Landships II

CharlieC · Legend

What's this then?

wayne · Colonel

Charlie,

The gun tube resembles a 155mm GPF. The platform-like thingie on the right side of the chassis resembles a Renault FB. So, the item might be a French SP mount? No idea what the wheel-like thing to the left of the gun tube is.

Wayne

Tanker · Field Marshal

Bonjour,

On artillery tractor Renault FP

The wheel is a winch.

Renault FP porteur 155 mm (01)-min.jpg

Renault FP porteur 155 mm (02)-min.jpg

Renault FP porteur 155 mm (03)-min.jpg

Très bonne journée - Michel

CharlieC · Legend

You guys are much too smart...

It is a modified 155mm GPF gun on a Renault FB/FP tractor.

There was a requirement issued early in 1918 to examine ways of improving mobility of the GPF gun.

Renault came up with two proposals:

1. Modify the existing FB/FP tractor with a large winch so the GPF gun could be carried on the deck. The trial vehicle

was obviously carrying a non-operational GPF - no spades. The stability of the Renault tractor with a GPF on the deck must have been

questionable since the GPF gun weighed around 11 tons.

2. Modify a GPF gun so that it could be installed to make an SPG (of sorts). The quoted description is from the Journal of Army Ordnance, Vol 2, pp.154-155, 1922

"Late in 1918 an experimental mount for the 155mm GPF gun was developed and one was built, by using a modified 10-ton Renault tractor with gear driven chain treads and a 110 hp airplane motor located in a housing on top of the platform. The mount was arranged to receive the top carriage, chassis, elevating and traversing mechanism of the wheel mount. In order to fire the gun it was shifted from its travelling position in the centre of the platform to the left-hand side of the same and pointed crosswise. Two large outriggers with spades were attached to the platform to stabilise the carriage and jacks were also provided to support the platform. This arrangement gave a field of fire of 60 degrees. The total weight of gun and mount was about 19 tons. The mount was considered as a makeshift and the tests indicated the necessity for many changes in its design, the most important of which were a longitudinal firing position with an opening in the platform for the recoil of the gun, provision for a 10-degree traverse of the gun and the location of the outriggers at the rear of the chassis. It was thought that with the modifications proposed the mount would be fairly satisfactory and the proposed changes were in progress at the end of the war."

I had known about the existence of a Renault GPF SPG but had never seen an image of the vehicle.

Regards,

Charlie

AN5843 · Sergeant

CharlieC wrote:
Anyone still alive out there - or has the CCP Virus offed the community?
Here's something to exercise your brain whilst being locked down/quarantined/self isolated.

More to exercise your brain? You mean you've already read through all the American Machinist articles? We're still here, but I don't have much new WWI information to post. I've been working on identifying Meyer's Konversations-Lexikon volumes from the Internet Archive, so that I know which section of the alphabet and which edition each volume is, but that's not particular to WWI.

In any case, that is a very interesting SP gun, I have not seen it before. It looks like it has a lot in common with the Canon de 194 GPF, and may well be a scaled-down version of that.

CharlieC · Legend

I've read the Machinist articles published on the forum. I don't know much about machining so much of the detail is wasted on me.

Here's another puzzle - what is it and while you're thinking about it - best guess on when and where?

Regards,

Charlie

AN5843 · Sergeant

The parts on the extreme left and right of the photo show a clear artillery spade, so those must be artillery trails of some kind (assuming the ones in the middle are on end, and don't have their spades attached). The trails are straight, so obviously no Schneider artillery with their curving triangular trails between the axle, spade, and trunnion. In fact almost every heavy gun prior to about 1890 had a tall curved trail to fire over parapets, so those are ruled out. It must therefore be a newer gun than that. The ones on the extreme right look like box trails, the ones in the middle have to be pole trails (no room for the breech to fit between the sides of the trail), and I can't tell what the ones on the left are. A box-like trail could be half of a split trail for a larger gun, but the only such big gun in WWI with a split trail was the 155 GPF, and it wouldn't have those diamond-like frames attached to it, and no split trail would have what must be an axle and trunnion attachment like that. So it must be a pole trail, and a straight and boxy one at that. That rules out just about every British gun (all box trails but the 18- and 13-pounders, which had tubular trails) and every Russian gun (all Schneider but the 3-inch m1902, which had a curved trail and no diamond-like frame).

Just about all howitzers, and apparently all heavier field guns had box or split trails, so it must be a light field gun. Late war guns also started to adopt box trails, if not split trails for greater elevation, so it must be a pre-WWI or very early-war gun (designed before the needs of greater elevation became apparent). Of those, the 13-pounder, 18-pounder, and 76 mm M1902 have already been ruled out. The Italian 75/27 modello 11 has a split trail. The 76 mm M1900 Russian gun, the Austro-Hungarian 8 cm FK M.5, 75 mm Schneider-Canet, Krupp 75 mm Model 1903, and American 3-inch M1902 have a box-like straight trail, but they all don't have that diamond-like frame attached to it.

That leaves only the Canon de 75, which does have some bracing that looks like that, so it must be trails for a Canon de 75. I don't know when it is, but must be later in the war, as it is unlikely early war production would be at such a level that so many trails could be under construction and in inventory at once.

-- Edited by AN5843 on Monday 11th of May 2020 03:21:06 AM

James H · Legend

All still here in the Mother Country, Charles.

And while we're on the subject-ish:

CharlieC · Legend

You're quite right the carriages are from 75mm M1897 guns.

I think the location is Aberdeen in the 1920s - the US Army had something more than 2,000 M1897s in storage between

the wars. They came from the ex-French guns returned with the AEF and the US production of the M1897 just after the war.

Many of the guns were still new having only been proof tested but never issued to a unit.

The US Army Ordnance Corps were still working on ways to utilise the M1897s well into the 1930s. The image came from an article

on the efficient warehousing of surplus artillery.

There's a caption opportunity in the Renault images - middle image right column... "Oi soldier - are you sure you're allowed to do that in public?"

Regards,

Charlie