Canon de 32 Modèle 1870/84 à Glissement: Seeing Action in Two World Wars

(From a stereoscope card. Author's collection)

     Somewhere near the French city of Reims, a battery of French Canon de 32 Modèle 1870/84 à Glissement railway guns fire on German positions, likely during the Second Battle of the Marne which raged from July 15, 1918 to August 6, 1918. In 1915, thirty of these railway guns were constructed by the Schneider-Creusot company using former Canon de 32C Modèle 1870/84 coastal defense guns. The 320mm (32cm) gun was capable of firing a 855lb. high-explosive shell to a maximum range of 13 miles and a skilled crew could maintain a rate of fire of one round every four minutes. The carriage was designed by Schneider-Creusot to house the guns and consisted of a rectangular steel base on two, five-axle bogies. The gun used a sliding recoil system (Glissement) in which the gun cradle slid backward to absorb some of the recoil forces before having to be pushed back into battery. For firing, the gun could be elevated from 3 degrees to a maximum of 40 degrees. However, given the gun itself had no means of traverse, special curved track had to be constructed at the firing site in order to move the entire carriage along the track to obtain traverse. The curved track provided from 2 degrees of traverse up to 15 degrees. Any further angling risked instability when firing. To stabilize the carriage, once the firing position was selected, heavy wooden beams were used to reinforce the rail bed and then steel beams underneath the carriage were lowered onto the tracks and the carriage lifted onto jacks. The steel beams utilized friction between them and the track to further reduce the recoil effects. The apparatus on the back of the carriage was the shell hoist and the ammunition was in two parts, the projectile and the powder bag. The guns entered service in 1916 and served throughout the remainder of World War One and after the conflict ended, some were put into reserve.

     When World War Two began, eight Canon de 32 Modèle 1870/84 à Glissement railway guns were taken out of reserve and assigned to the 373e Regiment Artillerie Lourde sur Voie Ferrée (ALVF; Heavy Artillery on Railroad) with four guns placed with the 7e Bataillon ALVF and four with the 8e Bataillon AVLF. Both battalions were held in reserve at Seppois-le-Haut but in short order, the 7e Bataillon AVLF deployed to Hirtzbach while the 8e Bataillon AVLF was sent to Steinsoultz. Both of these locations were in the Alsace region of north-eastern France, near the German border. Following the German invasion, these guns plus one additional example were captured and put into German service under the designation 32 cm K(E) 657(f).

The Canon de 305 Modèle 1893/1896 TAZ: France’s “Colony” Railway Guns

 

A Canon de 305 Modèle 1893/1896 TAZ sending a round downrange. (Author’s Collection)

     In 1918, the French withdrew the eight Canon de 305 Modèle 1893/1896 TAZ (Tout-Azimuth) railway guns which had been in service since 1916 in order to refit them. The main reason for this was that the 305mm guns were simply too large a caliber for the carriages and so it was decided to replace them with a smaller gun. Chosen were eight Canon de 240 de Côte Modèle 1893 coastal defense guns that had originally been installed in French forts located in Dakar, Senegal and Saigon, Vietnam. The St. Chamond company, who constructed the 305mm railway gun carriage, handled the required modifications in order to fit the 240mm guns. The work was completed and in 1918, the Canon de 240 Modèle 1893/1896 TAZ railway guns were deployed and served out the remainder of World War One.

     The guns, sometimes nicknamed the “Colonies” due to them having been taken from French colonies, fired a 357lb. high-explosive shell to a maximum range of 15 miles. The shell used a separate powder charge and a trained crew could fire one round every three minutes. The gun sat on a turntable which could traverse 360 degrees but in practice, it was never traversed more than 10 degrees from either side of the centerline of the carriage due to instability caused by the recoil. When traversed, the gun had an elevation of 15 degrees up to 35 degrees but if the gun was parallel to the carriage, maximum elevation was only 29 degrees. Any higher and the breech would strike the carriage during recoil. The carriage, once a firing position was chosen, was ground anchored in place to help absorb some of the vertical forces created by firing. In addition, outriggers and screw jacks were used to create stability in the carriage. Finally, to lessen some of the recoil forces, there was a 4 degree elevated ramp the gun cradle rode up on before returning to battery. Loading the gun was accomplished by a elevated shell trolley at the rear of the carriage.

     The photograph depicts one of the Canon de 240 Modèle 1893/1896 TAZ guns, having just fired. Each of the gun crew visible are wearing the metal canister that held the Modèle 1917 Appareil Respiratoire Spécial (ARS 17) gas mask and so this can date the photograph to at least 1918 when the gun was in service or possibly in the immediate post-WW1 years as the ARS17 continued to be issued until it was replaced with the Modèle 1920 Appareil Respiratoire Spécial. This suggests that, despite the rather exposed firing position, the gun was in action rather than firing on a range. The crew has traversed the gun 90 degrees and has only deployed four of the eight outriggers. It is possible the powder charge was lessened to reduce the chance of the recoil tipping the carriage over or the crew was simply taking their chances. As was usual, none of the men remained on the carriage when the gun was fired. The man nearest the carriage was the gunner, having been the one who pulled the lanyard which fired the cannon. The box car held the powder and ammunition for the gun as well as other supplies. Wheelbarrows and railroad ties can be seen, the latter likely used during the construction of the ground anchors.

     When World War Two started, the eight guns were still in service with the 374e Regiment Artillerie Lourde sur Voie Ferrée (ALVF; Heavy Artillery on Railroad), four guns with the 10e Bataillon ALVF and four with the 11e Bataillon AVLF. These guns were situated in the south of France and all of them fell intact into German hands following a brief period of combat against Italian forces in June 1940. As was common practice for the Germans, they were pressed into service as the 24cm Kanone (E) 558 (f) and all eight were incorporated into the Atlantikwall (Atlantic Wall) coastal defenses that ran from the continental European coast all the way up through the Scandinavian coast. Four guns were positioned in Saint-Nazaire, France while the other four were sent to Narvik, Norway in 1942 before moving to Nærbø, Norway sometime in 1944.