French 75

0 Canon de 75 mm modèle 1897 – Musée de l’armée à Paris 2. The French 75 mm field gun was a quick-firing field artillery piece adopted in March french 75. Its official French designation was: Matériel de 75mm Mle 1897. At the opening of World War I, in 1914, the French Army had about 4,000 of these field guns in service.

By the end of the war about 12,000 had been produced. The forerunner of the French 75 was an experimental 57 mm gun which was first assembled in September 1891 at the Bourges arsenal under the direction of a Captain Sainte-Claire Deville. Vieille’s smokeless powder, which was introduced in 1884. Self-contained ammunition, with the powder charge in a brass case which also held the shell.

An early hydro-pneumatic short recoil mechanism that was designed by Major Louis Baquet. In 1891 Haussner sold his patents to a firm named Gruson, which searched for potential buyers. After reviewing the blueprints in February 1892, the French artillery engineers advised that a gun should be produced without purchasing the Haussner invention. Accordingly, General Mathieu turned to Lt.

It took five more years under the overall leadership of Mathieu’s successor, General Deloye, to perfect and finally adopt in March 1898 an improved and final version of the Deport 75 mm long-recoil field gun. Various deceptions, some of them linked to the Dreyfus Case which erupted in 1894, had been implemented by Deloye and French counter-intelligence to distract German espionage. The final experimental version of Deport’s 75 mm field gun was tested during the summer of 1894 and judged very promising. Extensive trials, however, revealed that it was still prone to hydraulic fluid leakage from the long-recoil mechanism. The Deport 75 was returned to Puteaux arsenal for further improvements. In December 1894, Deport was passed over for promotion, and resigned to join “Chatillon-Commentry”, a private armaments firm.

The independent sight had also been perfected for easy field use by the crews, and a nickel-steel shield was added to protect the gunners. The gun was officially adopted on 28 March 1898 under the name “Matériel de 75mm Mle 1897”. The public saw it for the first time during the Bastille Day parade of 14 July 1899. The gun’s barrel slid back on rollers, including a set at the muzzle, when the shot was fired. The barrel was attached near the breech to a piston rod extending into an oil-filled cylinder placed just underneath the gun. When the barrel recoiled, the piston was pulled back by the barrel’s recoil and thus pushed the oil through a small orifice and into a second cylinder placed underneath.