidious position in the between-wars years. On the one hand, the introduction of motor traction, which put an end to weight restrictions, led to the promi e of bigger and better guns and howitzers .. On the other hand, the advocates of aviation were certain that heavy artillery was now obsolete, the task of demolishing the enemy's rear areas having been taken over by the bomber. The argument bothered planners and strategists and. with the continuing shortage of finance, many were happy to accept the assurances of the aviators. They were inclined to put heavy-artillery considerations aside, and spend the available cash on other forms of weaponry. It seemed a logical decision, given the conditions of the time. However, the designers and armaments manufacturers were nor convinced. Motor traction was measurable, and could be assessed and tested. Aviation was a promise. not yet capable of being proven in practice. When they were off duty, the designers continued with heavy-artillery designs, seeking ways to move the largest calibres by mechanical means .. As it turned our, this was just as well. Germany, [he one nation who had the right idea about aviation support for their ground forces, and regarded the Sluka dive-bomber and Dornier light bomber as extensions of the army's artillery, never faltered in its dedication to heavy artillery and produced a number of heavy guns which were long-ranging and highly mobile. Had Allied designers not beavered away in their off-time

between 1920 and J 935, thing. very different in 1939-45.

might have looked

SUPER-GUNS
The extremes of giantism, explored Germans, were left. virtually untouched Allies. They had been suitably impressed by the

by the by Big

B erthai n 1914 and the Paris Gu n in 1.9I 8. and there had been a brief flurry of paper ideas for super-guns
in 1919-20. Vickers actually lined a 16in gun down La Sin calibre, 104 calibres long, and fired it at their Eskmeals range in February 1919, using a 282!b (128kg) cordite charge. The shell reached a velocity of 4,400fL/sec (I ,340m/sec) but there is 110 record of what range was achieved .. The barrel displayed a 102in longitudinal split after the sixth round and that was the end of the enterprise. The enth usi asm soon passed, and in the colder climate of the years that followed, the super-gun proposinon was clinically dissected. Capital expenditure, manufacturing man-hours, weight of shell, weight of payload and probable error were all considered. The conclusion reached was that superweapons were good only for propaganda purposes, being insufficiently accurate or damaging, prone to wear out rather quickly, and unbearably expensive. Despite this, the British did build a super-gun however,

i[ was not a successful

story.

SE170 and SEt 71

The Director of Na val Ordnance began the story in [940. with a suggestion to develop a long-range

62

Medium and HeavyArtillery

A (iin Mark XiX gun of65 Medium Regiment in action ill France, 1940. Oia Firs! World War design, most were lef: behind 01 Dunkirk; with only a liandjul remaining ill ttie Middle East and in Britain.for Iraining purposes

for army use. The army wa Ies enthusiastic, seeing no tactical employment for it under modern warfare conditions. DNO pressed for it on the grounds that, even if the army did not need it now, they might in the future and. in any case, it would be a valuable ballistic experimental tool. At that time, no pecific calibre or size was Slated. but eventually an 8in of 140 calibres was suggested. firing a 256lb (116.12kg) shell at 5,500ft/sec (1.,676mlsec). The immediate objection to this was that there was then no gun lathe in the country capable of' turning a barrel of 93ft 4in (28.45m); the answer was to suggest that the rifled portion of the barrel be made in two pieces. The objection to this was that a two-piece construction would not withstand the high pressures and velocities [hal were foreseen. The idea wa not pursued. Finally, it was decided to use an 8in 90-eaJibre (60 [tlI8.3m) inner tube (the longest piece that could be made on existing machinery). fitted into a J3.5in Mark 5 gun body, the 13.Sin breech being modified La suit the rear of the 8in chamber. Two gun: were made - SE170 and SE 171 - by VickersArmstrong. and a mounting was made by the Great Western Railway workshops at Swindon, based

gun

upon a naval 13.5il) warship

barbette

mounting.

The mounting, carrying the first gun, SE170, was installed i 11 late 1942 at Yantlet Battery on the Isle of Grain in the Thames Estuary. (This was an experimental site on the north shore of the island, used by the Proof & Experimental Establishment at Shoeburyness, on the north side of the e mary, when they needed to do long-range firing.) A few experimental shots were fired; this showed that this location was of little use, because the range of the gun sent the shells well past the observed ranges off Shoeburyness, where the fall of shot could be had to be found, and north of Dover was selected. SE 170 was removed, the mounting was sent down LOo Dover and re-assembled, and Gun measured. A second
0.

location

eventually

location

just

SE.J71 was fitted to it.

It

directing

eems probable that there were thoughts about this gun towards German-occupied

France, with particular emphasis on some of the German cross-channel batteries. The gun. now christened 'Bruce' (after Ad miral SiT Bruce Fraser, Controller of the Navy), was manned by a Royal Marine Siege Battery. The Proceedings Ordnance Board takes up the tale:

of the

63

Medium and Heavy

Artillery

Firing was carried out on 30 and 31. March and 2 April 1.943. Gun No SE 171. all 1).5.in Barbeue Carriage Mk No 27 at Royal Marine Siege Battery, Dover. Shells of three types were fired, all fined with Fuze No 241. Propelling charge Cordite SCtS weight 2471b. Maximum range observed was 96.659 yards achieved at 42 degrees 52' quadrant elevation, Time of flight 145.89 seconds. One round was unobserved and heard to fall at approximately IOO,OO() yards range. Muzzle velocity varied between 4.50ClFlfsec and 4.S73fl/sec. 22 rounds were fired, Height to vertex of trajectory 84 ..100 feet (25.637m). Mean deviation in each series of shots was 0.4 per cent or range. 50 per cent breadth z.one at maximum range about 75 yards. Some rounds burst in the air. and the board requests the Chief' Engineer, Armaments Design (CEAD) to put forward a fresh design of shell modified for a fuze or the 118 type, a design with a fuze inside the ballistic cap, and a base fuze. A probable barrel life of twenty-eight effective full

charge

rounds

appears

to be 'indicated

from the

n-

wear ligures

reponed.

No high priority was given to the manufacture of special projectiles (they were ribbed, the gun having sixteen very deep ri fling grooves), and the next firing took place on 20 September
Commanding

1944:

Officer RiV! Siege Regiment reports on the firing of shells fitted with modified No I J 8 fuzes from the 13.5J8in gun. One shell burst at 61,150 yards range and 60.000 feet height .. and one burst only 1,500 yards from the gun. I.t is believed to be a heat effect, am] it is proposed to insulate the fuze from the explosive filling by means of asbestos and, as an alternative solution, abandon the usc of a fuze and lise <l ballistic CHP with stick actuation of a gainc filled in the shell nose. 'Bruce' never featured in the Proceedings again, and the project was closed down very shortly afterwards. According to legend, the RM pointed it in the general direction of Germany one day and

This Yickers 9.2il1 howirze: was proposed as a replacement for the old pattern. bur was abandoned infavour (Jf the
American 240111l"n 1101-I'11:er

64

Medium (mel Heavy A rtillery

loosed off a couple of rounds; untortunarely, there i, probably lillie truth in that 'tory, Abc lit fi teen year, later, 1 tripped over the SE 171 barrel one day when walking through the long grass of the gun compound at Shoeburyness. I. believe it finally \ en! to the scrapyard during the imrnen 'e springcleaning which took place when the future London Airport was being planned on Maplin Sands in the 1960, ,

BRITAIN
Britain ended the war in 1918 with a huge armoury of heavy guns and howitzers, brought into being by the conditions particular to trench warfare. Much of it was rapidly scrapped, leaving only the mo. t modern example, of the Sin, 9.2in and 12in howitzers and 6in gun in service. 'Most modern' is a relative t r111; in this case, il means 'tho .e of the latest manufacturing daic. There was very little that was 'modern' about the 8in howitzers, [or exurnple; they were short-barrelled weapon. on imple bo -trails, with massive 'traction-engine' wh els, Their recoil systems were so ineffective that it was necessary to place ramps behind (he wheels: n firing. the carriage recoiled Ul the ramp and then rumbled down again into the firing position (or fairly do. e to it), As a result, heavy artillery needed to be considered in the late 1 920s. However with the Royal Air Force's assurance that it could take over the artillery' job and deliver bombs on whatever target were pointed out, the gun design rs turned to other work - including a new anti-aircraft gun, and the defence of Singapore. A S.Sin Gun Another thi ng that needed to be add res eel wa: a r pla ement for the ag ing 60-pr (Sin) gun as the medium support weapon. After much discussion, in

DISPOSI1ION

OF HEAVY ARTILLERY

Broadly, the di position of heavy ani lIery was similar in most armies. Gun. and howitzer in the 6inflSSmm cia ' were sometimes part of the divisional artillery, but many regiments and anything above thai calibre, would be classed as 'GHQ Arti llery, or Corps or Army artillery, and would be under the hand or Lh artillery commander of the particular higher formation. He would then attach batteries or regiments of heavy wcap n to divi ions for speci ric operations wher the particular type of weapon was appropriate. Once the operation was concluded, the units would return to the higher formation and await their next task. S0111 ci mes, the 'opera! ion' la: ted a long ti me; for example, some British heavy regi menis were attached to di vi 'ions at the start of the Italian campaign, and remained with them for the rest of [he war.

