German 15cm Feldkanone i.R.

Soon after stalemate had set in the West, all warring parties realized that they badly needed to bolster their artillery, especially with heavier calibres. In Germany, as in most other coutries, naval and coastal defence guns were hurriedly taken from forts, fortifications and naval stores and placed on more or less improvised field carriages. The 15cm Feldkanone i.R. was one of these naval guns, originally made by Krupp. (The "i.R." is an abbreviation of "in Räderlafette", i.e. "on Wheeled carriage".) It came in two versions: the more common (and shorter) L/40 and the somewhat longer (see the small photo above) L/45. They can be told apart by the L/40 having a set of top-mounted cyliders above the breach and the L/45 instead having one cylinder on each side of the breach. Also note the steps in the barrel; the L/45 had three short ones of just ahead of the shield, that of the L/40 only had one long step like feature. (Thanks to Wesley Thomas for pointing this out.)

The result was a long-range cannon that was very powerful but also very heavy: it weighed no less than 11.820kg emplaced. To this came the bedding, that weighed some 7450kg! The gun was placed on a special ground platform which allowed it to traverse bodily, as the carriage didn't allow for any traverse. The naval cradle was dropped into the carriage, and then the carriage was anchored to the special firing platform as the naval recoil system could not absorb all of the recoil. When moving it, it was require to break it down into three loads that could be moved by either tractor or horse. It fired a 44.2kg shell some 18.7km

There is are two samples of this gun still surviving, one L/40 and one L/45, both in the Naval Museum in Varna in Bulgaria. (Thanks to Arie Dijkhuis for this info.)

The photos below show those surviving guns, and have been kindly supplied by Jack Mueller:

Also, there is one surviving L/40 gun, in what seems to be very good shape, to be found in Sydney in Australia.