by Mike Blake on 12 Mar 2009 19:35 I have tried an archive search but turned up nothing. Can anyone direct me to some illustrations and stats for the guns in use c1900 please? Here is what little I have:
"Until WWI guns for the Russian army were built at Putilov and Obukhov, but lack of production capacity [and the poor performance of some of these guns] meant that some equipment, mainly field howitzers and mountain guns, had to be imported from Schneider and Krupp. In some cases models of the same gun were ordered from both firms at the same time.
Light artillery batteries had the light field cannon M1895 9cwt 3.42” (87mm) Obukhov-Krupp breechloader, range 7000 yards, fired 3 lb powder charge & 15½ lb common shell, rounds carried 1,200. Photos show the forward-facing seats either side of the barrel, with back- and foot-rests, and no shield. Some have buckets under the axles. became the first sample of such a gun. It was worked out to use smokeless powder. It was a transitional model, not fully QF and was called an ‘accelerated fire’ gun. The carriage was designed by A Engelgardt. Mountain batteries had 2cwt 2.5” mountain gun, range about 3,500 yards, fired 8¼ lb shell, rounds carried 720.
Most of the Russian artillery used in the Boxer Uprising was not fully QF, being breechloading but carriage-recoil, requiring the gun to be repositioned after each shot. However in 1900 the 3-inch [76mm] M1900 ‘Putilov’ fieldgun. quick-firing. The gun was designed at the Putilov works in St Petersburg, with involvment from N Zabudskii and A Engelgardt. It had a quickacting screw breechblock with a locking device, extracting mechanisms and a safety device. The carriage had a pneumatic recoil break and counter-recoil mechanism and a spade. It was this Putilov gun which the Guard Artillery trialled in the field. Range was 6,400 meters, rate of fire 15 rounds per minute, box trail, no shield , with 2 forward facing seats either side of the barrel like the earlier model. Its main drawback was that at 4,145 lbs, it was too heavy for rough terrain.
Carriages and limbers were painted dark apple green with unpainted steel or bronze barrels. Wagons were also painted green, with the name of the unit on the sides."
Were the Cossack artillery armed with anything different?
Thanks
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