Mountain gun
A mountain gun is an artillery weapon that is designed for use in mountainous regions.
A special feature of the mountain guns is the possibility of breaking them down into smaller, more easily transportable parts (partial loadability). This made it possible for the military units deployed in the mountains to bring them with mules or by hand in the mountains to the locations often not accessible by horses or vehicles. Depending on the size and structure of the gun, four to twelve partial loads were chosen for transport. The Imperial and Royal Mountain Troops had the Škoda 75 mm mountain gun M1915 , the German Alpine Corps had 48 field and mountain guns and the Italian side used the 65 mm mountain gun in the First World War. A well-known gun of the mountain divisions of the German Wehrmacht was the 7.5 cm mountain gun 36 . The first mountain gun of the Swiss Army , the mountain howitzer model 1841, corresponded, except for details, to the trolleybusier de 8 introduced in France in 1829 . In 1864 it was replaced by the Ord 1864 mountain cannon , both of which were muzzle-loaders.
Technically, mountain guns hardly differ from other guns. The biggest difference is the usually very large side and height alignment areas. On some guns, the barrels can be lowered as much as −10 ° to allow direct fire at enemy targets from a height. The lateral directional area, i.e. the area that the weapon can swivel to the left or right, is also enlarged, since it is often impossible to rotate the entire gun, especially in high mountain positions.
To make the guns lighter, a protective shield was often dispensed with. The special introduction of mountain guns to support the mountain troops was necessary because the movable guns at that time did not have the range of today's modern field and tank artillery howitzers. In addition, direct support for the infantry by attack aircraft was only developed in the course of the First World War.
In modern armies, the mountain artillery is no longer used due to the increased range of tank artillery and field artillery with self-propelled and rifled artillery.
See also
- 7.5 cm mountain gun 36
- 7.5 cm mountain cannon L / 17 M.08
- 7.5 cm mountain cannon M.15
- 10.5 cm mountain howitzer 40
- Mountain howitzer model 56
- Type 31 75 mm mountain gun
- Type 41 75 mm mountain gun
- Mountain howitzer model 1841 (Switzerland)
- Mountain cannon Ord 1864 (Switzerland)
- 7.5 cm mountain cannon Ord 1877 (Switzerland)
- 7.5 cm mountain cannon Ord 1906 (Switzerland)
- 7.5 cm mountain cannon 1933 L 22 (Switzerland)
literature
- M. Christian Ortner : The 7.5 cm mountain cannon. The most modern mountain gun of the Austro-Hungarian Army in World War I , Edition Winkler-Hermaden, Schleinbach 2019, ISBN 978-3-9504720-0-4
- Ian Hogg : 20th Century Artillery . Gondrom Verlag, Bindlach 2001, ISBN 3-8112-1878-6 .
