The Quick-Firing Revolution
Edwardian Armies
Much has been made of the failure of the armies of the years leading up to World War I to full use of the machine gun. While much of the blame for that mistake can be laid at the feat of arm-of-service parochialism and lack of imagination - problems that plague the armies of today as much as those of ninety years ago - there is another, albeit partial, explanation for this fiasco. During the years when inventors, “merchants of death,” and a visionary officers were trying to interest the various war departments and ministries in the potential of machine guns, the attention of many other military professionals was firmly fixed on another new weapon, the quick-firing field gun.
Throughout the nineteenth century, field artillery had been improved by a slow-but-steady succession of minor upgrades. Advances in metallurgy meant that lighter guns and smaller shells could do the work previously done by heavy pieces and heavy projectiles. The replacement of black powder with smokeless powder made propellant charges more powerful, thereby increasing the speed with which shells flew through the air and the distances that they could travel. Fixed ammunition - putting the propellant in a metal cylinder and attaching the projectile to that cylinder before loading - combined with improved breech mechanisms to increase rates of fire by a factor of three or four.
Towards the end of the 19th century, these changes culminated in was a class of field guns that might best be described as “quick-loaders.” Seventy or more kilograms lighter than the weapons they replaced, quick-loaders could be drawn by the same six horse teams and were thus significantly more mobile than their predecessors. Their calibers were smaller (about 75mm against the previous norm of 87mm) but their ranges were greater (5,000 to 8,000 meters as opposed to a previous average of about 4,000). Where field guns of the previous generation could fire two or three rounds in a minute, the “quick-loaders” could, in the same time, put six, seven, or even eight shells into the air.
The one thing that kept quick-loaders from firing even faster was recoil. Every time a field piece was fired, the “equal and opposite reaction” to the propelling explosion caused it to jump back a few meters. This meant that, if any degree of accuracy was required, the gun had to be manhandled forward and re-aimed before it could be fired again. This, in most cases, took far more time than the simple process of loading the weapon.
As was the case with the automobile and the heavier-than-air flying machine, inventors and engineers in a number of countries set about solving the problem at approximately the same time. In Germany, the upstart firm of Heinrich Ehrhardt had offered quick-firing guns to the Kaiser’s gunners as early as 1896. In Russia, the Putilov factory was working on quick-firing guns of an entirely different design. The first country out of the gate, however, was France. In 1897, one short year after German batteries started to receive their model 1896 “quick-loading” gun, the French Army adopted a 75mm quick-firing field gun designed by a team of French ordnance officers.
Thanks largely to a “long recoil” mechanism, the carriage of French model 1897 field gun remained perfectly still during the entire cycle of loading and firing. Thus, in the minute in which the German 77mm quick-loader could fire eight 6.85 kilogram shells, the new French quick-firing field gun could spit out twenty or more slightly heavier (7.2 kilogram) projectiles.
Between 1897 and 1901, the Germans remained unaware of their inferiority in the field gun department. Good security kept spies away from both blueprints and performance data. An elaborate disinformation plan that included the fabrication of guns that used “short recoil” mechanisms similar to those that were then being developed in Germany kept the German authorities believing that they were on the right track. It was not until the first time that the French 75mm gun was used in combat - in China, during the pursuit of a band of retreating Boxers - that Germany learned how well armed their once-and-future enemy actually was.
After a number of incidents where the fire of one of the new French guns succeeded in driving off large numbers of normally fearless Boxers, the new weapon was put to the test in a deliberate assault against a fortified Chinese village defended by 2,000 men. The French forces consisted of two and a half companies of Zouaves and a pair of “75s.” Beginning their advance at 1,500 meters, the two guns advanced by bounds - one firing while the other one moved forward. At 600 meters the French crews stopped moving forward and concentrated their efforts on maintaining the liveliest possible fire while the Zouaves rushed forward with fixed bayonets. Almost completely suppressed by the fire of two field pieces, the Chinese offered little resistance. The French thus took the village at the cost of one man wounded.1
In the five years that followed the unveiling of Mademoiselle Soixante-Quinze, as the French 75mm gun soon became known, the armies of the world rushed to obtain quick-firing guns of their own. Between 1901 and 1906, Russia, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Portugal, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, and the United States all adopted quick-firing field pieces of similar caliber.
In most instances, the caliber of the new field guns was 75mm. In the United States and Russia, which had yet to adopt the metric system, bore diameters of the new field guns measured 3-inches (76.2 mm.) Great Britain departed from this general trend only insofar as caliber was concerned. This 83.8mm weapon (designated as the “18-pounder”) was, nonetheless a true quick-firing piece able to deliver over twenty rounds a minute.2
Besides greatly increasing the rate of fire, solving the problem of recoil allowed the armorers to fit bullet-proof shields to gun carriages. Since the dawn of gunnery, gun crews had been well advised to stay clear of the gun, its carriage, and wheels at the moment of firing. Gunners who ignored this advice only did it once, for the force with which field pieces recoiled was considerable. Needless to say, fitting an armored shield on such a weapon made no sense. It would merely encourage gunners to risk being run-over by their own recoiling gun carriages. Once field pieces stopped moving backwards every time they fired, however, protecting gunners from shrapnel and rifle fire made a lot more sense.
The efficacy of such shields was demonstrated both on the test range and in battle. In 1909, Danish artillerymen fired 270 shrapnel shells against an unmanned battery of shielded quick-firing guns set up 2,000 meters away. Although the shields were frequently hit, only five shell fragments managed to penetrate the shields. In the same year, during street fighting in Constantinople, a battery of quick-firing guns engaged rebel infantry at a range of 500 to 600 meters. Although the enemy rifle fire was heavy, the only casualty among the gunners was a non-commissioned officer who was shot through the head while trying to peer around his gun shield.3
An excellent description of the way that the “quick-firing revolution” changed the way that a gun crew performed its definitive duties, see Oliver L. Spaulding, Weapons and Munitions of War, Part III: Artillery Weapons (Fort Leavenworth: Infantry and Cavalry School, 1907) pages 1 through 3.
Michel de Lombarés “Le 75” Revue Historique des Armées (1975) pages 96-102
Willi Heydenreich Das Moderne Feldgeschütz (Leipzig: G. I. Göschen, 1906) Volume 2 Foldout Appendix