Another Britt. Ii proposal been completed

II'ClS

this

(iill

gun, but the American

I 5511l1J1 gill] M / elbowed

it aside before development

had

65

Ordnance, 5.5in Gun Mark 3 on Carriage Marks lor 2

In January 1939, an Operational Requirement called for a new 5in calibre gun firing a 90lb shell to 16.,000 yards, and weighing Jess than 5.5 Ions. The baltistic eX(ler!~ studied thi~ for a while and reported baek that a better solution would be a5.Sin gun. firing a I ODlb shell: the 5.5in gUll came into being. The de igners set 10 work with great entlnrsiasm. No expense was spared to incorporate all the most receur ideas. but the result turned out to be rather less than the sum ofthe various parts. and some of the idea' had to be de signed OUI again. The gun was to be an autofrettaged barrel in a 100'c jacket. with an A 'bury crew breech mechanism. This wa: unexceptional, but iL was given a 'Lock, Percu .'ion L in Slide Box AC' a Lhe firing mechanism. This complicated. eml-automatic device wa difficult 10 di mantle for cleaning, and showed a number of ways of going wrong. The mechanism had originally been designed for use in the Clean environment naval turret gUDS. where it had performed quite reliably, but the mud and dust of field service were [00 much for it. In 1941. it was removed and replaced by the 'Lock, Percus sion, K, and Slide Box Y·. a much lmpler mechanism, which had been first put into service in 1917. The carriage was all up-to-date split-trail type with two wheels and with the gun in a trough cradle, which was trunnioned well back and balanced by means of a pall' of complex hydro-pneumatic rams carried vertically to lifr the cradle. These proved to be a fertile source of trouble, prone to leak; if ODe leaked more than tile ether, it tended to twi t the cradle and damage the recoil system. They were difficult and expensive to manufacture, difficult to udju t and maintain, and eventually were discarded and replaced by a milch simpler spring design. These were fitted in the same manner, and gave the gun its distinctive appearance, the two balancing spring cylinders rising like a pair of horn . There was also a quick-loading gear, which gave no trouble. 'Thi: was a very simple but ingenious design. which unlocked the cradle from the ele ating arc and allowed the gun to be . wung down to the horizontal for loading while the gun-layer was till busy etting the elevation and traverse, Once loaded, all hand bore down on the end of the cradle. and the gun barrel wung LIp until the lock snapped into place in the elevating arc. and the gun was at the proper elevation. This was much quicker and ea ier than winding it up and down between each shot. Once the gun gOt. into service, in May 1942. it rapIdlY became popular, and, apart from GI.• pell of premature explosions in the barrel in Italy (eventually traced to carclessnc s with the ammunition allied will) worn barrel ), it gave srerllng service throughout the war and for many years afterwards. It was finally declared obsolete ill the I980s. It is still in use in South Africa where. with modem ammunition, it reaches a maximum range of 21,OOOm.

or

DATA (Mark 3 gun on Mark 2 carriage)

Calibre Weight of gun and breech Total weight in action Barrel length Rilling Recoil system and length Breech rnechanii m Elevation hell weight Muzzle velocity Maximum range Types of projectile available (l39.7mm) 4.120lb (I 869kg) 13.6461b (6,190kg) 17! .6in (4.358m) 36 grooves, right-hand twist. One turn 'in 20 calibre Hydro-pneumatic, variable, 30 to 54in (762 to '1,371 mm) Asbury with We]jfl . crew, percussion Jil'ing 30 degrees each side of zero lOOlb (45.36kg): 801b (36.28kg) 1.675filsec (5lOill/.ec) with IOOJbshell (ell 4) 1,950f1Jsec (594m1sec) with 80lb shell (Ch Super) 16.200 yd, (14,813111) with IOOlbshell: 18.100 yd (j 6.550m) with gOlb shell HE; BE smoke BE coloured smoke' BE incendiary

s.si»

66

Medium and Heal'}, Artillery

Ordnance, 5.5in Gun Mark 3 on Carriage Marks 1 or 2 contlnued

The 5.5in gun in firing position; it III/{. t have been raining sight

- somebody has pill rite nU:::l_le cover ol'er the dia7

January 1939 a new 5in gun was requested, to fire a 90lb (41 kg) hell to 16,000 yard (l4,680m). and weigh not more than 5~ tons, The subsequent balli tic calculation showed that a better olurion would be a shell of 5.5in calibre, 0 the plans were re-drawn and the 5.5in gun came into existence. II wa a plit-trail carriage weapon, with two distinctive 'horns' in front of the trunnions, which contained the balancing springs. As noted elsewhere. the designers were too ambitious and this led LO delay in manufacturing the carriage. with the re lilt that the gun wa: not ready for issue until May 1942, the first weapon going to orth Africa. They proved to be succe ful and popular, in pite of a rash of premature detonation of the shell in the bore during the Italian campaign. The. e were eventually ascribed to an unfortunate combination of a number

of mall factor ~ including dirt, mud, and \; om barrel - which had come together with di astral! effect. Once this wa, olved. the gun gave no more trouble. It was to 5(.9.Y in British service until. the 1980s, and i still in service with the South African army. The only objection which the army had to the 5.5 wa, a lack of range. Its maximum was 16,200 yard (14,860m): this had been asked for in the first instance, but thing had rno ed on ince then. An 821b (37.25kg) hell (always referred to a an '801b') was therefore de igned and, with a new 'super charge, this LOok the maximum range up to 18, I00 yards (16,600m). The shell achieved it weight by having a finer taper and being made of a higher-grade steel, allowing thinner walls. The result was that the terrni nal effect wa practically indio tingui: hable from that the original 100lb (45kg) shell, so that eventually the IOOIb was

or

67

Medium and Heavv Artillerv

1I10n

Loading. the 5c5ill gun; the kneeling 111 theforeground holds the cartridge and is waitingfor {IJeshell to be rammed before raking if to the breech

The open breech of illI' 5.5ill gun. showing the three-stepped right, the hand!« of the [iring luck

We{ln breccl: screw, the central vent, and, at the extreme

68

MediI/III and Heavy Artillery

The i.Sin breech closed: (he firing lock is also closed and the firing. lanvard wilt Ie hooker! into the ring righ! ofthe lock

(II

the bottom

abandoned, to be entirely replaced by the 801b. The Lack of Hea y Artillery que. lion came up again. It had become obvious that the RAF wa never likely to have . ulTicient aircraft to provide effecti ve . upp rt for the fiel 1 army. and that, even if they had, they app ared to have no inclination for the job. A new heavy gun and howitzer suddenly became very desirable. In April 1938. when the matter was finally debated, the decision was taken to draw lip design' for a 7.85in
artillery

(200mm) howitzer firing a 300lb (136kg) shell to 16,000 yards (14.680m). and a 6.85in (I 74mrn) gun firing a 100lb (45kg) shell to 26,500 yards Before either or them were even designed. a fresh change of policy abandoned the 7.65in in fa our or a new and more mobile 9.2in howitzer; and, ju t a war br kc ut, the 6.85in gun was also dropped. This meant that, as [he Army set off to France in 1939. there wa no modern heavy gun. even on paper. The 1st Heavy Regiment (the only one in existence) went across the Channel with twelve 8in howitzer. and four 6in guns, which had been
(24,310m).

In the summer of 19"7, the heavy

69

Medium and Heavy ArtillelY

An HI1I~sr([l1 picture ala 5.5il1 gUI1 witt: thields. shields were never pUI into service

IUU/

with 111(' original hvdro-pneumatic

balancing cylinders. The

modernized to the extent of fitting pneumatic-tyred wheels. More heavy regiments were mobilized, but the supply of 8in howitzers and 6in guns ran out, and the cumbersome 9.2in howitzer was the only road-mobile armament available. Also. when the evacuation from Dunkirk took place, twelve 6in gun, twelve Sin howitzers and twenty-four 9.2in howitzer Were among the 2,700 guns left behind in France. The British Army therefore had virtually no heavy artillery, other than a small number of railway guns. The Royal Navy, a in the previous war. tried to rally round. producing a collection of obsolete

naval guns from. tore. They were offered to the army. but this time the offer was declined on the grounds that 'these monster equipmenrs' were likely to be a liabil ity in modem fast-moving warfare.

The 7.2in Howitzer

In

the wake of Dunkirk, one of the first things the General Staff asked for wa a replacement for the 8in howitzer, something with longer range with which to counter-bombard enemy guns. In November 1940. a new weapon, the 7.2il1 howitzer.

was approved.

In fact, this was

110

more than the old

70

Medium and Hem'." Artill

I)'

A medium re iiment preparing for a major opera/ion in Germanv, /945. This picture illustrates the reality oIA/fied air superiority; lining guns up whee! to wheel like this would be [atal if the enelilY fwd ail' superiority

Sin howitzer with a linered-down barrel, firing a new 200lb (91 kg) shell. It still had the short boxtrail, and still needed the 'quoin' or wedges behi.nd the wheel to try to contain the recoil which wa now rather worse. clue to a more powerful charge), but it could reach to 16,900 yard. ([ 5,505m), a 30 per cent improvement on the 8in h witzer. There were actually four different marks of 7.2, dependi.ng on which mark of 8in howitzer had been used for the conversion: the carriage wa the am for all four. The e 7.2in howitzer saw service in North Africa and Italy, but experien e . howed that, when firing Charge 4, the weapon was ahno t uncontrollable. It needed too much adjustment and repo itioning after each round to allow a rea enable rate of fire to be u tainec. so early in 1943, it was decided to design a new carriage. At about this time, the American 155 m111 Gun M I wa arriving in Britain; the carriage was an excellent plit-trail type, with an eight-wheel bogie, which could be lifted from the ground to lower the carriage body into firm contact and provide a very stable platform. Somebody pointed our that the Americans also mounted their 8in howitzer on the ame carriage, 0 why not put the 7.2in on it as

well'? The idea was accepted, and the combination of a 7.2in howitzer, Marks I to 4, and the American MI carriage be ame the 7.2in Mark 5. Pew 7.2in Mark 5s were made, however; ju: I' as production wa; about to tart, it wa pointed out that allying a modern carriage with uch an elderly lashlip as the 7.2in converted from the 8in wu overdoing it. There was too much carriage for lOO little gun, It would make more sense to develop a ompletely new 7.2in 110\ itzer to take advantage of the greater stability of the American carriage. As a re ult, a completely new howitzer was designed. built, tested. and approved in Dec mb r 1943 a the Mark 6. Itincrea ed the maximum range by about two miles, to 19,600 yards 07,900 m) with the same 200lb (91 kg) shell, largely by being able to fire a heavier charge of propellant. The 9.2in Howitzer The 9.2ill howitzer had been introduced at the start of the war, in 1914, and an improved Mark 2 vel' ion appeared in 1916. This wa a cumbersome piece of equipment, whi h had originally b en designed to be dismantled into three major units ~ barrel, carriage body and cradle, and carriage bed -

71

Medium and Heavy Artillery

Preparing ainmunition for 9._ill howitzers during training

()/I

Salisbury Plain. 1942

each LO be drawn by a team or horses. Traction wa later done by Holt caterpillar tractors. but it was still a Jaw-moving item and took everal hours of very hard work to a semble and put. into action. One of the detachment s major worries wa th need to fill an 'earth box' with 11 Ions or soil. to keep the carriage from jumping into the air when the howitzer fired. About a dozen of these were in existence in 1939. and five them were left in France in 1940. three with a heavy regirn nl and two as reser e . The remainder were dispersed around outhern England as anti-invasion weapon. c vering likely landing beaches. They were obviously 1:00 slow to fit iruo a fast-moving war. and when their anti-invasion role was finished they were retired into tore to await being made obsolete as soon as the war ended.

