6inch 26cwt Howitzer

[David]

The 6inch (152mm) 26 cwt (1320kg) Howitzer was developed in 1915, in order to replace earlier British models of the same calibre, and soon it became the standard British medium howitzer: 3.633 had been manufactured at the end of the war. It had a simple and sturdy hydro-pneumatic recoil system, that varied the stroke according to the elevation. The traverse possible was 4° to the right and left, and the elevation was from 0° to +45°. The standard grenade used was first a 45kg shrapnel shell, but this allowed only for a range of some 8.7km, but when a lighter shell was put into use (only 39kg) the range was increased to 10.4km. (A pure HE shell was also introduced.)

The guns first real debut came at the Battle of the Somme in the summer of 1916. 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. The gun was used mainly by the British Army (at the end of the war 1.246 were employed by them) but some had also been supplied to other allies, like the Italians. 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 mechanized traction was used whenever possible. An indication of the importance of this gun, can be given by the fact that in November 1918 guns of this type hade fired some 22.4 million rounds on the Western Front alone. The guns soundness can be measured by the fact that it was used well up in WW2, seeing action both in North Africa and in Burma.

The gun below, has been photographed at the War Memorial at Redipuglia, north of Trieste in Italy.