On the 6inch 26cwt Howitzer
by Terry Gander

Anyone who has ever had any insight or involvement in the design and manufacture of virtually any article has encountered the phenomenon that the prototype rarely resembles the finished product. Perhaps the best examples of this can be seen in the aircraft industry, where a typical case can be quoted in that the English Electric P.1 had very little in common with the end product, the Lighting. Numerous other such cases can be brought to mind in many other fields of endeavour, including the design of artillery. To the average onlooker perhaps, the very first 25 pr Mark 1 appeared to be very much the same as the last, but the end-user is all too aware that gradual design and development changes were introduced by the time the 25 pr Mark 2 went out of general service. Just about every artillery piece you can think of went through a very often involved and prot­racted test and in-service programme that introduced many alterations in appearance and performance over the years. Needless to say there is an exception to every rule and in the realm of British artillery design that exception is one of the most widely-used and most successful of all heavy artillery pieces in both World Wars, namely the 6 inch 26 cwt Howitzer Mark 1.

The 6 inch 26 cwt Howitzer design was so good that it remained in service unchanged in all but very minor respects from 1915 until 1945. One of its components, the recoil mechanism, formed the basis of the recoil mechanisms of the later 5.5 inch gun-howitzer, a weapon that is still in service all over the world. The very first 6 inch 26 cwt Howitzer remained in produc­tion throughout the Great War, unchanged from the drawing board to the last example off the production line, and it is a salutory lesson in sound design and production principles that would be difficult to better.

The 6 inch 26 cwt Howitzer had its roots in the early change from fluid to static warfare in late 1914. During the early winter months of 1914 the British Army found itself involved in an unexpected form of siege warfare in conditions that had not been anticipated, soon after the Race to the Sea had settled down into trench warfare. Siege warfare, for that is what the trench warfare of 1914-1918 really was, involves the use of heavy artillery and the British Army had precious little of it. What was particularly lacking in the gun parks was a 6 inch howitzer. It was true that the Army did have some 6 inch howitzers to hand, the 6 inch 25 cwt, designed with the Indian Army in mind, and the 6 inch 30 cwt, intended for use in the European theatre of operations. Both were cumbersome designs however, that lacked range, and once they had been tried out on the Western Front the artillery arm became all too aware of their shortcom­ings and asked for something better. The designers set to work.

When artillery is designed the first thing that is considered is not the gun but the projectile for that is the gunner's weapon. The gun (or howitzer) is only the delivery system to use modern parlance. Thus in the early days of 1915 the designers were asked to produce a weapon that would lob a 100 pound/45.4kg shell to a range of over 9000 yards/8230 metres. The shell design was based on the existing 6 inch howitzer example and using this, Vickers produced the 6 inch 26 cwt Howitzer Mark 1- the 26 cwt was included in the designation to differentiate it from the existing 25 cwt and 30 cwt howitzers.

Production started as soon as the first examples had been proof fired in July 1915. The 6 inch 26 cwt Howitzer was a hand­some artillery piece with an Asbury breech mechanism, and mounted on a sturdy box-trail carriage in what was then quite an advanced configuration to allow elevation up to +45° to take full advantage of the weapon's potential range. By the end of 1915, 695 had been delivered and produc­tion went full ahead to churn out the ever-increasing demands of the Allied armies. By the time the Great War ended the production run had reached 3633 and by then the British Army was not the only user. The 6 inch 26 cwt Howitzer had by then become part of the inventory of the Canadian, Italian, Belgian and (to a small extent) the American armies, and every­where it had performed sterling service without the need for any basic design changes.

The only alteration was a very minor one in that the firing mechanism of the first production examples still used a friction tube, a firing system that had long been in use in the days of the Duke of Wellington. It had worked well enough for many, many years but once in prolonged action in France, the vent holes into which the friction tubes were inserted for firing became worn and corroded. A temporary front-line expedient using old Martini­Henry actions soon gave way to an estab­lished percussion lock, and that was that - no further changes required.

