January-February - Air Defense Artillery

1943 GERMAN SIEGE GUNS OF THE TWO WORLD v..'ARS
C.Jtb~,
({'/II)
GUNS:
Length
(Cal.J
TABLE II
HEAVY AUSTRIAN ORDNANCE OF WORLD \VAR I
Weight of Shell
(Pound,)
E.xtreme Ran!!.e
{Yards}
De'lf!,llatlOn ,,.
Name
24cm L/40 470 32,000
35cm L/45 1540 33,000
(The 2-km L/40 could be mounted in place of the 38cm howitzer on the combination road-railroad transportation
equipment designed for the latter.)
HOWITZERS:
24cm L/9 300 7,100
L/I0
r836
i630
1660 (shrapn.)
10,5001
12,100~
12,100 J
30.5 em L/12(l916\
r836
i630
12,3001
13,500 ~
[660 (shrapn.) 13,500)
38cm L/17
) 1630
11320 (shrapn.) 16,500
42cm L/15
)2200
11760
14,000
16,000
"2-km mortar L 9"
"l\1otorbatterie ..
or
")\1 otormorser"
or
"Skoda"
"38cm Haubitze Muster 1910"
(Barbara and Gudrun.)
"Kiistenhaubitze Muster 1914"
(The 42cm howitzer was introduced as "Coast Howitzer M-14"; later it was made mobile and designated as
"Belagerungshauhitze L /15" and finally, in 1917. mounted in the same manner as the 38cm and called "42cm
Autohaubitze.")
for disobedience of orders. The reason for all this was
that their actual performance was not released for publication
until after the war and that the enthusiasm of
the German newspapers went unchecked. Those papers
wrote that the guns had been secretly developed by
Krupp and presented to the Kaiser on the day of the
declaration of war, that they therefore had to be served
by Krupp engineers who insisted on wearing formal
dresswhile doing so and that the range was sixty miles.
The higher officers who barely knew thar the guns
existed went by newspaper reports, making some allowance
for exaggeration but not enough. Such exaggerated
secrecy may sound incredible to the average
American; the Germans took it to be normal and justified.
And it is literally true that a general did not know
range and effect of the howitzers unless he took the
trouble of finding out from the battery commander.
Some of these beautiful canards about the Krupp
engineers had a slight foundation in fact. Many of the
officerswho knew about the pieces had been employees
of Krupp's after honorable discharge from active service.
They re-enlisted when the war started and were, of
course, left with the materiel they knew. But they
wore,of course, uniform. As for the story of the "present"
both Becker and Justrow agree that all credit has
to be given to the A.P.K. (Artillerie Prufungskommis-
~ion= Ordnance Dept.) under General Sieger for the
conception of Gamma and "M" and for the detailed
~pecificationsturned over to Krupp for execution. HoweVer,as
late as 1931 Krupp engineers told me that their
hnn had borne the expense of the pioneer model, the
firstGamma, that Army officers had ridiculed them for
attempting the impossible and that Krupp got the
A.P.K. to look at the piece only through intricate and
powerful political pull. After that everything went
smoothly.
At any event: those howitzers were secret!
After Namur and Maubeuge news photographers
were permitted to swarm in and take pictures, not of
the guns, but of the shells and of the damage done by
the shells. And Justrow asserts that at least the greater
part of the shell holes thus photographed and publish~d
were not shell holes at all, but craters caused by demolition
crews who had blown up partly damaged fortifications.
In fact Justrow did not publish his collection of
pictures because he was not sure himself. On the other
hand government photographers photographed a number
of shell holes definitely caused by the 42s, released
them in the form of official picture postcards ... and
in 1916 an Austrian publishing house published a
picture book entitled Our Motor Mortars in the West,
containing most of these postcard pictures but ascribed
to the Skodas. Captain Becker recognized several of
them as craters the formation of which he had personally
observed when directing the fire of his "M"
battery.
All of which explains why the stories are so confused.
In 1915 the "Skodas" were withdrawn from the
Western Front, to be replaced by the German 305s
and the then more numerous "M" batteries. The
Austrian 42 never appeared on the v..'estern Front, they
were then still Kustenhauhitzen (Coast Howitzers) and
did not become mobile until later in 1915. It seems
that the Austrian 42 did not perform well at all.