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During the World
War 1 the Bulgarian Army captured a lot of weapons and hundreds of guns. Even
if I have not accurate information about the use of captured guns, it is very
probable that many of them were assigned to Bulgarian units, especially in
1915-16. Also during the Interallied War the Bulgarian Army had used many
guns captured from the Turks, 49 field and 63 fortress guns according with
official history of the war. In 1913-14 they were assigned to artillery
regiments in order to achieve the established strength. lt.col.
Napier, the British Military Attaché in Sofia
before World War I (August 1914 – September 1915), affirmed that, when he
visited gen. Gesov in Plovdiv,
he saw “a number of good Krupp guns recently captured from the Turks”. Gen.
Gesov told him that “thanks to the latter he was able to fit the Division out
complete with Q.F. guns” (Experiences
of a Military Attache in the Balkans, p.47).
Since in
1915-16 Germany could
deliver only a little number of guns, so the Bulgarian Army had to utilize
the guns captured in Serbia
in 1915 and in Romania
in 1916-17. This was easy, since both Serbians and Romanians had the same
field guns that Bulgarians used (Schneider and Krupp). But soon frictions
arose in sharing the war booty among the different Armies involved in the
fightings.
After the
defeat of the Serbian Army, when a considerable amount of artillery material
fell into the victors’ hands, the Germans quickly established a booty
commission, which began to confiscate war material and raw materials and
transport them away. It was only later that a distribution key was elaborated
for the booty, providing for 30% of the material each for Germany, Austria-Hungary
and Bulgaria and about 10%
for Turkey.
During the
offensive against Romania
in 1916, German High Command held the view that every unit should keep the
booty it had made. But the Austro-Hungarian Supreme Command insisted on
sharing the war material, above all artillery, according to a distribution
key based on the numerical ratios of the troops involved. In addition
recaptured weapons should be returned to their original owners. However
during the whole war the Germans proved to be by no means willing to dispense
with important booty material in favour of their allies, even if they were
still far inferior in the field of artillery.
In any case
the majority of the artillery material captured by Germans and Austrians in Serbia and Romania
was later delivered to the Bulgarian Army, since neither Germany nor Austria-Hungary introduced those
guns in their Army. The first was able to manufacture enough artillery pieces
with its own industry, while the second judged that the number of the
captured guns did not justify a special ammunition production. During the war
Germany ceded also a
certain amount of guns captured in Russia. Some of them were used as
coast artillery or as improvised antiaircraft guns.
Bulgaria too was very
rapid in organizing the requisition of war materials in the occupied
territory. On 25 November 1915 the 2nd main firearms depot in Shumen built up the 5th
intermediate depot, which was assigned to the 1st Army and placed
at Leskovatz. Its task was to collect weapons and ammunition left by the
enemy and to dispatch them to Sofia.
Till the end of 1915 43 wagons of war trophies were sent to the capital,
where they were selected and, if possible, repaired in order to be used by
the Bulgarian Army.
The 2nd
Army had the 2nd firearms unit, that was
built up by the 1st main firearms depot Sofia on 29 May 1916 and was
administratively subordinated to the 5th intermediate depot. It is
very probable that also the 3rd Army had similar unit, since
during the campaign against Romania
the Bulgarian Army captured a lot of weapons and ammunition.
The enemy weapons were a source of maintenance so
mattering for the Bulgarian Army that on 30 March 1916, on a proposal of the Artillery
Technical Committee, the Council of Ministers emitted a decree in order to
intensify the activity of searching the war materials hidden by the enemy.
The State promised to pay a compensation to the citizens of the recently annexed territories, who showed where
they were stored. The amount of the compensations for the materials rose to
10% of their value.
It is not easy
to know the exact number of the captured guns used by the Bulgarians during
the World War, but it was very height. For instance at the end of the war,
the 3rd Heavy Artillery Regiment was armed with a total of 12 howitzers
and 24 guns: among them there were 8 Turkish howitzers and 8 Romanian, 6
Turkish and 2 Greek guns. The origin of 4 of the remaining guns is not clear.
The Turkish guns were war trophies of the Balkan War, while the Romanian and
Greek guns had been captured in 1916. Only 4 heavy howitzers and 4 long guns
had been delivered by the German Army.
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