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Up til this point the carriages of all guns had been rigid and fixed. The biggest problems with this was that it lowered the rate of fire: firstly because the gun had to be relaid between each shot, as it rolled out of position for each discharge. All this was changed with the "75". The truly great invention was of course the hydro-pneumatic recoil system, that allowed the whole recoil to be absorbed by the carriage. This meant that the gun could be fired without it moving at all, meaning that the gun layer didn't have to relay the gun after each shot, and that it could be reloaded a whole lot faster, as the loader only had to wait for the gun tube to recoil back, before putting another round into the breech. At the outbreak of the war in 1914, the "75" was the main gun of the French Field Artillery. Every Division had one Artillery Regiment attached, consisting of three groupes, each with three batteries equipped with four guns, or 12 guns per groupe, or 36 guns per Artillery Regiment. The Army had a total of 1.011 of these 4-gun-batteries in service in August 1914. The French had an enormous faith in this fenomenal gun, with it's tremendous rate of fire, ease of maneuver (it was light) and accuracy. The problem was, that the gun was intended for a classic war of maneuver, and it was not as efficient in trench warfare. Anyway, dispite these problems, it remained a formidable gun, that, if the conditions were right, could make a very telling effect indeed. And it is a testimony to the excellence of this gun, that it was also adapted by the US Army, and later also by the armies in Poland, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Romania, Estonia and Lithuania. It was also used in WW2, not only by the French and Poles, but also by the Finns, the Germans and others. My model is based on Al.By:s excellent kit, built virtually straight from the box, adding only some superfluos details.
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The French
"75" - or to be more precise: Canon de 75, modèle 1897 - was a new
and revolutionary piece of weaponery, as revolutionary as other remarkable
inventions that changed the face of battle, say, the bayonet or the breech
loading rifle.
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