The 6 inch 26 cwt proved to be invaluable in the dreadful conditions of the Western Front. It was one of the few pieces that could be relied upon to really cut through the huge barbed wire obstacles and demolish the front-line enemy dug-outs. There was a shrapnel shell but the main projectile fired was HE, and they were fired in prodigious quantities. After the war some

statistician worked out that the number of rounds fired by the 6 inch 26 cwt Howitzer was over 22,400,000 in all. The size of the armaments industry required to produce this staggering number of projectiles can well be imagined, and it must have been a trifle disturbed when it was decided to increase the range by introducing a slightly lighter shell. This new `light' shell weighed 86 pounds/39kg which allowed an increase in range to 11,400 yards/ 10,424 metres, and in time it replaced the heavier shell in service. Both projectiles were fired by bag charges.

Like all artillery pieces of its size, the 6 inch 26 cwt was no easy load to move. It required a sizeable team of horses to shift it any distance and mechanised traction was used whenever possible. Once in place any shift in firing direction had to be achieved by man-handling alone and that was no easy task in the all-too-often muddy conditions. Not surprisingly, consideration was given to finding some other form of providing the weapon with more mobility. One project that came to naught was the plan to place the piece on a railway bogie to produce railway artillery, but despite a considerable amount of drawing board activity, no hardware saw action, since the piece lacked range and putting it on a railway carriage was too much trouble and cost, for too little end result.

But one new form of transport did see action, for the 6 inch 26 cwt Howitzer became the weapon involved in the world's first self-propelled artillery. This was the Gun Carrying Tank, Mark 1. The first of these gun carriers reached France in 1917 in time for the Third Battle of Ypres. The howitzer was carried on a special cradle on the front of a much-modified Mark 1 tank. The carriage wheels were slung on the sides of the main carrier body which also housed the gun crew and ammunition, and the idea was to carry the gun across broken ground with the gun firing from the carrier if necessary. In practice the 48 Gun Carriers produced were little used in their projected role. The carriers more often than not were used to carry ammunition and other equip­ment only, and a promising idea came to very little. But small numbers of carriers were used at times in a night-firing role. Under the cover of darkness, single carriers would move well forward, fire off a few 6 inch rounds and quickly move to a new location. This form of harrassing fire presented the enemy with considerable tactical and location difficulties, but gra­dually the practice fell from use, and the Gun Carrying Tanks ended up as supply carriers.

Once the Great War was over the large numbers of 6 inch 26 cwt Howitzers were either stockpiled or handed out to many users. Some went to Russia for the White Russian armies. Others were sold or pre­sented to various colonial armies, and others went to nations as diverse as Italy, Finland, Holland and Belgium.

By the end of the 1930s the 6 inch 26 cwt was still an important weapon for the British Army. With the introduction of mechanisation, steps were taken to up-date the carriages of the howitzers in use. There were two types of modernised carriage, the Mark 1P which had pneumatic tyres and the Mark 1R which had solid rubber tyres. Both were also equipped with suitable brakes. In 1939 the 6 inch 26 cwt went to war once more and by the time of Dunkirk the type formed the major part of the equipment of the 14 Medium Regiments RA of the BEF. Unfortunately, by the end of the 1940 campaign, all 221 (176 in use, 45 in reserve) had been lost to the Germans. Many of them had been spiked and otherwise rendered useless but the Ger­mans were happy to have those that were still serviceable. With the German forces the 6 inch 26 cwt Howitzer became the 15.2cm schwere Feldhaubitze 412(e), and examples from Belgium, Holland and later Italy helped to swell the numbers.

After Dunkirk, the 6 inch howitzer became a valuable weapon to the material­starved British Army in the invasion scare days during the summer of 1940. Stockpiles were raided to drag out as many elderly examples as could be found, and these were used for local defence and training of the cadre armies. Elsewhere they were in active use in North Africa especially during the Eritrean campaign which was really their last major contribution to the conflict. Gradually, as numbers of the newer 5.5 inch gun-howitzer came into service, the 6 inch 26 cwt was withdrawn. In the Far East they continued in use until 1945 in action against the Japanese during the prolonged Burma campaign, and some were even issued for use in some anti-tank platoons during 1942 - but alas there is no record of their ever being used in that role.

During 1945 the venerable 6 inch 26 cwt Howitzer was finally declared obsolete and those left were scrapped. It was a sad but inevitable end for an artillery piece de­signed for the long-gone conditions of trench warfare. But many gunners still remember it with pride. Alas, there are now relatively few who remember it in action during the days of 1918 and before, but many still recall it from the dark days of 1940. Doubtless they cursed its bulk and immobility but when prompted, many still remember its sturdy sound design.

- Text originally published in Airfix Magazine June 1982