Austria-Hungary
3.7cm Infanteriegeschütz M.15
The Austro-Hungarian 37mm Infanteriegeschütz M.15 was - like the French counterpart, the 37mm mle1916 - created out of the new and unforseen demands created by the trench warfare. In this type of combat there often araised the need to destroy targets that were very well protected against ordinary indirect artillery fire, regardless if by cannon or howitzer. The most common target of that kind was dug-in, well-protected, shield-equipped Machineguns: the only way to destroy them was to use direct artillery fire. Mountain guns was often used in this role, but even they were often difficult to move and use on the churned-up battlefields. And even if you could bring them into the first line, they were difficult to bring along in an attack. The gun, the infanteriegeschütz M.15, could be dismantled into three packs for transports: tube, cradle and tripod, each weighing 34.6kg, 25.3kg and 24.4kg respectively. (It could be transported by manpacks, by horse or by dog-cart.)
In theory each Infantry Regiment should have two infantry gun platoons. Each platoon consisted of 1 officer, 2 NCO:s, 26 men, 1 cart, 4 pack horses and 4 guns. Due to lack of equipment in general each Regiment only got one infantry gun platoon each. They were often employed in the first line, even during defence, but were often kept down in the dug-outs until needed. It was accurate alright, and the theoretical range was up to 3.000 meters. At that range it wasn't very accurate due to the pretty short gun tube (37.2cm). The longest practical range was 2.200 meters. Also there were complaints regarding the lack of punch in the grenades, at the end of the war the general word was that the calibre was too small, and that a bigger gun was needed for this role.
My model is simply the one that comes with HäT:s Austro-Hungarian Heavy Weapons set. It is a bit over-scale, and the mounting is wrong, but it still captures the look of the gun. I have added some details, including a shield.
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