Cannone da 75/27 mod.06

[David]

Around the turn of the century, when all major powers were in full swing modernizing their Field Artillery, hurridly following the example of the revolutionary French "75", the Italian Army also followed suite. After trying, without success, to design a gun of their own (which resulted in a obsolete design with no recoil system) the Army instead decided to import a German gun, designed by Krupp.
It was a pretty standard design, with a hydro-spring recuperator, equipped with a shield 4mm thick, and weighing precisely 1 ton emplaced. It could shoot a HE grenade of 6.4kg some 6.8 km. The Shrapnel grenade weighed 6.5kg. The muzzle velocity was 510 m/sec.
The gun made pretty good service during the war. Its performance matched roughly that of the German FK 96 n.A.. The explosive load of the HE grenade was however deemed to be a bit too light. (During the war, this was in some measure remedied by Italy receiving large shipments of ammunition from England and France.) It was used primarily in the standard field artillery batteries, the horse artillery batteries using the 75mm Deport, which was also seen as the better gun of the two.
The gun below is a WW1 piece, in a much battered condition, displayed outside the museum in Kobarid in Slovenia (or as it was known during the time the village belonged to Italy: Caporetto).

The gun in this walk-around is a modernized version of the da 75/27: the old spoked tree wheels - see the photo above - have been substituted for modern ones, made in pressed metal, and with rubber tyres. It was in this guise the da 75/27 participated in WW2, and it was there this gun was captured. Many details missing in the gun abive can be seen here.