The Long Life of the "French 75"

[Art]

The French Mlle. 1897 75mm field gun was one of histories great weapons. It's main innovation was a hydraulic reciprocating recoil system that allowed it to maintain its position shot after shot along with a very fast ejection and reloading system. A well trained crew could maintain very high rates of fire for long periods. With shrapnel rounds against infantry it was every bit as effective as German machine guns and in direct fire with high explosive ammunition it was equally useful against ground defenses.

It is the direct ancestor of all modern artillery.

The big liability of the gun was it was purely direct fire. Over time more versatile howitzers rendered it increasingly out of date as a field gun. However it was extensively modified (sometimes into a virtually new gun,) at least in US service, because we had adopted it in WWI and had the guns and large stocks of ammunition (75x350mmR) on hand and cranked out more and better ammo for it as the war went on. At the start of the war it was used (unmodified) mainly in the Pacific Theatre as self propelled artillery mounted mainly on Half Tracks. Shortening up the gun and its recoil mechanism as well as lightening it allowed it to be used on everything from B25 bombers to medium and light tanks, the last being the M24 Chaffee which was in US service into the early 1970s. The Germans used large numbers of them on the Atlantic Wall where their direct fire capabilities were actually an advantage. On the Sherman, With good AP ammunition it was effective against most mid war tanks out to 500 meters though it was ineffective against later (Panther - Tiger) German tanks. It also had problems with late war Pzkw IV tanks when engaged from the front. It was absolutely lethal against any Italian or Japanese armor.

Over the years a wide variety of ammunition was used, including shrapnel, high explosive, cannister and a variety of armor piercing rounds.

So long live le soixante-quinze.

A "French 75" in action with US troops in 1918.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiiwCbVgCOw

[lyman]

I have a friend that has one,

the Marine's wanted to buy it from him for some reason, and he suggested a trade,
he wanted one of the Huey's he flew, and they declined

[Vern Humphrey]

Notice in the film the use of the gunner's quadrant (on seats on the breech) to check elevation (which in the Artillery is called "quadrant.")

[bruce]

The French and British both came to the early years of the war w/ cannons ill suited to the developing conditions. The Germans came with a howitzer that fired less rapidly but offered the advantage of being able to range into the trenches, etc. Combined w/ machine guns, this was very effective for WWI. IIRC, the US Long Tom was either a French development or a US adaptation which served very well through WWII and beyond. Sincerely. bruce.

[Art]

The French and British both came to the early years of the war w/ cannons ill suited to the developing conditions. The Germans came with a howitzer that fired less rapidly but offered the advantage of being able to range into the trenches, etc. Combined w/ machine guns, this was very effective for WWI. IIRC, the US Long Tom was either a French development or a US adaptation which served very well through WWII and beyond. Sincerely. bruce.

You are correct.

French WWI doctrine was the result of the Franco-Prussian war which resulted in a humiliating defeat for France. The French were comening off a successful war with Austria which as one fellow said proved only that an army using the tactics of the early 19th century could defeat an army using the tactics of the 18th century (bit of hyperbole there.) The Prussians were a different breed of cat, and that combined with the fact that the French seemed to have forgotten that telegraphs and railways had been invented along with overconfidence and grossly incompetent staff work led to some severe butt kickings by the Prussians and the French agreeing to an embarrassing peace settlement.

The default position of the French when things didn't go well was Napoleon and it was figured by the French brass hats that his emphasis on the attack was the secret sauce of his success. Soooo....in a typical piece of French extremism, the French army was converted into a pure assault force. The "75" became the only, and I mean the only, field piece in the army because it was able to keep up with and support the ever advancing infantry. Of course the French completely forgot Hiram Maxim and his imitators and so much of the French field army was wiped out in mass attacks against dug in machine guns with interlocking fields of fire it is a miracle their army remained combat effective. Losses were especially heavy among incredibly brave company grade officers leading from the front. Then, as you said, when trench warfare set in they had no artillery capable of indirect fire. The "75" did, however, do yeoman work against German assaults where rapid fire from these guns with shrapnel shells stacked up almost as many German bodies as the machine guns had French in 1914. If they'd had a cannister round they would have stacked up even more.

