Russia

58mm FR Mortar

The trench warfare during WW1 led to a big revival of an old artillery system, the mortar, and many experiments were initially made in the warring nations. The systems tried falls broadly into two types: tube mortars and spigot mortars. Spigot Mortars usually consists of a base plate with a elevating mechanism and a short barrel. There is usually a trigger mechanism built into the base of the tube, with a long firing pin activating a primer inside the projectile and firing the propellant charge. The barrel is just long enough to hold the steel tail that projects out from below the aerial torpedo. The fins are important, because they were shaped in such a way that when the projectile was fired, they imparted a spin that stabilized it in its trajectory. The advantage of spigot mortars is that the firing unit is much smaller and lighter than needed for a Tube Mortar with an equivalent payload. They are also a bit simpler to manufacture. It is therefore not surprising that many of the first mortar designs were of the spigot type. The first mortars used by the Imperial Russian Army during WW1 were copies of early German or Austro-Hungarian types. But soon they also started making several spigot type variants based on French designs. One of these was the 58mm FR Mortar (FR standing for "French-Russian".) It was a simple spigot design, with a rectangular wooden baseplate, equipped with small wheels, that could be elevated above the ground when it was readied for firing. It had a practical range of some 500 meters. Not much is known of the grenades, but in line with other types of mortars of a similar design, it is pretty certain that there was several types, with lighter types used for longer ranges, and bigger ones having heavier payloads but shorter range. The mortars of the Imperial Russian Army were often organized into platoon-sized Special Bombing Groups, with each Rifle Regiment ideally having one, with perhaps four to six pieces in each group. During the Civil War both sides used these types of mortars, and in the Red Army in 1919 the practice of the Imperial Army was mirrored in each Rifle Regiment having a team with 6 58mm mortars. (Eventually they were phased out, like most spigot mortars, in favour of different tube designs.) My model is based on the HäT mortar that can be found in their Russian Heavy Weapons set. It has been detailed, and corrected a bit: in it there is only one wheel, integral to the baseplate, but in reality the mortar had two big wheels on the sides of the front baseplate. The crew is mostly from HäT's Russian Heavy Weapons set. Click on the thumbnails to see more views of this model (notice that on many of these, the model will appear larger than life):

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