A New Vicker

Design

or

In early 1939. a new design had been commissioned Irorn Vickers-Armstrong and from Woolwich Arsenal. Wooden mock-ups were made, and the Vicker' design was selected. A prototyp wa built and fired successfully in J941. Handling and travelling trials and modifications took another year. The weapon u ed a split-trail carriage with a four-wheeled bogie and could fire a 315lb (143kg) shell to a range of 16.000 yards (14,630m), It could be brought into or out of action in half an hour, a con iderable improvement On the 1916 de ign. A II .eemed set for al proval and production, but in October 1942. the project was abandoned. No reason has been found for this decision. but it is probable that the imminent supply of the 240111111 (9.45in) howitzer Ml from the USA was the

72

Medium and Heavy Artilter:

deciding production production

luctor, This weapon would be in and ould be really for use long befor of the new 9.2 could be achieved.

. The Westel'velt Board Recommendation

The Westervelt Board had recommended

the

The l2in Howitzer

Th la: l major Briti h super-hea y weapon wa the l2in howitzer, which was simply the 9.2il1 enlarged. Being bigger, it was moved ill . ix loads, drawn by Holt tractor r steam engines at little more than walking pace; it was nicknamed 'the twelve-inch road-hog'. Once emplaced, which could take half a day or more, it fired a 7SQlb (340kg) shell to a range of ] 4,350 yards (13.120m). Probably le than a dozen of these equipment. s exi ted in 1939, and they were all emplaced in the anti-inva ion role in 1940. After that, they aw little use. There was a proposal in 1943 to develop an anticoncrete shell and form the equiprnents int a super-heavy road regiment for the invasion of

development of a 155111111gun capable of 65 degree. elevation, all-round traverse, and a shell weighing about 100lb (45kg), which would be interchangeable with that of the 155mm howitzer. The range • h u ld be about 25,000 yards' and it

or

should be rubber-ryred for mOLOr traction at about l Zrnph. This was to be supplemented by an 8in howitzer using the same carriage, firing a 240Jb (l09kg) hell to about 18.000 yards ( 16,515m). Regarding heavier weapons, the board suggested a gun of about 8in calibre, firing a 220lb (IOOkg) shell to 35,000 yard. (32,1 JOm). and a 9.5in howitzer, firing a . hell not over 400lb ( 181.8kg) to a range of about 25.000 yards (22.93Sm). All th se weapons were to be road-mobile, and in each case it

Europe. Their role wa to be to batter their way through the defences of Festung Europa. but by this
rime the tactical air support question had been examined and refined. and there was very little point in labouring to bring one of these 1110n tel'. into action when air p wer could do the. arne job. The anti-concrete hells were never made and the 12in howitzer received it obsoletion orders in

March 1945.

USA
During the First World War, the US Army. ha ing no heavy field guns of its own, adopted the French 155mm gun and howitzer. and the Briti h 8i nand 9.2in howitz rs. Between the war, the two 15Smm equipments were the standards, while the two British equipments went into store; some of the Sins were returned to Britain in 1940 to be converted into 7.2i.n howitzer. The remainder erved as training guns until they could be replaced

by

modern weapon, withdrawn and scrapped.

after

which

they

were A Britis/; 12ill Mark 4 howitzer ill France, 1940

73

Medium and Heavy A rtillery

LU
The 7.2il1 howitzer Mark 1 was simply a new barrelfitted on to the carriag« of the old
8i11

howitzer

Controlling the recoil 011 the 7.2in howitzer Mark .I werspartly performed l7y a normal recoil system, but also by allowing the gun to recoil up these ramps or 'quoins', .1'0 as {O soak up some of/he energy

74

Medium and Heavy Artillery

Firinv a 7.2ill howitzer in Italy, 1943; the carriage is half-way up the ramp and tile barrel atfull recoil in. the cradle. The gun-layer; on the far side, is holding the dial sight; it was a/ways removed before firing, in case it wasjolted out oj its socket. The object in front of the kneeling m.an is a loudspeaker connected to the command POSI and delivering/ire orders to the gun

wa proposed that a self-propelled mounting might be the be t elution. It is rare to read the recommendation of a board of thi type and then, years later, look back and see that the, ystem w rked. What the Westervelt Board a ked for, the US Army got. They may have had to wait twenty or more years for most of it, but the

recommendations of the board were adhered to throughout that time. There were no econd thoughts or revi. ed opinion, , the de igner just kept working until they got the deigns right, and then they were put into production ju t in time to win the next war.

The 7.2ill howitrer Mark 6 was a /lew barrel mounted 011 the carriage ofthe American Bin lioIVI155mrn gatt, gi\'ing a considerable increase ill performance and a much more stable weapon

75

Medium and Heavv A rtillerv . .

Firing the 7.2ill howit:er Mark 6; the next round is

lying
01/

rite loading

(my.

with the rouuner; and the dial sight stays in irs socket

Design Work Between the Wars Work on designs to reflect the Westervelt Board's idea began in 1920. It wa frequently interrupted or slowed down by lack of finance in the 1925-35
period, but it continued - designs were drawn up, discu: sed and dissected. put back together again on paper, torn up. changed. re-d ne, an I argued about until they were found satisfactory, then they were put away and another one wa begun. In this \' ay. the pitfall of over-hat ty production were avoided. ami it. i hard to find any serious defect in any of these between-wars designs. improved by the Americans; the M 191.8 was the same gun but manufactured in the USA. and the carriage was given pneumatic tyres. roller bearings. electric brake' and, later, air brake, The ammunition was improved. so that eventually the M J 9 J 8 had a maximum range of 2 J .100 yards

( 19,3551'11).
Even though the GPF was, at that time, can sidered ro be the best gun of it: class in the world, the We tervelt Board had a ked for 25,000 yards (22,935m) so the designers went t.o work, The .l55mm MI920MI appeared on a carriage similar to that of the GPF, but engineered to allow 6S degrees of elevati on (i nstead of the 35 degrees of the GPF) and it reached 25,860 yard. (23 72Sm) in trial firing. .Work a then topped for 0111e time, but in 19_9 it was revived and an entirely new gun and carriage design was begun. Thi was tandardized a the 155mm Gun Ml in 1938.

The 155 mm GPF

The 155111111gun in (Grande Puissance,

u: e in 1918
Filloux,

wa the French GPF or 'high power,

designed by Filloux), which was in US service as the M1917. This was a g d design of split-trail two-wheeled carriage (the first larae-calibre splittrail ever built). with a powerful gun, firing a 9S1b (43kg) shell to 16,200 yards (14,860m) range. During the 1919-39 period.

Production

began in the following

it was periodically

time of the US entry been built.

year and, by the into the war, sixty-five had

76

Medium and Heap), Arrilfer,r

The 155111111 c-« M I with the barrel retractedfor travelling and secured to the trail bv WI A[rame, This is probaiJIy one of the pilot models, since there are some minor differences between it and the standard weapons

The 155mm Howitzer M191.7

The 15Smm h witzcr M 1917 was another Fren h design adopted by the US Army. A simple and robust box-trail carriage carried the short barrel in an elongated cradle typical of Schneider's design. It fired a 9S1b (43kg) shell t a range or 1l,500m (12 535 yards). As with the gun. the Americans fir t bought the howitzers from Schneider, built them in the USA, then made a few modifications and improved the ammunition: in [hi-case. there was no improvement in perf rmance, the maximum range. taying the same. The carriage, by 1939, was equipped with pneumatic tyres and air brakes for high-speed towing. The MI 917 and it American-buill equivalent, the M 1918, spent 111 .t of th Se ond World War a training weapons. although SOme use was made of them in the Far East and a number were sent to North Africa for Lise by the British until they had enough 5.5in guns.

ground platforms were designed and tried, in the hope offinding a way of providing a greater arc of lire with <IS little labour as po sible, but none were effective. In 1934, work therefore began on a completely new split-trail arriage, which would give 30 degrees of traverse and 65 degrees of elevation. permit a maximum range ofI6,0()O yards (J 4,680m) and have an all-up weight of under II ,OOOIb (5,000kg). This work went along moothly unti I 1939, when it occurred to somebody that there wac little sense in de igning a beautiful new carriage only to mount a h witzer of 1917 de ign on it. This brought the work to a stop, everything was torn up, and the drawing office got busy on a completely fresh equipment. new 1'1'0111 muzzle to trail eye, with the proviso that the carriage. hould mount either a new I 55mll1 howitzer or an equally new 4.7in gun. The ominous noi e corni ng from Europe acted as a stimulant, the designer moved fast, and the new equipment was standardized a. the 155mm Howitzer M I in May 1941. The carriage. it would seem, was more or less that which had been under development inee 1934, since it had all the desired attributes of traverse, elevation and range, although it was a over the stipulated weight. The ho itzer wa 2.0-calibre barrel with a better breech mechanism, and, lO provide stability when firing, trifl

