During World War I, artillery played a key role on the battlefield. The hostilities lasted for four whole years, although many believed that they would be as fleeting as possible. First of all, this was due to the fact that Russia built the organization of its artillery on the principle of the transience of armed confrontation. Therefore, the war, as expected, was supposed to be maneuverable. Tactical mobility became one of the main qualities of artillery.
Target
The main goal of artillery in World War I was to defeat the enemy's manpower. This was especially effective, since there were no serious fortified positions at that time. The core of the artillery that worked in the field was made up of light cannons, the main ammunition for which was shrapnel. Thenmilitary tacticians believed that due to the high speed of the projectile, it was possible to perform all the tasks assigned to artillery.
In this regard, the French cannon of the 1897 model stood out, which, in terms of its technical and tactical characteristics, was among the leaders on the battlefield. At the same time, in terms of its initial speed, it was significantly inferior to the Russian three-inch gun, but it compensated for this due to profitable shells, which were spent more economically during the battle. Moreover, the gun had a high stability, which led to a significant rate of fire.
In Russian artillery during the First World War, the three-inch gun stood out, which was especially effective during flanking fire. She could cover an area up to 800 meters with a width of about 100 meters with fire.
Many military experts noted that Russian and French field guns had no equal in the fight to destroy.
Equipment of the Russian Corps
The field artillery of the First World War stood out among other armies for its powerful equipment. True, if before the war light guns were mainly used, then during the battles a shortage of heavy artillery began to be felt.
Basically, the organization of Russian artillery troops was the result of an underestimation of machine-gun and rifle fire by opponents. Artillery was required to primarily support the infantry attack, and not conduct independent artillery preparation.
Organization of German artillery
Germanartillery in the First World War was organized in a fundamentally different way. Here everything was built on an attempt to foresee the nature of the coming battle. The Germans were armed with corps and divisional artillery. Therefore, by 1914, when positional warfare began to be actively used, the Germans began to equip each division with howitzers and heavy guns.
This led to the fact that field maneuvering became the main means for achieving tactical success, besides, the German army surpassed many of its opponents in artillery power. It was also important that the Germans took into account the increased initial velocity of shells.
Situation during the war
Thus, during the First World War, artillery became the leading means of warfare for many powers. The main qualities that began to be presented to field guns were mobility in conditions of mobile warfare. This trend began to determine the organization of the battle, the quantitative ratio of troops, the proportional ratio of heavy and light artillery.
So, at the very beginning of the war, the Russian troops were armed with about three and a half guns per thousand bayonets, the Germans had about 6.5 of them. At the same time, Russia had almost 7 thousand light guns and only about 240 heavy guns. The Germans had 6.5 thousand light guns, but almost 2 thousand heavy guns.
These figures clearly illustrate the views of military leaders on the use of artillery in the First World War. They can also give an impression of those resources,with which each of the key powers entered into this confrontation. It is obvious that it was the German artillery in World War I that was more in line with the requirements of modern warfare.
Next, we will take a closer look at the brightest examples of German and Russian artillery.
Bomb thrower
Russian artillery in the First World War was widely represented by bombers of the Aazen system. These were special stock mortars, which the famous designer Nils Aazen created in France in 1915, when it became obvious that the available units of military equipment did not allow the Russian army to fight on a par with opponents.
Aazen himself had French citizenship, but was Norwegian by origin. His bomb launcher was produced in Russia from 1915 to 1916, and was actively used by Russian artillery in the First World War.
The bomber was very reliable, it had a steel barrel, it was loaded from the side of the treasury in a separate type. The projectile itself was a cartridge case used for the Gras rifle, which was outdated by that time. A large number of these rifles were transferred by France to Russian troops. This mortar had a hinged bolt, and the carriage was of a frame type, standing on four pillars. The lifting mechanism was firmly attached to the rear of the barrel. The total weight of the gun was about 25 kilograms.
The bomber could fire direct fire, and it also had a grenade loaded with shrapnel in its ammunition load.
At the same time, he had one, but a very significant drawback, due tofor which shooting became unsafe for the calculation itself. The thing was that with the upper bolt open, the firing pin was sunk to a very shallow depth. It was necessary to carefully monitor that the sleeve was sent manually, and not with the help of a shutter. This was especially important when shooting at an angle of about 30 degrees.
If these rules were not respected, then a premature shot occurred when the shutter was not fully closed.
76mm anti-aircraft gun
One of the most popular guns in the artillery of the Russian army in the First World War was the 76-mm anti-aircraft gun. For the first time in our country, it was made for firing at air targets.
It was designed by military engineer Mikhail Rozenberg. It was supposed that it would be specifically used against airplanes, but in the end such a proposal was rejected. It was believed that there was no need for special anti-aircraft artillery.
Only in 1913 the project was approved by the Main Rocket and Artillery Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Russia. The following year, he was transferred to the Putilov factory. The gun turned out to be semi-automatic, by that time it was realized that special artillery for firing at air targets was needed.
Since 1915, Russian artillery in the First World War began to use this gun. For this, a separate battery was equipped, armed with four guns, which were based on armored vehicles. Spare charges were also stored in them.
During the war, these guns were sent to the front in 1915. They are in the firstIn the same battle, they were able to repel the attack of 9 German aircraft, while two of them were shot down. These were the first aerial targets shot down by Russian artillery.
Some of the cannons were mounted not on cars, but on railway cars, similar batteries began to form by 1917.
The gun turned out so successful that it was also used during the Great Patriotic War.
Fortress artillery
Fortress artillery was still actively used in the First World War, and after it ended, the need for such weapons finally disappeared. The reason was that the defensive role of fortresses faded into the background.
