Mountain gun
The 7.5 cm GebirgsKanone 06 was a mountain gun built by Krupp that was used by several countries during the 1900s.
Background
During the late 1800s, Krupp became a major arms supplier and one of their better-selling product lines was mountain guns and Krupp sold 688 mountain guns to its customers before World War I. Many of its customers had mountainous borders which were sometimes ill-defined and often were in dispute.[3]
The problem that Krupp's engineers had to solve was there was often a lack of roads and rail lines in mountainous regions and only narrow rocky footpaths existed. The field artillery of the time was designed to be towed by horse teams over gravel roads and then manhandled into firing position. Which was hard enough to do on flat muddy ground but became even more difficult when there was a lack of roads. Traditional field artillery could usually be broken down into separate wagon loads with the barrel on one wagon towed by a horse team while a second horse team towed the carriage. However, there was the issue of the gun crew being unable to reassemble the guns due to a lack of oxygen, cold temperatures, and weighed down with thick clothing.[3]
What was needed was a gun that was light and could be broken down into multiple loads for transport by the gun crew and pack animals. Horses could carry more weight but were large and not always sure-footed. Mules were smaller, sure-footed, but were stubborn and carried less weight. After experimentation, it was found that if a gun could be broken down into multiple loads a mule was capable of carrying a 100 kg (220 lb) load and the gun crews were able to reassemble and manhandle the guns into position.[3]
However, the trade-off was mountain guns didn't stand up well to being towed when assembled due to their jointed designs. Also to keep weight down the guns were often small caliber with reduced propellant loads to reduce recoil and lacked range because their barrels were short to keep them light and portable.[3]
Design
The 7.5 cm GebirgsKanone 06 was a breech-loaded mountain gun built from steel with a box trail carriage, and two wooden-spoked steel-rimmed wheels. It also had a hydro-spring recoil mechanism, horizontal sliding-wedge breech, optional gun shield, and it fired separate loading cased charges and projectiles. It was the first Krupp mountain gun to have a recoil mechanism and its predecessor the 7.5 cm Gebirgskanone L/13 C/80 did not have one. For transport, the gun could be dismantled into four mule loads or towed when assembled. Since the gun was short the barrel sat on a dual-height cradle that gave -10° to +15° of elevation in its low setting and -10° to +25° in its high setting. Due to its limited elevation, it was a direct fire weapon meant to fire on troops in the open and the most common shell types were high-explosive, and shrapnel.[4]
German Empire
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