The IS5mm Howitzer Ml

This relegation of the M1917 was due tOiLS replacement in first-Line service by a I11Llchimproved weapon. the 155mm howitzer MI. Tf the MI917 could be aid to have a defect, it was the method of traversi ng tbe gun on its carriage. The axle was formed jruo a screw-thread; turning a captive nut attached to the carriage allowed the carriage to move, ideway: aero. the a Ie for 3 degree' in either direction. For changes of direction greater than thi . the whole carriage had t be 'run up' to free the pade, then moved bodily - almost four Ions inweight.

a new

there was a firing pede tal in the centre of the axle, which could be lowered to the ground to take the weight off the wheels. It soon gained a reputation for phenomenal accuracy and consistency; just over six thousand were made during the war, and afterwards they were retained in service and widely

During the 19208, a number

of

77

Medium and Heavy Artillery

155mm Gun M2 on Carriage MIAI The' American develepmen; of

It neW 155'1l1ID gun to replace the French M1917 began in l~20 because the Westervel,t Board considered that a range ef 15,000 yards ought 10 be available if the gun Jiad efficient elcv<\_ti0ll.Two guns were built: the MI9'lO, which was It built-up gun of nickel teel, and the Ml920M l , a wire-wound gun (problil,bly (he last of that Lype ever developed in [he. USA). A plit-trail carriage giving 65 degree~ elevation was also designed, with !?rovt~iQn for rerneving the barrel. and transporting it ad a separate transporttrailer, The magic 25,000 yards was reached, and the design was closed clown and put to one side. The idea was revi ved in 1929 and allew gun, the T4, was begum, intended 1'0 be even more powerful. The Schneider breech of the M1917 and

MI92D was abandoned.

and a new ASbury-type

mechanism, using a side lever, wa designed. It went through various test.'>and modlfiearlons, emerging as the T4E2 and was standardized as the M I in 1938. At the-same time. a cornpletely new carriage, the T5. was developed, This was a masterpiece by any standards. It was a split-trail pattern, wirh the: front end carried on a four dual-wheel bogie attached to the carriage body by two enormous screwed rods. Above this was a traversing top carriage carrying the cradle, recail system and gun, trunnioned well batk, and balanced by two hydro-pneurnatic cylinders, which ran . _ . . .. from the top of the top' carriage te ~nppor.t the cradle, The j 5)rrrm GUll Ml Gl maximut« etevauon The trail ends were carried on a two-wheeled limber. On going .int€! action, the Ii I11ber. \',1,1$ removed, and the trai I legs spread, 11:01e8were dug and the spades dropped in and pinned to the trail Iegs, Then, four men with two huge ratehet spanners tu.n1fl;d tL1escrewed reds unril the carriage rested on the ground, and the wheels were suspended in the ail'. For travelling. the gun Gould be disconnecte'.d from the recoil system and pulled back in the cradle .. tJ16 breech bei.ns 810]pported O.1iI the trail. by.an A-frame. This way, the weight was shared between the limber and gun wheels and the barrel was-supported, S9 that it dld Bot vi.brate unduly while en the move. DATA

Callhre
Weight of gun and breech Total weight iii action Barrel length Rifli'ng Recoil system and length Breech mechanism Elevation

155mm (6. J Dill) 9,5951b (4,3S2kg) 3Q,oOOl b l13, &80kg) 290il1 (7.366m) 48 grooves, right-hand twist, ORe tum in 25 calibres Hydro-pneumatic. variable 35 to 65i:n (889 to l65cm)

Traverse
Shell weight Muzzle velocity

Asbury wi.th Wel.in SOFGW, percussion firing - 1 degrees 401 (0 + 63 degrees 20' 30 degrees e1Lb~rside 01' zere
94,711b (42.96kg) 2,800ftls<;lC (853m/sec) 25,395 yards (23,22:,[ 111)
HE; HEI.A.P;Chel11ical

Maximum range

Types of projemile available

78

Medium and Heavy Artillery

British gunners in Italy prepare to fire a } 55mm so» M I. The gun-layer for line, standing on the [mil leg, is waitingfor the gun-layerfor elevation, on the other side of the gun. rofinisk elevating. Two loaders stand by with the next shell on the loading tray

The Sin Howitzer MI distributed to annie" all round the world. Many are till in use today, Some have newer and longer barrels to give more range, but many are exactly as they were made in 1941. In the US Army the M 1 was re-de 'ignated MJ 14 at. ome time in the 1960 , and is . till in wide Lise. The next First World War design to be overhauled was the Sin howitzer. The US Army had obtained a number of these from the British to equip their troops in France. Some had. been manufactured in the USA, so the manufacturer wer imply told to keep at it after they fini hed the British contract and make more for American u e. The American

Four men on ratchet spanner lowering [he carriage and lifting the wheels off the ground to bring {heir 155111111. gun into action

79

Medium lind Heavy Artillery

with a J 55111111 gun Oil 1I •. somewhere in the South Pacific ill 1944. The carriage sirs 0/1 a central pivot, and the trail ends ride on the circular rail so that the gun can be rapidly traversed tofire against ships (but not at thts elevation. oj course)

US gunners

'Kelly

MOII/7/'

ended

the

war

with

three different

marks

of

h witzer made ill either country.

During lhel920s. the older designs were scrapped. but a few or the final mark (Mark 8~) were retained into the Second World War years as

Work on a new design began in 1919, resulting in 11 split-trail weapon with a range of 18.700 yards (17,l55111) with 11 200Ib (9.lkg) shell, but the project was closed down in 1921 for the usual financial reason. It was revived in 1927.

traming weapons.

The /55111111 1)(II1'it~er M 1918

1I-1I.\'

a French

First World !M:II' design. which. by 1939. had been given pneumatic

ryres

80

Medium and HeavyArtillery

The 155111111 owitzer M J was (Ill entirety new h design, with split trail and spring balancing gear

the intention being to provide a 'partner piece' for the ISSmm gun - a howitzer barrel that would fit on the same mounting. Desultory work continued through the 19308 and the final design was standardized as the SinHowitzer M 1 in 1940.. Apart Irorn the length of barrel, the result of this worklooked .Ill. t Iike the M I gun, and even used the . arne breech mechanism. However. the inter-

changeability of the two barrels was not as easy as it might have seemed: it was not simply a case of disconnecting the barrel from the recoil system, removing it and replacing it with the other barrel. The different. weight, recoil force and balance meant that the entire top carriage had to be lifted off and the springs beneath the traversing ring changed; the pressure in the pneumatic equilibrators which

The Bin howitzer M I shared the came carriage witt: th« J 551"1"1111 barrel

gUll

M I: the only obvious chB"el'ence is the shorter

81

Medium and Heavy Artillery

E.o ...

'~.I,.f ,010> ""'~ Ii~...-I!J!I'I'

', ..... ,." W .....

~~;o,

.Mltl~.
hT M .....

r...

c..,.,.1.p ,..
...

CurS.".

~ MIt"&'

, I•• r..,r'

r., ""110"

The 240mm howitzer M1918 has an elderly look about it; the wheel 011 the barrel. the 'prongs' slicking out alongside the recoil system, and the winch drum 011 thefront are all part of the apparatusforputring the gun together by means of winches. The inset picture shows the mounting being lifted from its transport wagon

Tit 240mm M1918 on it. modernized

11'(lI1SpOrl wagons

771ejil'SI design of240!l1/11lw\Vil~er MI, showing how the gun was to be carried on a semi-trailer

82

Medium and Heavy Artillery

Thefirst model 240mm howitzer emplaced, showing the original carriage design with 'he semi-trailer connection as the front and the four-wheeled limber off to aile side

balanced the muzzle weight had to be changed, and the nitrogen pressure in ide the recuperator had to be adju ted. Ir was. in other words, a work hop job. and not one that could be done in half an hour with a hammer. The Ml (and its modification, the M2, which differed only in the method of attaching the breech ring) was widely u ed during and after [he war. 11 wa taken out of US first-line service some time in tbe 19808, but j still used by several other countries. It fired a 20mb (91.kg) shell to a maximum range of 18,500 yards (l6,970m).

When they entered the war, the Americans looked this 28cm weapon over in their earch for a heavy howitzer, but preferred a calibre of24cl1l.1l1ey a ked Schneider LO modify the Ru ian de ign accordingly. The design was drawn up, and arrangements were made to have the gun and mounting built in the USA. American officers and engineers were attached to Schneider to learn the technique , and Schneider later. ent engineers to the USA to help in setting up the production facilities. No less than 2,627 howitzers and 1,2J4 mountings were ordered, with production to commence early in 1918. The technical production problems were enormous, not least the manufacture of the hydro-pneumatic recoil ystem, and by the end of 1918 only one complete equipment had been built. The end of the war iaw the contracts drast ically curtailed, and in the end only 330 complete equipments were built. Even thi was slow; the Or L equipment was, ent to a proving round to be tested and blew up at the first shot, and it took a long time before production of a reliable howitzer was able to begin. The '1l918 was a ponderous weapon which, like most of it contemporaries, travelled in several pieces, and had to be laboriously assembled by means of hoists and ropes at the firing point. It fired a 3451b

The 2401lllll Howitzer

The last wartime design to require attention wa Ole 240mm howitzer. The M1918 de ign had been

purcha: ed from Schneider in France and had a peculiar hi tory. In the Russo-Japanese War, the Japane e put 28cm howitzers into the field 1 bauer the defences of Port Arthur. The Russians decided that a . imi lar weapon might be useful should they ever decide to wage war in Europe, ince wherever they moved they
would be faced with fortresse . 111ey asked chneider for a 28cm howitzer. The de. ign wa. finally approved in 1911, several were deli vered to Russia, and some were later built for the French Army in 1914-18.

