Bandera Miniatures 1/76 Cannone da 65 mod.1911

Considering both it's mountainous borders, and the often rough terrain of it's colonies, it is not surprising that the Italian Army in their inventory had quite a numer of mountain guns. The Cannone da 65 mod.1911 was originally a French design, intended to replace the small Cannone da 70 A, an old design with rigid mount (old in design, not in years: it was developed as late as 1902). The cannone da 65 mod.11 was a modern gun, with an up-to-date hydro-spring recoil system. (Because of it's cronic lack of guns, the Italian Army was forced to continue using the the old da 70 A all through the war.)

The gun weighed 460kg when deployed, had an elevation from -7º to +20º, and a traverse of 8º. It could shoot two types of ammo: one HE weiging 4.27kg, and one Shrapnel, weighing 4.07kg and containing 216 shrapnel bullets. The muzzle velocity was 343m/sec and the maximum range was 6500 meters. It could be broken down into four loads when moved.

At the beginning of the war, some 50 mountain gun batteries were equipped with this gun, for a total of 200 pieces. It was quite successful and subsequent production exceeded 1.000 pieces. It was of course much used on both the Dolomite Front and on the Isonzo. Later it also saw action during the Spanish Civil War.

Contents of the kit:

Click on the picture for an enlarged version! 

Like all Banderas kits this one comes in a simple ziplock bag. It is cast in White Metal and quite simple: as you can see it just consists of four parts: wheels, carriage and gun tube. That's it! Bandera caters for the wargaming market, and their kits are not seldom very simplified, some of them so much so that it borders on caricature. The good news in this case, is that it is actually pretty accurate. It is very basic, of course, but you can build it almost straight out of the box - or bag in this case - and still get a pretty good likeness.

What I would recommend is replacing the moulded-on handwheel, added lifting handles, detailing the breech and adding a dial sight. 

You can get this kit from this site.

This is the only kit of this gun I know of, and you could actually do a lot worse. It will require some detailing, but the work will be quite easy, I think. An evenings build!