Landships II

You have a French Scheider 75mm Model 1906 or the Model1907 A.� This is not the famous French 75mm mle/1897 but is a much more rare model that was exported to several countries like Serbia and Bulgaria.� In that your example is in Australia it is likely that it was one of the many Scheider 75mm M 07 A guns that were captured by the Ottomans from the Serbian Army in the 1912 Balkans War.� These were re-used then by the Ottomans throughout their empire.� Most of the Australian and all Iraqi examples of this gun type have Serbian Markings.� It seems that some were also captured by the Austro-Hungarians in WW1 and may then have been handed over to the Ottomans to supplement the ones they had since 1912.

I have attached a few photogphs of the gun.

Marco also have a very good article about this gun type in Bulgarian service in WW1:

Schneider-Canet 75mm in Bulgarian Service

Hope this helps

R/

Ralph Lovett
Lovett Artillery








-- Edited by Ralph Lovett on Tuesday 23rd of November 2010 12:39:22 AM

" Captured " may not be the applicable term regarding these guns if we are to believe the French version claiming they were hijacked�while in route to delivery.�
These�guns were excellent weapon systems,� and certainly not inferior�to other nation's divisional�field pieces.�
As information the French government actively supported the arms industry fronted by Schneider-Canet in the Balkans,�which was in direct competition with Krupp.�� Solicitation of customers was supported by government guarantee of financial reimbursement to the industry.� Hence there is little evidence that Serbia,� whose primary national export was pigs,� paid for the sizable quantity of arms supplied by France.
Even Bulgaria was given the same lucrative arms pact with Schneider-Canet.

Krupp was doing pretty much the same thing with its arms sales. Krupp owned a bank which financed arms purchases at attractive rates. It's unlikely Turkey could have afforded to buy the 500 or so 75mm Krupp guns before WW1 without Krupp loans.

Regards,

Charlie


-- Edited by CharlieC on Wednesday 24th of November 2010 12:01:38 AM