(156.8kg)

shell to a range of

16,400

yards

CI5,045m),

83

Medium and Heavy Artillery

240DlmHowUzer

Ml on Carriage Ml

The US Alimy decided that a 240mm (9.45in) howitzer w01:11d useful, bought a design from France in I ~ 18, be built 330 of them and lived to regret it. It wasa poor design. end genin.g it to work properly ate up far too much ofthe slender budget in rhe 1920s. It Wi1~freely admitted tl'ml the only real solutum would be to scrap tile design and start again, bUI that was an unattainable dream. In ~934, there was a proposal to develop an improved carriage, mote suitalrle for high-speed towing, but this came to nothing. In 1939, the financial climate was improving and 1.11<: drawings were brought our and. studied, torn up. and a completely new equipment was designed. The howitzer itself was a stralghtforward enough design u$ing a SGTeW breech with a dropping block balanced by spriogs, and more or less based. UpOt1 thel6in gtlll breech. The mounting was to be'a massive split-trail affair, which was-to have the trail ends carried 01;1 a four-wheeled limber, and Lhe fI;0111 end curved up and forwards. so that it would hook. on to a tractor in the Same manner as a commercial articulated truck, The gun and its recoil system and cradle were to be earned as a separate lOlld on a semi-trailer hooked LO another tractor. However. it seems that the cross-country performance ef thi!; was Dot satisfactory, and the design WaS changed. doing away with the [railer connection and carrying the mounting on another six-wheeled trailer. Towing was done by the Tractor; High-Speed, 38-10n M6 or, later, by various redundant tanks with their tUrrets removed. Oil arrival at the firing point. the maunting was slid. from its trailer by winches on the tractors, the trails opened part-way, the barrel trailer winched up the trails, and the barrel unit winched off the trailer and (1) to the rnounting.Jt was a 10l'1g,hard job, also involving the digging (ill' a masslve pit between the trail legs to allow the breech to recoil at high elevations. The design was standardized as the 240mm howitzer M 1 in May 1941 .. and shortly afterwards a 20-tOl~ motorized crane was auaehed LO each guo bauery. TIllS Lowed a small trailer with It clamshell bucket, whish was used to dig the pit. The crane lifted the meunring over the pit and positioned it, lifted the spades into the pit" then lllted tb:e gun off its trailer and placed iL On 10 the mounting. This reduced the ernp.acernent time trern about eight hours to about 11'10, and wasmuch less exhausting. DATA Calibre We.ight of gun and breech Total weight ill action Barrel length Rifling 240mm (9.45in) 25,26J.1b (11. ,458kg) 64,7001b (29,348kg) 33J in(8.407m) 68 grooves. light-hand twis; . one (urn in 2S calibres Hydre-pneumatic, constant, 56in (14'2cm) Interrupted screw, drop block, percussion firing + 15 degrees to + 65 degrees 22.5 degrees either side of zero 360tb (163.Jkg~ 2,300fl/sec (701 rn/sec) ~S,225 yards (23,065m)

Recoil system [mellength

Breech mechanism Elevation Traverse Shell weighl 1\1luzz[e velocity

Maximum range
Types of projectile available

HBonly

84

Medium and Heavv A nillerv. .

240mm Howitzer Ml on Carrtage M I continued Thefinal. standardized, 24()mm ho.wil~er M I. No. spades are jilEed here. a« it is VII a concrete
gunpark. The curved rail between If te trall legs is 10 rest the real' end of a loading tray Gil. the front end

resting in 'he breech

but it was not considered to be as accurate as had been hoped, and it range was disappoiruing. In 1924-25. a long and exhaustive eries of trial Jed to the conclusion that lhe only proper remedy would be to scrap the equipment and de ign something better; with 330 brand-new howitzers in stock, however, Lhis was hardly practical. I..n 1934. an interim solution was proposed -lhe design of an improved carriage, better suited lO high-speed towing. However, although this would improve manoeuvre.

May 1943, and was a fir t-ela s weapon. [t saw a deal of 1I e in the Italian campaign in 1943-45, and it was LO remain in use in the Briti: h and US Armie: unti I the late 1950s, when the warti me stock of ammunition was finally expended. The howitzer fired a 360lb (163.6kg) shell l.0 a

great

range of 25,225 yards (23,140111) with commendable accuracy .. In late 1944, there wa: an intere ting propo aJ to fit the carriage with tracked and pull the barrel back, di connected from the recoil system, so (1 [0 di tribute the weight. This would allow the howitzer to be moved suspension in one piece, by a uitably powerful tractor, for short tactical eli placement. Thi idea wa followed by a suggestion for a 240mm gun as a

balli: tic shortcomings,

it would do nothing for the and that idea was quietly

dropped. It was brought out again in 1939 and, after a great deal of di cussion, in April 1940, the decision to design a completely fresh weapon The 240mm Howitzer M I wa was taken.

irandardized

in

The 240111111 1IIOIIIIIing all irs transport wagon

85

Medium and Heavy Anillery

The 38-[oll High Speed Tractor M6. used/or towing the 240111/1/
how iller and Sin gllll

Loading the 240m.m howitzer; the bag charge i. beinu pushed lip the loading tray and into the chamber

'partner piece', with a range of 45,000 yard. (41,280m). Thi gun would be 70 calibres long (just over 55ft. or about 17m), and it was felt that it might be easier to design the carriage so that it could be slung between two tractors. one at each end, making the gun more manoeuvrable. The war ended and th projectwa dropped. but it i: intere ring to note that the 28Qmm M65 'Atomic Cannon' of the 19508

adopted the very arne idea. The 8in Gun MI Only one American heavy equipment did not have a Fir t World War ancestor. The 8in gun MJ wa developed in re ponse LO the demand in the Westervelt Report for a heavy gun of about Sin.

86

Medium and Heavy Artillery

The 240mlll Howitzer M J made irs last appearance ill Korea. Here is the gun of the 2 J 3th FA battalion, 45th infantry Division, north of Yang-gll in 1953

(a) The Bin gun MJ barre! arriving on its transport wagon; the 20-ton Lorain crane in the background would have lifted it ofr

87

Medium and Heavy Artillery

(b) Another location, but {he next stage in the assembty ofthe Bin gUll. as the barrel is carefull» lowered into place. Four lugs Oil the cradle have to mate with jour bolts on (he carriage. requiring a deli touch by the crane operator QI'I(I the men all the grdding rope

(c) The a isembly continues, witlt everybodv holding their breath. The Jour VOilS were allow .lin in diameter; and mils were run down
and tigluened once (he barre! unit \Vas ill

place. Thai W(IS all that transferred the recoil stiockfrotn the cradle to the mounting

88

Medium

and Heavy Artillery

(d) Tile [inul result: the Sin gl/II i\lf./ in position. The lank beneath the barrel Ivas the nitrogen pressure tankfor tlie barrelbalancing apparatus; the roller above it was part ofthe machinery for assembling the gun to tli« carriage by means o] winches, when I/O crane was available

firing to about 35,000 yards (32.ll Om). Some work had been done on the idea in t 920, largely aimed at adapting the coast-defence Sin gun, currently being used on a railway mounting, to a road-mobile weapon. However. this 32.-calibre gun, with a maximum range of about 24,000 yards (22,02.0m), came nowhere near the Westervelt demand. so the project was dropped in 1924. l.n 1939, the suggestion WaS made to develop a

rough country. Even so, it was put to good use; the US

Ist Army in Europe had nine guns, which between them fired J 8,935 rounds between

D-Day

and VE Day.

RUSSIA
The 203mm Howitzer lVIodel1931
The heavy artillery in use by the Soviet Army in 1939-45 is really limited to the 152111m group weapons. Very little is known about Second World

really powerful new Sin gun as a partner piece for the 240mm howitzer. to fit on the same mounting. Work on this began in June 1940, and resulted in the 8in Gun T2. Its maximum range of 33.500 yards (30,735m) fell slightly short of the original demand, but was deemed close enough. The new gun was 50 calibres long, and had a muzzle velocity of some 2,800 feet per second, and this led to problems with excessive bore wear and a lack of accuracy. Various modifications were tried: the T2El used the British Probert rifling system, with 11 shell having a forward centring band as well as a normal driving band; the T2E2 hat! a different rifling twist; the T2E3 had a chromium-plated bore; the T2E4 had Probert rifling chromium-plated; the T2E5 used pre-engraved projectiles. None of them showed any superiority over the original T2 design and eventually. in January [944, this was standardized as the MI. It was appreciated thati t was not entirely satisfactory but, since nothing better seemed likely to appear, the 1'2 was accepted. Comparatively few were made, since practical use also revealed that the long gun barrel was unstable on its transport trailer over

or

War Russian heavier artillery, and the only equipment of thi kind seen in wartime pictures is the 203mm Howitzer Model 1931. In spite its title, the Howitzer Model 1931 was not introduced into service until 1934, and it. subsequently went through about six minor

or

modifications

before

the final

design

wa: settled,

probably in J938-39. It was a perfectly conventional Sin howitzer, mounted on a box-trail carriage allowing 4 degrees of traverse on either side of zero, and 60 degrees of elevation; this allowed it to fire a 220lb (I OOkg) shell to a maximum range of 19.700 yards (18,075111). Once the design had been perfected, three variations appeared. The first production had two large wheels on the carriage, with a small-wheeled limber supporti ng the trai I ends. The next type, few of which seem to have been produced, had small wheels on both carriage and limber; and the final and most. common model used a tracked suspension unit on the carriage and a large-wheeledlimber. The

