75mm Mle1919 Mountain Gun

[David]

During the First World War different types of Mountain Guns - i.e. small, light and easily transported artillery pieces - came much into use. Not only because there were much fighting in mountanious regions, like the Alps and the Balkans, but also because the mobility of these pieces became much appreciated, not least on the churned up battlefields in the west. And the Central Powers soon found out that they often could fill the role of improvised AT guns - being small and thus easy to hide, and often having a high muzzle velocity.
The 75mm Mle19 was only one in a long row of pretty succesfull designs by the French firm of Schneider. It came out too late to be used in the Great War, but as it was not only used by the French Army, but also exported to Poland and Greece, it saw service in the Second World War instead.
It had a generous elevation (typical of mountain guns) of -10 to +40 degrees. It had a traverse of 10 degrees. The weight was 659 kg in firing mode, it could be both towed by horse, or broken down into seven loads and thus carried. The Mle19 could shoot a 6,5kg heavy shell with a muzzle velocity of 450 m/sec up to a maximum range of 9,6km.
The photos below were taken by Eric Gallaud at the famous French Armour museum at Saumur in France: