150 mm field cannon L / 40
The 15 cm field cannon L / 40 was a German long-range flat-fire gun from the First World War .
history
The 15 cm field cannon L / 40 was a gun born of necessity. In 1915, the German leadership at the beginning of recognized trench warfare the acute shortage of heavy and assault far excellent Flachfeuer- artillery . Existing guns were withdrawn from arsenals, coastal fortifications and obsolete ships and passed on to Krupp in order to construct guns for trench warfare.
One of these weapons was the 15-cm SK L / 40 , which was available in large numbers on the outdated ships of the line of the old Kaiser class and the Wittelsbach class . The ships were decommissioned and disarmed in 1915. Since the navy used a center pivot mount to transfer the large recoil forces to the ship, major modifications had to be made to the braking and recovery device when mounting in a wheel mount. The barrel and the cradle of the weapon were mounted on a sturdy single-bar box carriage. The strong recoil when the gun was fired could only be insufficiently absorbed and diverted by the mount. The spar always dug into the ground up to the stop when it was fired. A concrete barette served as a launching base . The name for this was 15 cm KiSL (cannon in umbrella mount).
Against all odds, the gun was very successful despite its limitations. Some of these guns were used in coastal defense until 1944.
Technical specifications
- Caliber: 150 mm
- Weight: 12 t
- Elevation range: −5 ° to + 20 °
- Muzzle velocity: 750 m / s
- Maximum shooting range: 18,700 m
150 mm field cannon L / 40
150 mm field cannon L / 40
In action in Bulgaria on the Thessaloniki front
literature
- Ian Hogg : 20th Century Artillery. Gondrom Verlag, Bindlach 2001, ISBN 3-8112-1878-6
