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