Some years ago David Fletcher wrote an article in WHEELS & TRACKS No 58 on the various Gun Carrier designs of the Great War. Attached is a photoshopped consolidation of the sections on the Gun Carrier Mk II.
Curious. After coming so close to a really useful SPG with the Mk I, they suddenly opted for a design in which the gun points backward and would have to be unshipped and turned round before firing. The French were in the process of doing the same with with the Schneider CD2.
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My best guess would be they spun the tank around and pushed the gun out. The fact the gun is removable probably reflects the perceived reliability issues of early tanks if the tank breakdown then at least there is a usable gun.
Thank you Roger - the David Fletcher article clears up the Gun Carrier Mark II mystery - it's probably worth a new section in the Landships II article on the Gun Carrier
(adds to list....).
Helen, your argument is one of the many which was proposed at the end of WW1 and into the 1920s about the role of vehicles in moving artillery.
Opinons were split among a number of options and combinations of these - horse towing, wheeled towing, tracked towing and self-propelled guns.
I get the impression that the US Army Artillery would have been totally incapable of fighting after WW1 because the many factions in the artillery
officer corps could never have agreed on how to move the artillery. As it turned out the horsey faction won until it was realised in the 1930s that the US Army could
get into a 20th Century war with 18th Century technology - or, using Douglas MacArthur's phrase, the old guard just faded away.
FWIW, the French had a not dissimilar schism: whether to carry or tow artillery. Hence the vacillating over Renault porteur v Schneider CD v Schneider CD3.
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"Sometimes things that are not true are included in Wikipedia. While at first glance that may appear like a very great problem for Wikipedia, in reality is it not. In fact, it's a good thing." - Wikipedia.
I've seen the first pic before - it's in one of BT White's old books, and is also in an old thread from a couple of years ago (or more), but the Chamberlain & Ellis pic is new to me.
From the shape, with its similarity at the front to the Mk IX, I'm assuming it must be similar in size to the Mk IX; The Mk I carrier was 30ft long, the Mk IX APC 31ft 10in, so the Mk II can't be far off. Perhaps one of you knows how big that arty wheel is, for comparison?
I'm in agreement with Helen that the vehicle would be spun around before unloading the cargo - having the epicyclic steering gearboxes, there would no problem turning around, as old footage of Mks V, V**, and Medium C shows.
Okay, checked Landships II, there's a scale drawing of what looks like the right arty piece: wheel diameter about 5ft, that should help judge the size of the vehicle.
