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More excellent images in this most interesting thread. Just look at the effort those matelots are required to put into moving that gun. It’s no wonder that the Royal Navy attach so much importance to the Field Gun event. I only ever ran the Brickwoods version which was deemed a safer alternative and continues to this day without the obstacles used in the traditional Field Gun event and that was exhausting enough, but so much fun. These poor guys look exhausted and they’ve only just left the dockyard.

Four views of one of the twelve 6-inch BL Howitzers that saw service in South Africa. These photographs were taken by Captain Stephen Slocum, US Military Attaché with the South African Field Force. Probably taken at, or near, Paardeberg.

Captain Slocum's report states that on 26 February 1900 "Three Vickers-Maxims and four 6-inch howitzers arrived [at Paardeberg] and were placed in position with the other guns south of the [Modder] river, making a total of 98 guns of all kinds, exclusive of the Maxim machine guns, which were not classed as artillery". The final photograph, also by Slocum, shows these four guns in position.














At my prep-school we were lucky enough to have one of the last surviving howitzers as our war memorial. Taken in the late 60s, this very grainy "Instamatic" photograph shows the gun before it was restored and removed to a museum.



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At the beginning of the ABW, the War Office believed that the Boers would defend Pretoria, and that there was a high likelihood that the British would have to lay siege to the Transvaal capital. If such a scenario played out, it was assumed the Pretoria forts would be heavily armed with 155mm Creusot ‘Long Toms’. The heaviest mobile howitzers the British possessed at this time were the two batteries of 6-inch howitzers (see post above), which were no match for the Creusots in terms of firepower and range.

Thus, an urgent request for heavier guns was issued, which resulted in the location of four available 24cm [9.45-inch] howitzers on mobile mountings, in the stock of the Austro-Hungarian firm of Škoda, of Plzeň (now in Czechia). A German agent was already negotiating the purchase of these guns, so the War Office had to act quickly, managing to secure the howitzers in late February 1900. Some accounts suggest that the German agent was acting on behalf of the Boers, but this appears to have been pure propaganda, as by February 1900, the ZAR clearly wouldn’t have been able to import the guns due to the "blockade" of Lourenço Marques.

RGA officers were immediately despatched to Austria to learn how to work the guns, and a company was placed in readiness to embark, being told only that they would be equipped with four large-calibre howitzers. The nature of the armament was to remain secret until the ship carrying the guns had reached Gibraltar, when the Royal Garrison Artillery were permitted to open the sealed packet containing the provisional handbook for the howitzers. At Trieste, the four guns were loaded onto a transport supposedly sailing “direct to Shanghai”. However, on 6 April they were transferred to a Cape-bound vessel at Gibraltar.

Safely arriving at the Cape, the howitzers were railed to De Aar, where it had been arranged that No. 92 Company Royal Garrison Artillery would take charge of them. However, due to sickness the strength of this company was so depleted that there were only enough remaining men to work two guns. Thus, only two of the four howitzers were transported north to the railhead at Roodeval (between Kroonstad and the Vaal River). From here they were inspanned and drawn north by 32 oxen each, with a full battalion of infantry as escort. According to Captain Slocum they arrived at Johannesburg on 2 June.

As the expected siege of Pretoria never materialised, the howitzers proved to be of no use in South Africa. After the taking of Pretoria, they were mounted in Fort Klapperkop, where they remained silent. According to Lionel Crook just one of the “thousands or rounds that formed part of the Škoda contract” was fired. “That round was fired when one day Colonel Sir Stanley von Donop, R.A., was on his way with some mounted infantry to withdraw a picket which had been attacked on a hill outside Pretoria. The officer commanding the 9.45-inch howitzers, who had been waiting weeks for the chance of a shot, spotted the objective of the mounted infantry, and promptly fired a round in advance of them which fell just where the picket had been. The Boer force took flight” (Lionel Crook, 2003, p. 250).



The six photographs below were taken by Captain Stephen Slocum, US Military Attaché with the South African Field Force. The first two were probably taken on 2 June 1900, and those of the guns installed at Fort Klapperkop, sometime shortly after 7 June.

The final Slocum image shows what remained of a truckload of Škoda 9.45-inch shells after they had been destroyed by the Boers at Vredefort Station, while en route to Johannesburg.

Slocum, 1901, pp. 75 & 76: "Two 9.45-inch howitzers and four 6-inch ones, arrived from rail-head on the 2nd June. These 9.45-inch howitzers are made by Skoda of Pilsen, Austria, using shells weighing 780 pounds, with 30 pounds ammonium powder per shell as a bursting charge. The weight of carriage and gun is about 4½ tons each. The gun and carriage were transported separately, being each hauled, the gun on temporary carriage, by thirty-two oxen. It could be fired only from a fixed position. These guns had never been used, and were intended for the expected siege of Pretoria".

































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