[Vern Humphrey]

The French claimed to have invented indirect fire in 1915. When the US entered the war, US artillery units were equipped and trained by the French. Virginia National Guard officers challenged them, and had the man who invented indirect fire during the Civil War write a pamphlet.

Milton Wylie Humphrey (or Humphreys), my first cousin (three times removed) wrote:

'

My piece opened first and was immediately answered, and my third or fourth round cutting away the Yankee colors, they shelled us so vigorously and accurately with several guns that we were compelled to move to a place nearby where we could not be seen for the timber in front of us and the smoke behind us rising from the woods beyond the road which were on fire.'
This was a perfect opportunity for Humphreys to try his theory of indirect fire. He knew that the fort was approximately a mile away. From experience, he knew the range of his cannon. By using trigonometry, he calculated how far he would have to elevate the muzzle of his piece to shoot over the stand of black pines in front of him and drop a shell into the vicinity of the fort. The distance from the gun to the fort formed the base of a triangle; the trajectory of the shell was the hypotenuse. Once the shell expended its momentum, it would drop to earth.
Humphreys placed a man on a nearby hill to direct his fire, which he kept up the rest of the day and well into the following day. Under orders to fire slowly, due to a shortage of ammunition, he fired only 65 shots. The Union commander, Colonel Carr B. White, sent an armed patrol out on the 20th to locate the cannon, whereupon the Rebels prudently withdrew.

Union losses were light?two killed, seven wounded and nine missing. There is no record of Confederate casualties. Much of the damage sustained was to the landscape around the fort and, no doubt, to the Union soldiers' nerves. They had no idea where the shells were coming from.

In a modest explanation of what he had done, Humphreys wrote: 'The term 'indirect fire' is firing upon a point or place (A) from a point (B) which is not visible to people at (A). It is necessary, of course, that the trajectory or path of the projectile should pass above the top of the 'mask' or intervening object. At Fayetteville, May 19 and 20, 1863, the writer used a grove as a mask, but at Winchester, Va., Sept. 19, 1864, he successfully used a low hill. I claim no credit for the 'invention'; the thing is so obvious. In fact, if I invented it, I did not do it at Fayetteville, but in my day-dreams when I was about 8 years old.'

After the war, Humphreys returned to Washington College to finish his education. In 1869, he graduated with a master's degree in ancient languages. From 1872 to 1874 he studied in Europe, earning a doctorate from the University of Leipzig. Upon returning to the United States, he taught at Vanderbilt University and the University of Texas. In 1887, he accepted a professorship at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where he remained until his retirement in 1912. Although he lived a life that had brought many honors, titles and degrees, Humphreys once wrote, 'I became known as the 'First Gunner of Bryan's Battery,' a title in which I take more pride in than any other ever bestowed upon me.'

Humphreys died in 1928 and was buried in the chapel at the University of Virginia. His brilliant innovation ? indirect firing ? lives on.

[Ltdave]

Beale AFB's museum had a lot of Army (Armor) stuff because it opened in 1942 as a Tank Training base with the 13th Armored Division. because of that, we found one on a USGI carriage but it had had the barrel torch cut just ahead of the breech. we dismounted everything, trued up the ends, built a jig and welded it all back together. no body filler was used and other than being about 1-1/2 to 2 inches shorter than 'as issued' no one could tell it had been a de-mil. we used it our reenacting (living museum) group with black powder charges. the primer pocket on the cases was machined/modified for a 209 shotgun primer. the only problem is that even with only a small 1 pound charge, it would set the barrel back and after about a dozen firings, we had to block it up and use a come-along to pull it back from the recoiled position. the system had failed a long time prior and we never played around trying to get it to run with the light charges we used...

[Johnny P]

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