THE “75” MYSTERY. GUN.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1806, 26 March 1918, Page 1

THE “75” MYSTERY. GUN.

“S?very reader of the magazines and.newspapers in every country of the world,” says a writer in the Illustrated World, “knows that the most successful gun the war has developed is the 75-millimeter field. piece used by the French armies since October ,1915. Every military man knows approximately the construction and appearance of the weapon; in these particulars it does not seem radically different from our own Sin. field pieces, nor, indeed, could a layman pick out any virtues vyhicJn lift It above the British, Italian, German, and Austrian ‘heayies.’ But in the difference that really exists lies the reason why Paris, Calais, and the whole west coast of Northern France is not now conquered territory! It is a wonder gun, a mystei’v gun; it is the gun that the frantic German General Staff has singled out with a bloody question mark. Wherein lies its superiority? The answer sounds ridiculously simple. The '7s’ can fire 3ft aimed shots a minute; the best Krupp or Koda can deliver* five or six. There is the ‘edge,’ a simple matter of five to one! The French own the secret, and from present indications they would surrender Verdun rather than breathe the key to the mystery across the seried waste to the east of their first-line trenches. Here lies the marvellous part of it all. The Germans, with all their fiendish mechanical ingenuity, have plenty of opportunity to examine this gun at home in their Krupp laboratories! When first the French loosed a rain of shrapnel from the mouths of the first increment of ‘7s’s,’ the Germans knew they had encountered a new type of weapon. On the 26th day after the debut made by these guns, eight of them were captured by the mass attack-of picked German troops, who penetrated one sector of the Allies’ line, carried off their.-prizes, and then retired, not even striving to hold t(ic ground they had taken. Four thousand German troops perished to attain this one object, but for the nonce it was considered worth-while sacrifice. The .world has not yet produced a genius which the German mind could not equal or surpass—at least, that was the Germans’ belief. Months passed. Finally; the Krupp laboratories at Essen-on-Ruhr announced that they had achieved a gun identical to the dreaded\7s’. A great'heartening of the Avhole Teuton army was evidenced at this announcement by a general advance. But the gun did not come up to the French ‘7s’. When ported out .to a practice range, the weapon, although it was manned by the finest demonstrators available, coughed five times —and five times only —in one minute of firing at pell-mell speed. The affair was analysed and re-analysed. The greatest ordnance experts of Austria, Germany and Turkey took up the problem. It was, perhaps, realised that a hasty and satisfactory solution meant a chance for triumph of the Central Powers, and that failure spelled undoubted defeat, Yet they have failed! Today, 26 months after the first tilt at duplication started, the Germans can fire only five .or six shots a minute from their best light field piece of this type.”