Missing Gun from the SMS Königsberg

[Tanzania]

Three more photos from this gun in the Tanga bay.

[danebrog]

Moin Holger - schön, das wir mal wieder an gleicher Stelle arbeiten!

OK, Gentlemen
seems we have the Kahe mount proven. Instead of facts I´ve another "mystery" I´m interested in and until today I haven´t found an satisfying answer.

When examining the carriages in Jo´burg and Mombasa they are obviously different. My question is: Had the "MARIE" delivered different carriages (as available from arsenals) or were these in some manner modified AFTER the war?

Mombasa-gun with reference


Jo´burg gun without reference


If both are original we may identify guns also by three different types of carriage : DAR, KRUPP_A and KRUPP_B
Otherwise the Jo´burg gun is a patchwork of different guns for display use:

british QF 12pdr 12 cwt as exemplary comparison


Any ideas and suggestions are well appreciated

[Chris Dale]

Holger,

Thank you for the photos of the Tanga emplacement! Great to see how it all worked. As you have captioned, this is most likely the 10 Massasi gun used in its turret. 1 Kahe should not have had a turret as it didn't have a barrel flange and so was probably one of the exposed K'berg guns.... then again enough of my other theories have been proven wrong, this might be another!

Olav,
Yes the Pretoria gun is different to the normal Krupp carriage. I don't think is was made by Krupp (this is advice that came from one of the team working on the Pretoria restoration), have a look at the welding and machine work on it-


Compared to the Krupp barrel with very straight edges and even curves, the carriage looks poorly made. The welding is not straight or even and the hole on the base plate is not perfectly round.

But it does have Krupp wheels (in your comparison photos above the left wheel of the Bagamoyo gun is on the wrong way around explaining it's different pattern).

I think that this is a replacement carriage made at Dar after March 1916, so based on the design of the Krupp carriage and using Krupp wheels (possibly from the 2 Kondoa Iringa gun). This again is only a theory. I have no proof.

It could also be that the carriage was made after the war to display it. But the question then is which gun was intact with intact wheels but no carriage?

What do you guys think?

Cheers
Chris

[danebrog]

I also suppose it´s an after war replacement carriage, using wheels, axle and barrel from a KBG gun.

And I found another hint on the belgian website:

L'épave resta émergée et les allemands récupérèrent ce qu'ils purent. Les canons furent adaptés et trouvèrent une nouvelle vie dans les campagnes terrestres en Afrique. Ils furent successivement capturés. L'un d'eux fut pris à Tabora en septembre 1916 et ramené à Léopoldville. Un autre le fut à Massassi en octobre 1917 et conduit à Stanleyville. Il y fut exposé pendant longtemps sur le rond-point de la Place du Canon.

Translated:

The wreck remained appeared and the German recovered what they could. Cannons were adapted and found a new life in countryside of the Earth in Africa. They were successively captured. One of them was taken in Tabora in September, 1916 and brought back to Léopoldville. Other one was him in Massassi in October, 1917 and drives in Stanleyville. It was displayed there for a long time on the roundabout of the Place of the Cannon

.

This makes sense as we know from several accounts the Korogwe gun was destroyed, but the Itaga/Tabora gun fell intact in belgian hands (as mentioned below the first picture: Canon de la marine pris aux Allemands à Itaga en 1916)
As it has a DAR carriage and barrel flange identical to the Leopoldville gun (probably Massassi), so the Korogwe gun may have had the KRUPP carriage mentioned by Hans Apel

Possibly the Massassi gun was a kind of gift from the british to the belgians to honour their engagement AFTER the capture of Tabora...

a lot of "probably","possibly", "may" - therefore happy brainstorming

[danebrog]

For further research I made a list. Below we have all the guns we know from sources but keep in mind it´s not complete and we surely have some doublettes

KAHE---------pivot----no flange-------confirmed destroyed
MWANZA-----pivot----flange----------on display Jinja
TABORA------DAR-----flange----------Stanleyville
MASSASSI----DAR-----flange----------Leopoldville
BAGAMOYO--KRUPP---flange----------London
KOROGWE---?---------------------------presumed destroyed
KONDOA-----?----------?----------------confirmed destroyed *
?--------------KRUPP----no flange------on display Mombasa
?--------------Unknown-flange----------on display Jo´burg

confirmed by PICTURES
DAR------no flange-----intact
DAR------no flange-----wheels missing
KRUPP---flange---------barrel blown
KRUPP---?---------------barrel and carriage separated

Altogether we can expect by several accounts:
3 barrels confirmed destroyed (Kahe, Kondoa, unknown)
1 barrel presumed destroyed (Korogwe)
6 barrels on display (Mwanza, Mombasa, Jo,burg, Stanley, Leopold, London)

so we may expect all surviving barrels were on display ??

[Chris Dale]

Very good find there, Olav! I had no been able to tell which Congo gun was which before...

Another of your posts that other readers might find interesting is the map of actions around Bagamoyo-
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 3&t=174952

Cheers
Chris

[Chris Dale]

Great to see the list updated but I have a couple of small alterations to make based on modern photos of the survivors-

KAHE---------pivot----no flange-------confirmed destroyed
MWANZA-----pivot----no flange----------on display Jinja
TABORA------DAR-----flange----------Stanleyville
MASSASSI----DAR-----flange----------Leopoldville
BAGAMOYO--KRUPP---flange----------London
KOROGWE---?---------------------------presumed destroyed
KONDOA-----?----------?----------------confirmed destroyed *
?--------------KRUPP----flange------on display Mombasa
?--------------Unknown-flange----------on display Jo´burg

Cheers
Chris

[danebrog]

Thanks for the update, Chris - for this purpose I made this list.
Now we have to solve several contradictions:
FIRST: All these guns have DAR carriage and NO FLANGE and are INTACT – possibly are all the same ?



