Canon de 7 modèle 1867
| Canon de 7 modèle 1867 | |
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| General Information | |
| Military designation: | Canon de 7 modèle 1867 |
| Manufacturer designation: | Atelier de Bourges |
| Manufacturer country: | French Empire |
| Developer / Manufacturer: | Colonel Reffye, Bourges Gun Factory |
| Production time: | 1867 to 1872 |
| Number of pieces: | about 800 |
| Model variants: | 1 |
| Team: | 6 men |
| Technical specifications | |
| Caliber : |
85 mm (8.65 cm) |
| Twist : | clockwise |
| Cadence : | up to 6 rounds / min |
| Side straightening area: | 360 ° |
| Furnishing | |
| Closure Type : | Screw lock |
| Charging principle: | Breech loader |
| Ammunition supply: | Manually |
The Canon de 7 modèle 1867 (also called Canone de 7 rayé se chargeant par la culasse M / 1867 ) was a French breech-loading gun, which was mainly used during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71. It had an already advanced screw lock based on the "Eastman System". The gun construction was made by Reffye in 1867.
history
France was well aware of developments in German artillery before 1870. Last but not least, Napoleon III. , himself an artilleryman, was able to get a picture of the Krupp cannons at the Paris World Exhibition in 1867 . However, France did not have access to modern cast steel in Krupp quality, so that the first attempts at French breech loading guns were still made with bronze tubes. Colonel Jean-Baptiste Verchère de Reffye , head of the gun foundry in Bourges, developed a breech-loading gun with a screw lock in 1867. The barrel with a caliber of 85 mm was made of bronze and had a rifled barrel. The grenades, which weighed almost seven kilograms, had a usable impact fuse (in contrast to the muzzle-loading cannons of the French La Hitte system, which were equipped with fire fuses) and had a lead shirt , similar to the Prussian grenades , to transmit the twist .
Cannons of this type were not cast in large quantities in besieged Paris until the war year 1870 . The 1,500 pieces required for defense were not achieved. It is estimated that around 800 pieces were completed. These then intervened quite effectively in the defense of the besieged French capital. Initially, the cannons were manufactured in Meudon , a Paris suburb, and later by various Parisian companies. A part was made of bronze , a part of steel , which had been obtained from railway wheelsets . The cannon was nicknamed Canon de Trochu , after Louis Jules Trochu , the commander in charge of the defense of Paris . After the surrender, 33 fell into German hands. But they also proved themselves later in use by the Loire Army (after the fall of the capital).
After the war of 1870/71, production of this cannon was discontinued. France recognized the oppressive superiority of the new German Reich in the field of artillery and now pursued a progressive development of this weapon itself. At almost 2.2 t, the M / 1867 was much too heavy to play an operative role on the battlefield, and the screw cap, in conjunction with the gun powder ( black powder of coarser grain) that was common at the time, soiled very quickly and thus gradually slowed down the cadence .
technology
Striking on the tube of the M / 1867 is the thickening from the trunnion to the rear. This is due to the bronze as a gun barrel material, as well as the required remaining wall thickness in the area of the screw lock. This thickening means that the barrel with the cap weighed around 666 kg, almost twice as much as the barrel of the Prussian C / 61 .
The screw lock could be pulled back in the gun hinge and then swiveled to the left. The grenade or shrapnel was loaded first, then the powder cartridge . This was not prepared in bags, but from six compressed powder rings in a paper mache tube . This case had a metal base. The Reffye system allowed relatively quick loading and, above all, preparation of the cartridge for various distances outside the gun barrel. However, the unburned cardboard tube had to be ejected again from the front because there was no ejector.
Technical specifications
- Caliber: 85 mm (8.65 cm)
- Combat weight: Gun alone approx. 2150 kg
- Pipe length:
- Elevation range:
- Directional range: 0 ° (the entire gun was aimed)
- Ammunition type / weight: 85 mm (grenade, iron, 6.85 kg, lead jacket, impact fuse), shrapnel
- Muzzle velocity: 383 m / s
- Maximum range: grenade 3200 m
The successor model from 1873 was the similar Canon Reffye de 85 mm .
literature
- Brockhaus' Konversations-Lexikon , 14th completely revised edition, 16th volume, Verlag FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1908.
- W. Witte: The rifled field guns C / 61, C / 64 and C / 64/67 , Verlag Ernst Siegfried Mittler and Son, Berlin 1867.
- WH Maw, J. Dredge: French Rifled Field Artillery , at Volume 13, Engineering, June 21, 1872, pp. 419-420. ( Digitized online )
- H. Müller: The development of field artillery from 1815 to 1870 , 2nd edition, Berlin 1893.
- Max Köhler: The Rise of Artillery up to the Great War , Barbara-Verlag Hugo Meiler, Munich 1938.
- Anton Ritter Jüptner von Jonstorff: The French 14-pf. rifled rear-loading field cannon (Reffye system) , in Mittheilungen about objects of artillery and genius nature, R. v. Waldheim, 1873, pages 13–28 ( digitized online )
- Richard Wille: Guide to the theory of weapons, Johann Ambrosius Barth Verlag, 1874, p. 189, ( digitized online ).
Individual evidence
- ↑ German: 7 pounder cannon with rifled barrel and breech, model 1867
- ↑ Richard Wille: Guide to weapon theory, page 189.
- ↑ The United service magazine , May 1872, pp. 8-14 [1]