At the same time, Russia had a very extensive fortress artillery. By the beginning of the war, there were four artillery regiments in service, which were combined into brigades, there were also 52 separate fortress battalions, 15 companies and 5 so-called sortie batteries (in wartime conditions, their number increased to 16).
In total, during the years of the First World War, about 40 artillery systems were used in the Russian army, however, most of them were very outdated by that time.
After the end of the war, the fortress artillery practically ceased to be used at all.
Naval artillery
A lot of the battles took place at sea. The naval artillery of the First World War played a decisive role in them.
For example, large-caliber naval gunsrightly considered the main weapon at sea. Therefore, by the total number of heavy guns and the total weight of the fleet, it was possible to determine how strong the fleet of a particular country was.
By and large, all the heavy guns of that time could be conditionally divided into two types. These are English and German. The first category included guns developed by Armstrong, and the second - manufactured by Krupp, which became famous for its steel during the Second World War.
The British artillery guns had a barrel, which was covered with a casing from above. In the German artillery of the First World War, special cylinders were used, which were put on top of each other in such a way that the outer row completely covered the places of internal joints and associations.
The German design was adopted by most countries, including Russia, as it was objectively considered more progressive. English guns lasted until the 20s of the XX century, and after that they also switched to German technology.
These guns were used on ships for naval battles. They were especially common in the era of dreadnoughts, differing only in minor details, in particular the number of guns in the tower. For example, for the French battleship Normandy, a special four-gun turret was developed, in which there were two pairs of guns at once.
Heavy artillery
As already different, the heavy artillery of the First World War determined the outcome of more than one battle. She was characterizedthe ability to fire at long distances, and was able to effectively hit the enemy from cover.
Before the First World War, heavy guns were almost always part of the fortress artillery, but heavy field artillery at that time was just beginning to form. At the same time, the urgent need for it was felt even during the Russo-Japanese War.
The First World War, almost from its very beginning, had a pronounced positional character. It became obvious that without heavy guns it would not be possible to carry out a single successful offensive of the troops. After all, for this it was necessary to effectively destroy the enemy's first line of defense, as well as move further, while remaining in a safe shelter. Field heavy artillery became one of the main ones during the war, including siege functions.
In 1916-1917, on the initiative of Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich, who at that time held the post of inspector general of artillery, a reserve was formed for the High Command, called special-purpose heavy artillery. It consisted of six artillery brigades.
The formation of this unit took place in conditions of high secrecy in Tsarskoye Selo. In total, during the war, more than five hundred such batteries were created, which included more than two thousand guns.
Big Bertha
The most famous German artillery weapon during the First World War was the Big Bertha mortar, also called FatBerta.
The project was developed back in 1904, but this gun was built and put into mass production only in 1914. The work was carried out at the factories of Krupp.
The main creators of "Big Bertha" were a major German designer Professor Fritz Rauschenberger, who worked in the German concern "Krupp", as well as his colleague and predecessor named Draeger. It was they who nicknamed this 420-mm cannon "Fat Bertha", dedicating it to the granddaughter of Alfred Krupp, the "cannon king" of the early 20th century, who brought his company to the world leaders, making the company one of the most successful among other weapons manufacturers.
At the time when this mortar was launched into industrial production, its actual owner was the granddaughter of the legendary Krupp, whose name was Berta.
Mortar "Big Bertha" was actively used in the artillery of Germany. In the First World War, it was intended to destroy the strongest fortifications of that time. At the same time, the gun itself was produced in two versions at once. The first was semi-stationary and bore the code "Gamma type", and the towed one was designated as "M type". The mass of the guns was very large - 140 and 42 tons, respectively. Only about half of all mortars produced were towed, the rest had to be disassembled into three parts in order to move them from place to place using steam tractors. It took at least 12 hours to assemble the entire unit on alert.
Rate of fireguns reached one shot in 8 minutes. At the same time, its power was so great that the rivals preferred not to face it on the battlefield.
It is interesting that different types of ammunition were used for different types of guns. For example, the so-called type M fired powerful and heavy projectiles, the mass of which exceeded 800 kilograms. And the range of one shot reached almost nine and a half kilometers. For the Gamma type, lighter projectiles were used, which, on the other hand, could fly over 14 kilometers, and heavier ones, which reached the target at a distance of 12.5 kilometers.
The impact force of the mortar was also achieved due to the large number of fragments, each of the shells scattered into about 15 thousand pieces, many of which could be deadly. Among the defenders of the fortresses, armor-piercing shells were considered the most terrible, which could not stop even the ceilings of steel and concrete with a thickness of about two meters.
The Russian army suffered serious losses from "Big Bertha". This is despite the fact that its characteristics were at the disposal of intelligence even before the start of the First World War. In many domestic fortresses, work began on the modernization of old and the construction of fundamentally new structures for defense. They were originally designed to hit the shells that the Big Bertha was equipped with. The thickness of the overlap for this ranged from three and a half to five meters.
When the First World War began, German troops began to effectively use the "Bertha" during the siege of the Belgian andFrench fortresses. They sought to break the will of the enemy, forcing the garrisons to surrender one by one. As a rule, this required only two mortars, about 350 shells and no more than 24 hours, during which the siege continued. On the Western Front, this mortar was even nicknamed the "fort killer".
In total, 9 of these legendary guns were produced at Krupp's enterprises, which participated in the capture of Liege, the siege of Verdun. To capture the Osovets fortress, 4 "Big Berts" were brought at once, 2 of which were successfully destroyed by the defenders.
By the way, there is a very common belief that "Big Bertha" was used for the siege of Paris in 1918. But in reality this is not so. The French capital was shelled by the Colossal gun. "Big Bertha" still remained in the memory of many as one of the most powerful artillery pieces of the First World War.