Presumed the Belgian source is correct, TABORA and MASSASSI are out of competition (flange)
also KAHE and MWANZA, of course (pivot)
BAGAMOYO had a KRUPP-carriage
KONDOA (barrel) was blown for sure,
BUT: MKUYUNI, KOROGWE, KIBATA and MAHIWA are presumed destroyed, at least damaged beyond repair by several accounts - so what we have here??

[Chris Dale]

As they all have the same attributes and are all in British captivity they maye well be the same gun. They may also be the same gun as seen in the photo credited to Kraut.

If this picture is correctly captioned (and it is Wenig's book so I would assume he knew what his own gun looked like) then it can't be Mahiwa as it has a Krupp carriage-


So we've left with MKUYUNI, KOROGWE, KIBATA...

Cheers
Chris

[danebrog]

KOROGWE was in the belgian area of operations
Holger stated MKUYUNI, KIBATA and MAHIWA were DAR, MASSASSI a KRUPP carriage
No matter, wether the Belgians or Holger were in error – we have finally left MKUYUNI and KIBATA
As H.J. Mueller, gunner at MKUYUNI wrote, he also blasted the wheels away, then this could be his gun:

and KIBATA is the remaining gun - although it´s described blown up, too
Following consequently these theories, then this should be the ITAGA/TABORA gun instead of KOROGWE:


As a German I will finish with a quote from Goethe: All theory, dear friend, is gray....

[danebrog]

It's a shame we can't clearly see if this gun has a flange or not. If Wenig says in his own book that the gun was gesprengt or burst, I would tend to believe him. So that's disproved the theory of -
9 Mahiwa (Unknown possibly Pretoria) Flange/Fixed Pivot/Dar-Pretoria Carriage?

Which should now be written as-
9 Mahiwa (barrel burst) Flange?/Fixed Pivot/Krupp Carriage

Then this one could be the MAHIWA gun instead of the MASSASSI gun ( we expect for Stanleyville)


Here is the same problem as we have for the KOROGWE/TABORA guns: one DAR, one KRUPP carriage nearby, so there is always the option for confusion. But for now it´s another temporary working model and -hopefully - we´re able to link up these more and more...

[Chris Dale]

Then this one could be the MAHIWA gun instead of the MASSASSI gun ( we expect for Stanleyville)

I did like that theory until I read this in Wenig's notes-

"Ein langer Sprung klafft das Rohr entlang, der Verschluß ist in Fetzen herausgeschleudert, das Bodenstück trichterförmig ausgeweitet."

Unless I'm mistaken that says the breech end was blown out into a funnel shape. In the photos above it's clearly the other end which has suffered the notable damage. Then he says-

"Emsig regen sich die Hände, um die Geschützreste abzumontieren, in den Busch zu schleppen und zu vergraben. Nichts, keine Spur soll der Engländer vorfinden. "

Again if I'm reading this correctly, the gun was dismantled, dragged into the bush and buried so the English wouldn't find it. Again this doesn't tally with the photos, which show apart from the barrel damage a right wheel off. It doesn't look like it has been dismantled or buried. And if it was buried and hidden, it wasn't done very well.

All in all these photos do not match the description. I would say then that this is not 9 Mahiwa... but more likely 10 Masassi as the original caption to the first blown barrel gun photo (left) says. If that's right then both 9 and 10 are Krupp carriages and 10 certainly did not go to the Congo...

Cheers
Chris

[Chris Dale]

As for this gun, shown in Wenig's book and captioned as the 9 Mahiwa gun making it's last shot. This does perfectly fit the scene description in Wenig's notes. Wenig describes it as between trees, a rusted veteran, camouflaged under Miombo leaves-

""Hier steht zwischen schlanken Bäumen, Dahinter unter dem Laubdach des Miombowaldes steht das Geschütz, verrostet, die Farbe im Laufe der Jahre abgeblättert und abgestoßen, Ein alter Veteran!"

That looks very close to the scene in the photo.

Cheers
Chris

[Chris Dale]

Another interesting point. We seem to be running out of surviving guns. We know five of the ten guns- Mombassa, Pretoria, Leopoldville, Stanleyville and London survived after the war. Yet German sources claim that at least six guns- Kahe, Kondoa-Iringi, Mkuyuni, Korogwe, Massassi and Mahiwa were blown up. So at least one of those was not blown up very well. I would suggest Korogwe...

Here's an interesting report of the Mwanza gun being blown up-

"Er ordnete daher den Abmarsch am 14. Juni (Juli 1916) an. Das hier befindliche 10,5-cm-Geschütz konnte nicht mitgeführt werden, sondern wurde gesprengt". (WA , S. 208.) -roughly the gun could not be transported so was blown up.

We know for a fact that it was not destroyed however as it is now on display in Jinja Uganda looking quite intact-


Another description of the destruction of this gun seems more plausible-
"das 10,5-cm-Geschütz mit Dynamit tunlichst zu zerstören, was leider mißlang" (CJ , S. 100)- roughly gun was filled with dynamite but failed to blow it up!

So at least one failed attempt to blow a gun occurred and was reported by some sources as a success. We now need to examine which guns were successfully and properly blown up and which ones were only attempted. It is possible that while the Jinja gun looks OK on the outside that the dynamite blew cracks down the inside of the barrel thus rendering it useless to the British who captured it...

Cheers
Chris

[Chris Dale]

Another quick mystery to solve... as well as the six allegedly destroyed guns and the five that we know were on display, there are also reports of a gun put on display in Dar Es Salaam after the First World War. This worried me at first as there really seem to be too many guns now. But this photo would seem to show that it is in fact the 1 Kahe gun with that distinctive barrel split that went on display in Dar.



Cheers
Chris