S9

Medium and Heavv Artiller»

The Soviet 203mm howitzer on its unique tracked carriage

Rear

pieHl

of the So vier 20311111'1 howir:;.el; displayed at Aberdeen Proving

Ground, USA

90

Medium and Heavy Arrillery

tracked standard

II pen ion y. tern closely Soviet tracked agricultural

resembled the tractor of the the same

period in its design; one L1PpO es that production line was responsible for both.

with many features that were to become Schneider trademarks such as the screw breech, a hellretaining clip in the chamber, and advanced sights. It was moved in two parts, the barrel on a I'ourwheeled wagon and the carriage on it own two wheel and a limber. This made two hor e loads, but in later year, when tractors became available, it was common to pull both load behind one tractor. This was now taken and modified: the carriage wa given. mailer wheels, the elevation reduced to a maximum of37 degree instead of 40. and the ammunition improved to increase the range from 12400111 (13,515 yard. ) to 17.1 OOm (18,640 yards). It remained. though, a two-part load and, after considering the matter, the de igner went back and tried again. This time, they crapped the original carriage and produced a . plit-trail pattern: the gun was mounted further forward and given twin spring equi Iibrators to balance the muzzle weight, and the gun could be pulled back for transport in one piece. This became the M191O/34; the elevation now increased to 45 degrees, there were 29 degree of traver e each the charge was reduced in order to force, so U13t the maximum range to l6,200m (17,660 yards). This sound design, and production replacing the M 1910/30. ide of zero and reduce the recoil dropped lightly seemed to be a began in 1934,

Other Iodels
Some reports mention a 21clTl Gun Model 39/40. but it seems that this wa actually a German weapon, the 21 em K39/40 which had been captured on the Ea: tern Front in mall numbers. It fired a 300lb (136kg) shell to a range of 33,270 yards (30,S20m). Similarly, the 28cm Howitzer MJ 939 and the 30.Scm Howitzer M39/40 were probably Poli 11 or Czech weapon . either taken in Poland in 1939 or captured from the Germans on the Ea. tern Front. one aw much employment. Generally, it ieems that the So iet Army was content with its 152nml armoury, which produced aJl the firepower ir required and was mobile enough to keep up with the action. Heavier weapons might have their us es but their slowness in deployment wa a drawback, and their production time meant fewer weapon reaching tile troop; in the lime taken make these heavy weapons, a larger number of 152mm guns could be turned out, Also, in the 'Storrnovik' ground-attack aircraft, the Russians bad the replacement for heavy artillery that had been promised to other armies, but which rarely ill peared.

to

The 152mm Gun M1935 The 152 nun Model 1910 Gun
The 152mm ?TOUP ~ consisting howitzers - represented the major the supporting artillery strength of guns and component of in all their The army wa: or the opinion, however, that more range could be achieved in rhi: calibre, and in the following year a completely new de ign appeared. Thi eern to have been developed in concert with the 203mm howitzer, ince it used the same boxtrail carriage with tracked su pen ion. Thi restricted the amount of traver e, cutting it clown to 4 degrees each, ide, but the elevation went up to 60 degree. The gun wa 50 calibre long and could fire a 45kg 'hell at 880m/sec to reach a maximum range of 27,000m (29400 yards). Thi: went into service a. the 152mm Gun MI 935. Thi was very good performance but at a price: the equipment weighed 19 tons behind the tractor, and 18 ton' in

operation .. The cal ibre (6in) dates back to the 1870s in Ru ian er ice, and had featured in the major re-equipment programme which took place pri r to 1914. When ..in the 1930 , the time came to look at thi group or weapon, the Fir t move wa familiar: find the be t urvi ing 152mm weapon, and bring it up to date a an interim measure, The re ult was the Model 1910/30 gun. The Model 1910 gun had been designed by Schneider of France; it was advanced for it. day,

91

Medium and Heal'." Artiller»

the firing position, which was about 10 tons heavier than the M1910/34 quipment. A a result. it was only built in relati ely small numbers, and the de. igner had to go back to try again. The 152mm Gun-Howitzer Model 1934

Meanwhile. another 152ml11 gun bad appeared from another design bureau; this design \ as intended as a partner piece for the same carriage a' used with the 122mm gun M31. This took the barrel of the M 191 0 and added a 'pepperpot' muzzle brake to reduce the recoil to a I·vel the lighter carriage could. land. The carriage was a two-wheeled pi i t-irail pattern. with spring equilibrator horns in front of the shield - now ornething of a Rus ian trademark - and the trail ends supported on a two-wheeled limber for towing. It fired a 43.5kg hell to 17.600m (19.185 yards), and entered ervice as the 152mm GunHowitzer Model 1934; it was called a gun-howitzer becau e it was provided with everal charge wiles. the topmost of which gave it a vel city of 655111/sec, allowing it to produce a gun-like trajectory. while the smaller charges ga e it a howitzer capabi lity. The 152mm Gun-Howitzer M 1937

elevation. This duly appeared as the 152mm GunHowitzer M 1937. which got its title from being 30 calibres long. and having a maximum elevation of 65 degrees and twelve charge zones. At top charge it performed as a gun, with a maximum range of 17,265m (18,820 yards) with a 43.5kg shell: it also had an armour-piercing shell, which could go through I 25m111 of armour at .I ,000m (1,090 yard) range. Thi performance was rather a urprise for 1937. and the twelve Charges gave it a bewildering choice of trajectorie , all wing it to drop hells behind cover at virtually any range. It:h ugh the maximum range was about a kilometre less than that ofthe M1935 gun. it ver atility and its weight - only 7 ton - more than compen ated for that and it became the principal heavy weapon or the Soviet rmy. ln POSI-\ ar year it was generously handed out to the Warsaw Pact and other countries, and many are till in existence. The 1520101 Howitzer M1938 In the following year, the 152mmI-IowitzerM1938 appeared. Thi was a lighter and handier weapon than the gun-howitzers, but it threw a 51kg shell to 12.400 yards (I .1 ,375m). and was no more than 4. I tone in weight. It was al: 0 a great deal easier and cheaper to produce than the larger 152mm weapon'; the carriage wa that of the 122mm 11938 howitzer. a .plit-trail with shield and

Thi was reasonably well received. but the army thought it could be improved by bei ng gi en more

Loading the Soviet 152111111 gun-howitzer MJ937

92.

Medium and Heavy Artillerv. .

The Soviet 152mfll gun/ln. wttzer /III 1937 ill travelling mode. with [he barrel disconnected [rom the recoil system and pulled back so as distribute the weight between the wheels

10

WI

The Soviet 15211l1ll/wlIIil::.er /III 1938. esseutial!» enlarged 122/1/1/1 design

rubber-tyred wheel, and the barrel wa: carrie I on the usual type of trough cradle.

The 152111111 Howitzer

I1943

With this varied armoury in production, the Rust ian entered the war and, rather than interfere with production by ordering new de. igns, they wi ely rayed with what they knew. and produced them by the thousand. Howe er, U1e tre sand strain. or war oon told on the M1938 howitzer: putting a 152mm barrel on the light r carriag had over-stressed it, and by 1942 there wa an urgent need to replace it with a better and stronger design.

The carriage wa re-de igned in a .rronger form: the howitzer was given a large double-barrie muzzle brake, and the recoi I system was changed, so that the barrel now moved in a ring cradle, with the recuperator and buffer cylinders above and below the barrel. The weight came down to 3.5 tons but the equipment was Far more reliable, and it went iruo service a the 152mm howitzer M 1943. It reliability ha: been well proven: it served through ut the war, is sti II in Russian r serve and traini ng cstabl ishrneru . and is in fir, t-Ime service with a dozen or more annie around the world, from Chile to Mongol ia.

93

Anti-Aircraft Artillery

DEFENCE AGAINST THE BOMBER

In the j 9305, the prospect of war meant ooly one thing for most people; the prospect of fleets of ai rcraft raining down bombs. and particularly gas bombs. As a result, the defence again. t aircraft hac! a high priority when it came to political rhetoric, although rather less of a priority when it came to di tributing money and actually can tructing some form of defence. When Prime Mini tel' Stanley Baldwin toad up in the Hou e of Commons in overnber 1932 and aid, 'I think it i well for the man in the street to realize that there 1 110 power on earth that can prevent him from being bombed. Whatever people may tell him, the bomber will always get through ... ' he was simply telling the truth as it stood at that moment. Detection The only defence again t bomber. was exactly what it hac! beeni n 1918: a combination of guns on the ground, and standing patrols of aircraft in the sky covering the likely approach routes. At the time, the number of guns defending Britain wa. probably les than a hundred, many lacking pare parts, while the fighter trength of the RAF wa insufficient to permit standing patrol to be flown for more than a few day, . The only method of detecting aircraft wa either by eye, relying upon (he Observer Corps and other alerting organization, or by sound, relying upon huge concrete ' ound mirror' erected in likely places (Romney Marshes, the Thames Estuary, the Yorkshire moors). The e were supposed to collect the sound of approaching

aircraft engine, reflect it into a microphone and del ivel' it to an operator. Other decis ions were being taken, and factories began to recei ve orders for aircraft and guns. The order. were based upon a gradual increa e in strength, which would put 136 guns and 1,008 earchlights in place by March 1940 and 464 gun and 2,400 light. by 1946. Fighter aircraft strength would increa e to twenty-five squadrons over the arne period. Most significantly. the orientation of the defence .. hifted from a po ible French threat to a probable German threat. This meant that most of the sound mirrors were in the wrong place. and were redundant. They could be forgotten, but for the fact that to scrap them would have pointed towards the fact that something else wasjn u e. They were left ill place, therefore, and one or lwo new one were actually built facing Germany. to keep up the pretence. Radar At about the same time. a miracle happened: RDF, or Radio Direction Finding, was invented, later called 'Radar': The RDF name was u ed as a cover; radio direction finding had been in use since the earliest days of radio, so anybody who heard about RDF as umed it wa just a new and improved method of applying the old prin iples. Mo. r people did not hear much about it at all. Similar idea, had occurred to cienri t in other countrie . Late in 1935, the German' had carried out experiment', and in 1936 i sued a contract for their first early-warning radar el. The US Army and US Navy had also. by this time, developed

