Plans of modernisation
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The introduction of the first QF gun in 1897 -
the French built canon de 75mm Ml. 1897 - meant a true revolution in gun
design and involved a mass re-equipping of almost every army in the world. It
was a formidable weapon that made every other field gun in the world
obsolete: every army had to replaced its artillery park or be entirely
outgunned. This re-equipment took place between 1898 and 1914 and in many
countries had not been completed when World War I broke out. The superiority of the 75mm was due to the
combination of the recoil system, the trail spade, a quick-acting breech,
fixed ammunition, the independent line of sight, abatage,
and the use of an automatic fuze-setter. Most of
these mechanisms were separately utilized prior to 1897 on various guns, but
the French Army put all them together on a field gun, added a shield to
protect the gunners against enemy fire and obtained a weapon that could be
brought into action behind six horses and that had a rate of fire approaching
twenty aimed rounds a minute. At that time the Bulgarian artillery had only
a large number of antiquated 75mm and 87mm Krupp guns of various models. They
were screw-breech black-powder cannons, with no recoil mechanism and shields.
Their short range, lack of shields, and slow rate of fire endangered their
crews, while the black powder revealed their position. The lack of recoil
mechanism caused difficulties in aiming and providing concentrated artillery
barrages on enemy targets. This simply meant that the Bulgarian Artillery
needed more modern weapons. In General Rjaskov
emphasized that the countries near In 1911 general Tzenov
wrote a detailed report to the War Minister, stating that the whole Bulgarian
not QF artillery park (324 guns) was unreliable, since one
QF battery alone was able to destroy 29 not QF batteries. In
order to effectively use the great existing stock of obsolete 87mm shells, he
considered necessary to introduce the following modifications in 306 – 87mm
and 18 – 75mm not quick-firing guns: 1) to secure the fire control in every tactical
condition, the recoil should be minimised through fixed or elastic trail
spade : the adaptation of the fixed
trail spade required transforming the tube and the gun-carriage into a QF
system, mounting a cradle and a shield; 2)
the adaptation of the
chamber and tube is required in order to use a brass cartridge (single
piece ammunition) instead of
propelling charge and shell (the old two piece ammunition): this modification required the delivery of
brass cartridges and the remodelling of the limbers and caissons of the gun
system; 3)
to speed up and simplify the
graduation of delayed action fuze a mechanical fuze-setter should be introduced, but this required the
correction of the thread of the fuze. General Tzenov added that to make the whole not QF artillery into
a real QF weapon the cost would be 14,000 levas per
gun: that meant for 324 guns a total amount of 4,536,000 levas, not
counting the cost of the transport of the guns to and from the factories that
had to modify them, the cost of the cartridges
and the cost of the adaptation of the limbers and the caissons. Moreover due to
these radical modifications, the weight of the gun would rise up to 1300 kg. In order to cut down the expenses, he
considered the hypothesis to change the not QF guns in guns à tir accéléré,
adding spring-loaded trail spade and adapting them to use brass
cartridges. This would cost 5,000 levas per gun:
that meant a total amount of 1,620,000 levas, not counting the cost of the assembly of the
parts in Sofia arsenal, the cost of the cartridges and the cost of the adaptation of the limbers and the
caissons. Finally, he considered the hypothesis of supplying modern
optical instruments and fuze-setter in order to
improve the fire control, with an additional cost of 436,000 levas at least. After this detailed analysis, general Tzenov suggested to use for the best the not QF guns
without making any change, except the adoption of goniometric sight, quadrant
elevation and fuze setter, which should be useful
even if the not QF guns were assigned to the fortress battalions.
Furthermore, he asked to increase successively the QF artillery, adding three
QF batteries to every regiment. He thought that in this way within three or
four years Bulgarian Army would be able to modernize its artillery without
raising the military budget. The War Minister, lt. gen. Nikiforov,
answered that : 1)
the hypothesis of
introducing modern sighting devices should be examined immediately and, in
the event of a positive outcome, it should be extended to mountain artillery
as well; 2)
he
agreed with the proposal to gradually increase the number of the QF field
batteries. Therefore gen. Tzenov
wrote both to Krupp and Schneider to propose to supply the sighting devices
and fuze setters for the 54 not QF field batteries,
showing precisely the requirement that the material should satisfy: 1)
the sighting devices should be equipped with
goniometric sight to calculate the angle of sight and to aim the gun and
might be they could be fixed firmly to the gun or removable; 2)
the goniometric sight should be graduated in millièmes and the bar sight in hectometres, with a dash
every 50 m; 3)
the fuze setter should
have the same thread of the fuze and should be
graduated as the bar sight, with every 50 m, with the correction in
combustion corresponding to 1/1000 of the height at a distance of 2000 m, it
must be precise and easy and quick to use. If
interested, the two firms should sent to the Sofia Arsenal the projects of
the various devices and one or two specimens for the preliminary tests. For
this purpose gen. Tzenov
attached to his letter: 1) a sketch of the 87mm gun, 2) a drawing, and, if
necessary, also a sample of the T&P fuze, 3)
the firing table of the gun. However, nothing was
implemented before the outbreak of the Balkan war. Actually, in 1912,
every artillery regiment existing in peace formed another regiment armed with
not QF guns (2 divisions with 3 six-guns batteries each). During the war some artillery divisions
were rearmed with QF guns captured to the Turks. After the Interallied War gradually one division of every not QF
artillery regiment received modern Krupp guns and in September 1915 each
artillery brigade had two QF regiments and only one not QF artillery
division. Directing circles to calculate the angle of
sight for not QF 87mm field guns were introduced
only in 1915 with the Order on artillery Nr. 20. |