The Artillery Inspection in 1904
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The Artillery
Inspection (Артилериеската Инспекция) had the duty to prepare and to verify all the
projects, the plans and the technical conditions for the manufacture, the
check-up and the approval of the weapons of the army; to manage the activity
of the artillery arsenal, workshops and fire depots; to manage the storage and the maintenance of the
weapons and the requirements of the army; to prepare projects and plans for
the changes and the improvements introduced by the producers in matter of
weapons and military requirements and to verify and test them; to draft
instructions for the maintenance of weapons and ammunition; to make reports
on their state in peace and war; to furnish the completion of the cadres for the artillery
units; to manage all the artillery units of the army. The Artillery Inspection included the Inspector of
the Armaments, the Technical Department, the Line Supply
Department, the
Fortress Artillery Department, the Artillery Committee, the Technical Testing
Commission and the Artillery proving ground. The staff of the Artillery Inspection
was composed by one general, eleven officers and four clerks. The Artillery Inspector (Инспектор
на артилерията)
according with the Decree № 1/1895 was re-established with the rights
of a Division commander. Besides the unit assigned to the Infantry Divisions,
the whole artillery, with its staffs and establishments, were subordinate to
him. He had to take care only of the training and of the technical matters of
the divisional units. The Artillery Inspector had the following duties: to
prepare regulations, dispositions, instructions, and manuals about the supplying of the army
with weapons and ammunition and their preservation; to prepare in peace-time
a plan in order to supply with ammunition the army in wartime, specifying
also the number and the organization of the workshops, that would be
necessary to the army in wartime; to elaborate plans in order to supply of
weapons and ammunition the fortresses and the fortified areas; to collect
information about the improvements and changes introduced in weapons, firing
and “fire power”, making also reports to the Military Ministry for their
introduction. In addition he had to inspect the
military-educational, technical and tactical matters concerning all the
sectors, directions and departments of artillery, making written reports to
the Military Ministry about them. At the same time the Artillery Inspector,
as president of the Artillery Committee, was charged to make reports on the
conditions of the weapons of the army and to suggest the amount and the type
of what had to be acquired for the need of the army. The Inspector
of the Armaments (Инспектор
на въоръжението)
was the first deputy chef of the
Artillery Inspection. His tasks were to look after the state of all the
weapons and the requirements of the army; to take care of the breakdowns of
the weapons and to report all the breakdowns that had to be send to the
arsenal to be repaired; to check the weapons of the units of the army every
two years and to make a report on their conditions; to prepare instructions
on the maintenance of the weapons, proposing suggestions in order to improve
the state of their conservation; to carry out test of fire in the artillery
units and to direct the fire of the “mass of artillery”. He was also the
president the Technical Testing Commission. The Technical
Department (Техническата част)
of the Artillery Inspection was directed
from a chief “with high artillery instruction”. It had the duty to look after
devices, changes and
repairs of the weapons of infantry, artillery and cavalry of the army and of
the fleet; to be concerned with all the technical matters concerning the
arsenal, factories, workshops and fire depots, that manufactured and repaired
weapons, ammunition and artillery wagons. The Technical Department had to prepare programs to test weapons, gunpowder,
ammunition, artillery wagons and everything was needed for training and
instructing the troops; to settle technical conditions and instructions to
control the weapons assigned to the army and the fleet; to prepare sketches
for the weapons and plans for the achievement of the controls on the weapons
manufacturing. The approval of technical specifications, instructions for the
reception and sketches of weapons was carried out by the Artillery
Inspection, on the condition that the Technical Department had checked them. Finally the Technical Department had to write the
weapons specifications as well as the instructions for their conservation,
storage, cleaning, assembly and dismantling. The Chief of the Technical Department (Началник на Техническата
част) had the task to extract from the military literature
information about the technical advance of the weapons and to make written
reports to the Artillery Inspector. As delegate of the Inspector of the
Artillery, he had to inspect the arsenal, the factories, the workshops and
the fire depots with references to the manufacture and the technical repair
of the weapons. About these inspections he had to make written report these
for the approval of the Artillery Inspector. The Line
Supply Department (Строево-домакинската
част) had to look after the
supplying the line units of the artillery with officers, N.C.O.s
and soldiers, taking care of the education and training of the staff and the
cadres of the artillery units of the army. The Fortress Artillery Department (Крепостно-артилерийската
част) managed the whole activity of the three fortress artillery
battalions and of the coast artillery. The Artillery
Committee (Артилерийският комитет)
was
an important advisory body of the Artillery
Inspection charged to examine issues concerning weapons and fire. By right
the Artillery Inspector was its president, while its members were the
Inspector of the armaments, the chief of the
Fortress Artillery, the chief of the Line Supply Department, the commanders
of the artillery brigade and regiments of the Sofia garrison, the commander
of the Sofia fortress artillery battalion, the head of the arsenal of Sofia. All
the members were officers of the The issues to examine by the Artillery Committee
could be introduced by the Military Minister, the Artillery Inspector and by
every member of the Commission through its president. The issues discussed
during the meeting were presented to the chiefs of
the services of the Artillery Inspection. The decisions of the Artillery
Committee according to the regulations had to be made with two third majority of its permanent
members and were presented by the president to the Military Minister. After
his approval, they put back in force. The Technical
Testing Commission (Изпитателната техническа
комисия) was
an advisory body of the Artillery Inspection. It was composed from officers
of the |