94

Anti-Aircraft Artillery

experimental radar sets, while the French were working on a maritime radar for providing early warning of icebergs, This work was soon directed towards air defence, The significant difference was that the British developed a coherent defen ive system of radars, observers, communications and control rooms which ensured that the information which was extracted was sent to the place where it would do the most good, Other countries merely had radar sets. The Power ofthe Bomber Events in Abyssinia, and the Spanish Civil War pointed to the po sible power of the bomber, Unfortunately, most of the 'eye-witness' reports were exaggerated, particularly from Spain, where reports were issued via the appropriate political propaganda machine. so that what finally appeared in the newspapers was calculated to frighten rather than to inform. However, it did concentrate the mind on the threat, and provided the stimulus, without which the development of radar and other defensive measures might have been smothered by committees,

a high rate of fire, lO gel as many rounds off as possible in the short lime during which the target wa within range, Hitherto, the bomber had been the only target considered, and the existing guns had been developed with it in mind, Now, it seemed, lighter guns were going to be needed to deal with the low-flyers,

OERLIKON AND BOFORS

These requirements opened the door for two enterprising armaments firms in neutral countries to make their names known across the world. The Oerlikon Machine Tool Company of Zurich had, in the I 920s, acquired the patents for a 20mm automatic gun, designed by a German engineer named Becker during the First World War. They then perfected the design and promoted it as a light anti-aircraft cannon, selling it to several countries. The Oerlikon gun was . imply an overgrown machine gun, firing small shells filled with high explosive, or solid piercing shot, at abut 500-600 rounds per minute, and it was to prove a useful deterrent against the low-flyer. The second contender in the light-gun field was the Swedish company Bofors AB. They had been in the armaments business for many years, providing field- and coast-defence artillery to several countries, but without achieving much fame, In 1929, [hey developed a light anti-aircraft gun of 40mm (2.244il1) calibre. which fired at the astonishing rate of120 rounds per minute. It soon found a market and was eventually adopted by virtually all the combatants during the Second World War.

THE BOMBER TARGETS

By 1936, it was apparent that defence against aircraft was becoming more complex. It seemed that modem designs of aircraft appeared every week, and everyone new faster Or higher than the one before. Moreover, the aircraft had very different characteristics - there was the high-flying bomber, the dive-bomber, the low-flying ground-attack machine, the fighter the transport - no one gun could hope to compete against every type of target. The gun to fight the high-flying bomber needed to be very powerful.jn order to 'throw the shell up to high altitude in the shortest possible time, On the other hand, the gun to fight the dl ve-bomber or ground-attack aircraft, moving low and fast, needed to be much more manoeuvrable - able to swing quickly, to track a fast-moving target. It also needed

FIRE CONTROL
A Three-Dimensional Problem

The most difficult problem in the '1930s was fire control, In the 1920s, work had begun on improving the 'central post instruments of the First World War, so as to provide a rapid answer to 'the antiaircraft problem'. The problem was simply how to

95

Anti-Aircraft Artillery

The British Jiil 20-ewE !:IlIJ1, which rayed ill service witl: the [ield armies for some time after the arrival of the 3.71118111"1S

put the shell and the aircraft in the same place at the same lime. The gunner wa confronted with a target moving at high speed and capable of moving in any direction except backwards. The shell took a certain time to reach the aircraft's altitude. The question was, where would the aircraft be when the shell got up there'? The answer to this question was based on one fundamental assumption: during the shell's flight, ihe aircraft would continue 011 the same course and at the same speed. This was not as unlikely as it might sound - the bomber could not hope to drop his bombs with any accuracy if he wa jinking all over the .ky, nor could he afford to waste fuel by performing aerobatic over enemy country. Based on this assumpti n, the problem became a imple mailer or three-dimensional geometry, provided ome figures were known. including the speed 01' the aircraft. the velocity of the 'hell, the wind speed and its direction, and so on. All these

could be mea. ured, but what was needed was a mechanical calculator, which would produce a faster an. wer than could be achieved with trigonomeuical tables. slide-rule. pencil and paper. Predictors The 'central post instrument' of the First World War was a simple geared telescope device, which allowed the observer to track the aircraft. by turning hand-wheels. These were coupled to electrical generators. so that the speed of tracki ng was reflected in a voltage: a meter could be calibrated to work out the target speed and height. Instrument makers. such as the Sperry Gyroscope company, now built on this idea. and developed instrument which could be set with the wind . peed, shell velocity and other factor .. Then, by tracking the aircraft, it was possible to calculate where the ai rcraft would be at the end of [he. hell's flight. and

One ofthefirst i.Zi» gUlls 10 leave the factory ill 1936. Tile contplexity lind expense oftlie design is apparent. For some rea SOli , the outriggers have not been fitted

96

Anfi-A ircraft Artillery

thus deduce a 'future position', to which the gun would be directed. The e in truments, known as 'predictors' in British service and 'directors' in American ervice, began as entirely mechanical devices. Gradually, they adopted more electrical features until, driven by the electronic revolution begun by radar, during the course of the war, they became entirely electronic. (However they did not in any way operate like a modern computer. In today's parlance, these were 'analogue.' devices, using or generating electrical currents and voltage that were proportional to the information they represented.) The next tage f development wa to apply the output of the predictor directly to the gun by wire, so that the elevation, azimuth and fuze .erting could be di played on dials, and acted upon. This wa relatively simple" and was in u e before J 930. The next step wa to make life a little easier for the gunlayer by adopting the 'follow-the-pointer' dial. This was a dial with two pointers, one actuated by the predictor the other actuated by operating the control of the gun. To direct the weapon in azimuth, for instance, the gun-layer had to watch the azimuth dial, and keep hi pointer can tantly over the predictor pointer by adju: ring the traver ing hand-wheel on tbe gun mounting. Thi system was in universal use by the late 1930,. Remote Power Operation The ultimate goal wa to fit the gun mounting with electric motors controlled by the signals from the predictor. A the predictor tracked the air raft, the gun would be tracking the future po ition without the gun-layer having to touch anything. All the gun' detachment had to do was throw arnrnuniti n into the breech as fast as they could and pull the firing lever. This 'Remote Power Operation' took much longer to achieve; actually driving a gun by remote control was not very difficult, but. driving it and achie in" the preci e position demanded for accurate gunfire was tar more complicated. The US Army had a power-operated 105mm gun workingin

1930, but it took another twelve years before it was working accurately enough to put. the shell where the predictor wanted it, and was reliable enough to meet the demand of field service.

AMMUNITION
The First World War aw a wide range of likely projectile tried as anti-aircraft shells: high explosi ve, shrapnel, and incendiary all had their day. The problem of developing a time fuze accurate enough to burst the shell reliably in the right area had taken mo 1 of the First World War to solve. Now, the guns were getting bigger and the ranges and altitudes greater, so the designs had to be re-worked. The ptirnum combination, it wa realized, would be a high-explosi ve shell fitted with an accurate clockwork time fuze. Design and producti n facilitie for rna s production of mechanical fuzes had to be assembled and put to work and that, of cour ie, meant money. Eventually everything fell into place, and by 1939 most countries had the equipment they required, in quality if not in quantity. Once the war had begun, production and development were both stepped up and, because the performance f aircraft improved, the gun bad to irnpr ve in order to rema i. n effecti ve.

BRITAIN
Between the Wars At the end of the First World War, the standard British A gun wa the 3in 20-cwt, mounted either on a four-wheeled trailer platform or on a motor 10lTY. There was also a large number of other gun, which had been developed during the war but which were almost immediately made bsolete, leaving the 3in a the sole air-defence weapon. nder development was a 3.6in gun of can iderable promise, but with the end of th war this work wa stopped and the design abandoned. even though it had been approved for. er ice. The AA artillery branch was gradually

97

Anti-Aircraft

Artillery

(-

~ -.,.

"

Y" r
\i _ Or

~ r.....
r

.--

J. :",
. J'"

1,,1\,

'

,'-

.r.

