WW1 period (~1900-1920s) experimental and small-known artillery (field, siege, AA)

[tom!]

Hi.

Some less known japanese guns:

Pre-WW1 but used at least until 1920:


Type Meiji 31 7,5 cm Mountain Gun. The Type Meiji 31 Field Gun was very similar but had a longer barrel (2,2 m instead of 1,05 m)


IJA Experimental 7,5 cm Mountain Gun from 1920


Type Meiji 41 7,5 cm Cavalry Gun with its screw-type breechblock.


Type Meiji 38 10 cm Field Gun


Type Meiji 38 12 cm Howitzer

Yours

tom!

 

[Bottleship]

Schneider artilllery, part 1:

 

[Bottleship]

Schneider artillery, part 2:

 

[Bottleship]

Schneider artillery, part 3:

 

[Bottleship]

Davis gun:



British 2-inch WW1 mortar images (from Waffen revue):

 

[Bottleship]

More Russian projects and proposals:
4.8-inch L/11 mountain and cavalry howitzer based on the 4.8-inch M1910 field howitzer
4.8-inch L/18 and L/20 howitzers - two experimental howitzers that were supposedly built at the Perm Plant, both based on the 4.8-inch M1910 howitzer, one with a Schneider/Putilov piston breech, the other with a Krupp wedge breech. I would guess that the muzzle velocity of the 4.8-inch shell (weight 23.3 kg / 57 Russian lb) would have been 1,400-1,500 fps (427-457 m/s). The long 4.8-inch howitzers were originally intended for fortress and siege artillery, but I think that if they had been produced, they would have replaced the 4.8-inch howitzers M1909 and M1910. Among the Russian 6-inch howitzers, the fortress and siege howitzer M1909 was much more common than the lighter and shorter-range field howitzer M1910 (for example, in 1914 the Russians had more than 500 M1909 and about 250-300 M1910), a similar situation was possible among the 4.8-inch howitzers.
4.2-inch gun L/35 - based on the design of the 4.2-inch gun M1910 L/28. Here everything is quite simple, in field artillery the Russians had a 4.2-inch gun M1910 L/28 and a 6-inch howitzer M1910 L/12, which weighed almost the same and were close in design, in siege artillery the Russians had a 6-inch M1909 L/14, and it would be logical to have a 4.2-inch gun of similar weight. Two guns were produced, which were used during the First World War. According to my estimates, the muzzle velocity of a 4.2-inch projectile of 1 pood (16.38 kg) from the L/35 gun should have been 2160 fps (658 mps).
9-inch howitzer on a mount of an 11-inch Schneider howitzer, it would be similar to the American 240-mm howitzer M1918. It was assumed that this howitzer would be manufactured at the Perm Artillery Plant. As far as I know, on the eve of the First World War, reconstruction of this plant was planned, including to increase productivity, but due to the outbreak of the war, this project was not implemented.
130-mm gun L/45 - the Russian military wanted such a weapon as a long-range one. According to my estimates, if they had implemented such a weapon, using the design of the 6-inch gun L/45, the weight of the barrel and breech would have been 240 poods (3931 kg), the weight of the projectile 2 poods (32.76 kg), the muzzle velocity 2500 fps (762 mps). Most likely, the Russians wanted to have an analogue of the German 135-mm gun K 09.
6-inch gun L/40-45 - a new gun for fortresses, which was to be installed in armored turrets, in terms of ballistics, it would apparently be between the 6-inch gun M1910 L/28 and the 6-inch gun L/45.
In addition, it was supposed to install naval guns in the fortresses - 120-mm guns L/45 and L/50, 130-mm guns L/55, 6-inch guns L/45 and L/50, 10-inch guns L/45.
In reality, at the beginning of the First World War, the Russians had virtually no modern heavy guns more powerful than the 6-inch howitzer M1909 and the 4.2-inch gun M1910, not counting 200 6-inch guns M1904. On the one hand, Russia was quickly catching up with Germany in 150/152-mm howitzers (840 sFH 02 for Germany versus 250-300 M1910 and 500+ M1909 for Russia), 105/107-mm guns (182 K 04 for Germany versus 150+ M1910 for Russia), on the other hand, it had no analogues in the army to the German 210-mm mortars, 135-mm guns, 305- and 420-mm howitzers. At the same time, which is rather strange to me, Germany made little use in 1914-1917 of the developments that Russia had ordered from it before the war. For example, it is known that the competitor of the 6-inch Schneider/Putilov L/28 gun was a similar Krupp gun, it is strange that during the war Germany did not launch mass production of such guns in a caliber of 150 mm, using the much weaker 150-mm howitzers sFH 02 and sFH 13. Also, as far as I remember, Krupp offered the Russians a 9-inch howitzer with a range of about 10 kilometers, the Russians refused - but why did Germany not produce this howitzer in a caliber of 220-240 mm?

 

[Bottleship]

Does anyone have any information on the British 32 pounder 4 inch field gun project?

 

[Bottleship]

Erhard (or Ehrhardt) 280 mm L/12 howitzer, weight 11 466 kg, "height of line of fire" 1685 mm, recoil lenght 880 mm (on 59°), elevation from +20 to +60°, traverse 10°, shell weight 344 kg, muzzle velocity 256 mps, range 6018 m.




I don't know how many of these guns were produced in Germany. They were going to produce it in Russia, but the question of which plant should accept the order - Perm or St. Petersburg - was not resolved, and the issue of copyright for the gun design was also not resolved.

 

[Scott Kenny]

what

Here's the c&p from wiki

The concept of the railgun was first introduced by French inventor André Louis Octave Fauchon-Villeplée, who created a small working model in 1917 with the help of the Société anonyme des accumulateurs Tudor (now Tudor Batteries).[11][12] During World War I, the French Director of Inventions at the Ministry of Armaments, Jules-Louis Brenton, commissioned Fauchon-Villeplee to develop a 30-mm to 50-mm electric cannon on July 25, 1918, after delegates from the Commission des Inventions witnessed test trials of the working model in 1917. However, the project was abandoned once World War I ended later that year on November 11, 1918.[12] Fauchon-Villeplee filed for a US patent on 1 April 1919, which was issued in July 1922 as patent no. 1,421,435 "Electric Apparatus for Propelling Projectiles".[13] In his device, two parallel busbars are connected by the wings of a projectile, and the whole apparatus surrounded by a magnetic field. By passing current through busbars and projectile, a force is induced which propels the projectile along the bus-bars and into flight.[14]

In 1923, Russian scientist A. L. Korol’kov detailed his criticisms of Fauchon-Villeplee's design, arguing against some of the claims that Fauchon-Villeplee made about the advantages of his invention. Korol’kov eventually concluded that while the construction of a long-range electric gun was within the realm of possibility, the practical application of Fauchon-Villeplee's railgun was hindered by its enormous electric energy consumption and its need for a special electric generator of considerable capacity to power it.

I was expecting that to be a typo or something for a railway gun, not a Fleming Launcher!

 

[fortrena]

At the risk of going too far off topic, the following reference might be of interest...
Ian R. McNab (https://nps.edu/faculty-profiles/-/cv/ian.mcnab),"Early Electric Gun Research," ISEE Transactions on Magnetics, vol. 35, no. 1 (1999): 250–261