Landships II

In the past I promised to post pictures and info about Swiss artillery during early 20th. Please keep in mind most literature on the subject is written in German and my knowledge of the language is pretty much zero. So I will mostly focus on providing pictures and info on surviving guns, accompanied by basic historical notes.

If you would like to learn more about Swiss artillery in 19th and 20th centuries, I suggest you take a look at Henry Habegger's books available here:
http://www.armeemuseum.ch/index.php?id=29&L=1

I already posted about mountain artillery:
http://landships.activeboard.com/t56829249/swiss-mountain-artillery/

It's time to talk about 15 cm Schwere Haubitze 1916.

14 pieces of this gun were delivered in March 1916, another 42 followed between December 1916 and April 1917, for a total of 56 guns.

I always wondered why the Germans were willing to sell such precious guns at that stage of the WW I, but I have no factual knowledge about this topic.

Unlike the 12 cm and 7.5 cm guns, these weren't significantly upgraded during their service life and were later replaced by the 15 cm 1942 (a Bofors design build in Switzerland under license).

It's quite a rare model nowadays, I am aware of only 3 survivors:

One is stored at the Schaffausen Museum, who owns a great artillery collection:

Armeemuseum's collection in Thun is the most complete display, but it's not open to the public:

Full's Museum only received one in 2011, it's on loan from the Swiss Army:

You can see it on display:

In 2011 the Museum run a brilliant live demonstration:

Other notable collection of Swiss artillery, like the museums in Morges and Solothurn, don't own any 15 cm 1916.