.~

The 3.7ill gun 011 [he static Mounting. Mark 2C with r!:'I11(1/1;' power control andfit:e setting

and ramming machine

The 3. 7ill glll'1 in the firing position: would normally be removed

the wheels

98

Anti-Aircraft Artillery

Ceilinzs run down until only a .ingle brigade \. as left, and there it remained for several years. Behind the cenes, however, some technical progress was made. A mechanical lime fuze was designed (copied from a captured German pecirnen), and a few were made for trial ; designs of AA gun were discussed, a predi l r wa. developed, data transrnissi n from predictor to gun wa perfe ted, height-finders, sound locat rs and other in trurnents were produced and tested. By [928, opinions 011 a new AA gun had etLied on 'a 3.7in gun firing a 25fb (11.35kg) shell with a ceiling of say, 28,000f(. Six years elapsed before finance was approved, then, in 1934, a pecificatiou wa given to Woolwich Arsenal and to Vicker Arm trong, reque ting design .. The Vicker' was s leered, and their first pilot model passed its acceptance tests in April 1936. Production began in April 1937, the fir t guns being issued to a service unit in January 1938 Thereafter. pr duction increa ed and continued until 1945, averaging a delivery rate of 228 guns per month over that period. form, the 3.7in Mark I gun fired a 281b (l2.75kg) high-explo ive shell filled with the 'Fuze, Time, No. 199' , a powder-burning fuze, to an effecti ve cei ling of 23 500ft. A short explanation f the meaning of the word 'c iling' might be appropriate here. An)' AA gun can have three different 'ceilings', and it i not alwa , clear which is being quoted in performance figures. In most ca. e. it i the 'maximum ceiling, the height which the projectile will reach if the gun is at its maximum. elevation and the time fuze is not operating. If the maximum is 25,000fl., this describes an arc in the sky 25,OOOft from the gun s trunnion: . A Don as the elevation moves 1'1'0111 the maximum, the ceiling drop, as the line of fire swings round this imaginary arc. In the late 1920s. the rna irnum Lime of flight of the hell wa go erned by the ti me fuze; once it reached its maximum time, it deronared the hell. Thi: point wa inevitably lower than t.he maximum ceiling, and was known a the 'operational ceiling. Again, this describes an arc in the sky at the gun's maximum elevation, an arc representing the end of

In its original

A 3.7il1 gun on the Mark 2 travelling carriage; there are small differences in the all/riggers, jacks and simplifications for ease of production

OIlier

99

Anti-Aircraft

A rfillfl~V

A closer l'iew ofthe breech area of the 3.7 on Mark 2C mounting, showing the [uze-sener/rammer with iTS loading Iray folded Olll!!'; and also me heavy counterweight, which stretched above and behind the breech. The square box (top centre) is tlie fuze-setting machine. and the semi-circutarplate all it is the switch that set the fure-setter and rammer in action

the fuze lime. As soon as the elevation the gun is changed, the operational ceiling drops. More impor ant is the 'effective ceiling'. which is generally defined as the height at which the gun will be able to fire a series of shells at a moving target. The precis e defi nition varied [rom time to Lime as target. gOL faster or flew higher in the late 1930s. t11 definition was 'that height at which a directly approaching target at 400mph can be

or

engaged for 20 . econds before the gun reaches 70 degrees elevation'. The maximum ceiling of the 3.7in gun was 4LOOOft C12.S00m), but, based on thi rule. the effective ceiling wa only 23,SOOft (7,J65111).The best that could be said was that it left plenty of room for expan ion, and this arrived fairly quickly in the hape of a mechanical time fuze which added another 1,100ft to the effective ceiling.

The 3. tin gun could also be used as a ground support gUll, with. a maximum range oj /5.800 yards. This is a Mark 2 mourning.firing in Italy in 1943

100

A nti-A ircraft Artillery

A 3.7in gun of th.e London defences in action in November 1940

The Predictor
The predictor was another limiting factor. Obviou ly in the design of predictor there had to be a et f limiting figure , defining the maximum altitude and peed of the proposed target. If the target chose to fly higher or fa ter, the predictor was unable to produce a ..ensible answ r. Once the enemy had aircraft exceeding the value: designed into the predictor, either the predictor had to be modified (by changing the variou cam and g ill in the largely mechanical devices), Or it had to be replaced by a better model with higher design

Fuze 208 (mechanical), thi went up t 24,600, which was a much as the predictor could handle. The arrival of Predictor No.2 rai ed the Fuze 208 figure t 25,300ft: there was then a modification of th predictor. which lifted it to 29,400l't- finally, the largely electronic predictor No. 11 brought. the figure to 32,OOOf"t. hroughout all the e change, the T ceiling for the Fuze 199 remained at 23,500" ince in [hat case the fuze-burning time of 30 ieconds was the limiting factor, The Fuze 208. on the other hand. had a running time of 43 seconds. which all wed ample room for the predicror. to catch up. MFS The gun was al 0 improved. Jn its original form, the fuzes were set by hand, using a 'fuze key' - rather

performance.
In the ca e of the 3.7in gun, thi progre sion can be charted. With the Predictor No. 1 and Fuze J 99 there was an effective ceiling of 23,500ft; with the

101

Anti-Aircraft Artillery

like a large ring The complete

desir d etting. This process

palmer - to turn the time ring to the took time and care. round, which weighed 50lb (22.6kg),

predicted

fuze

length

was

timed

from

firing

to

was then hand-loaded into the breech .. and the gun was fired manually. Thi limited the rate of fire to eight rounds per minute. In 1939 came the first 'Machine, Fuze Setting' (MFS). a box with a follow-the-p inter dial; the gunner et the machine pointer to match the pr dieter poi nter, and another gunner then entered the no e of the shell into a hole in the box: then, a mechanical key gripped the fuze and. et the ti me ring. The gunner then withdrew the round and loaded it. Improved model of MPS followed, until finally the MPS No. ] I appeared, in 1942; this was attached to the gun radle and consisted of a tray into which the loading gunner dropj ed the round. He hit a switch and the tray 1i fted and dropped tbe round into the loading tray; the round wac thru t forward, so that the fuze entered the s tter, W'iS set and then withdrew. and the loading tray swung across to position the round behind the breech. A rammer drove the round into the gun, the breech closed, the loading tray returned to the setting por ition, and the gun fired automatically. Meanwhile, the loader had dropped another round on the tray and hit the "witch, a that as .oon as the loading tray came back. the next round was dropped in and the fuze eUing began. Thisincreased the rate of fire to nineteen round per minute. Thi y tern offered a further benefit. With hand fuze-setting and loading, the time lag between setting the fuze and firing the gun - known as the 'dead time' - was variable, depending upon the stale of training of the gunners, and their physical condition. The speed they could achieve with the fir t round of an engagement wa higher than that achiev d three or four hour later during a long night f constant alerts and air raids. The IVIFS II, h wever. gave a con tant 'dead time' of 3.05 seconds for the first round, and 2.5 seconds for every subsequent round. The imp rtance of this lay in the business of prediction. When the fuze length was predicted. it had to include an allowance for the time taken between setting and firing, since the

target. If rhe actual time varied, the prediction was in error by the difference between the assumed 'dead lime' and the real time. With a fixed 'dead time', prediction became much more accurate, and there wa a ignificant improvement in the ratio of shells fired to hit, obtained.

Improving the 3.7in Gun

By 1941, overtaking the performance the performance

of
of the

aircraft was gun, and in

January of that year the War Office demanded a new design of gun capable of reaching up to 50,OOOft in 30 seconds, with the ability to fire three rounds and have the fourth in the chamber in 20 seconds. Pour possible solution were offered: an exi ting Na at 5.25in gun; the 5.25il1 gun wiLh the bore reduced to 4.5in, but with the chamber taking the 5.25in cartridge; the 5.25 reduced to 3.7in calibre; or the existing 4.5in AA gun reduced in bore to 3.7in. and using the existing 4.5in cartridge. After some debate, the 5.25in gun was cho en as the long-term solution. However, these were large and complex. gun, and the Royal Navy had first call on them so provision in sufficient numbers would be slow. As an 'interim solution', the 4.5in gun, linered down to 3.7in bore, would be adopted until enough 5.25in guns were available. An xperirnental gun was built and became the Mark 5. However. it was SOOIl obvious that a 4.5in cartridge behi nd a'" .7in shell ]JLI hed it out at such a velocity that the erosive wear was staggering, and the accuracy life very short. Such a gun in service would need a new barrel after every air raid.

The 3.7in Mark 6

t

this

crucial

Lime,

olonel

Proben

of

the

Armaments Research Department had ju t perfected a y tern of rifling that promised to solve the w ar problem. The gun wa rifled with groove, , which gradually became more shallow a' they went lip the gun bore until they disappeared altogether

about three calibres

back from the muzzle.

102

Ami-A ircraft Artillery

Ordnance, QF.

3.7iill

GUll

This, the British standard medium PiA gun from "1936 to the mid-196tL, was first proposed ill 1928. Specification were drawn up, and in J 934 orders were given to Woolwich AI', enat and to Vicke: [0 produce a solution, The Vickers design was accepted and went into production i 11 1937, the fir, l guns reaching unit in
January 1938. It wa an extremely

ad anced design for its rime; unlike every other AA gun. it had rudimentary ight intended solely for emergency u: e, receiving all its information electrically from th predictor and displaying it on dial. All the gun-layers had to do war La operate the gun controL so thatthe dial pointers were continuou: Iy matched, while the re t of the detachment loaded and fired. The original carriage was highly complex and. at 8 t ns, well over the specified weight, up erring tho. e who were used 10 the lighter and handier 3in gun. However. iQ performance put it ahead of any competition and it goon converted the doublers. The gun was CIM tautly improved during the war. Perhaps the greatest single improvement was the Molins fuse- euer/ramrner. an electrically operated unit that doubled the rate of fire, The mountings, both mobile and static, were simplified i:o the interest of faster and easier preductien, Remote power eonrrol came into use in 1944, and the combination of this, with the latest radars and predictor and the proximity fuze, gave the guns ,1'0 82 per cent. ucces .. rate against the V-I {lying bombs in 1944-45. The average number of shots fired for one V-I was about ISQ, a va t improvement on the 18,500 hots per aircraft downed in the night blitz of 1940, when radar wa in the teething, :age and powder-Filled Lime fuzes till standard. Even so, the Army looked ahead and a earl. a. January! 941. t forth ipccificarions for an improved gun. As de cribed el .cwhere, this resulted in what was, in effect, oI4.5-in gun with a 3.7-Ul barrel. known as the 3.7' ark 6 gun, It wa only ever used on. tatic mountings, since the. e [0 kjust over half the time to build as did mobile mouruing .and in any ca e t.be4.5in gUll was too big for arnobile mourning. In po i-waryear it formed the ba 'is of the la 1 AA gun e pproved for British ervice, called 'Longhand'. which wa. virtually a belt-fed 3.7in Mark 6 gun capable of firing at almost 80 rounds per minute.
f\ 3. tin Mal'k 6 gun. Note that

the plCllf"Ormis bt:Ilied down into

the emplacement and has rw

olltrigger,r; there was no mobile

version of th is gun

103