120mm howitzer casing question

[wingsofwrath]

EDIT: I just realised I should have posted this in the "cartridge" section, but I don't seem to find a way to either move or delete this thread myself, so I guess it must live here until a mod either moves or deletes it.

So I have two puzzlers on my hand, both having to do with Romanian 120mm metallic cartridge howitzers, so I thought of combining them into a single thread rather than posting two of them.

The first one is the Gruson 120mm L/13 Howitzer Md.1888, originally a fortifications piece, and adapted in 1916 for field use.




This one uses a necked down metallic cartridge with double rim of unknown dimensions. We have pictures from the Bucharest Military Museum of the ammunition this piece used and, knowing the dimensions of the shell, I was able to estimate them from the photos to around these:



The second piece that concerns us it the Krupp 120mm L/11.6 Howitzer Md.1901.



Again, we have images of the metallic cartridges and from that we can estimate the dimensions and they seem to fit with the Krupp 128x84mmR140 which I know has been used by other countries, including the Netherlands and the Ottoman Empire.





Now, my question is - do any of you have any information, especially drawings, about any of these cartridge casings? Thank you!

 

[Hoeksel]

Here 2 different Krupp drawings for the Dutch 128x84R140. The difference is only the primer thread (20 vs 18 TPI).

 

[wingsofwrath]

Yes, thank you very much!

That's exactly what I needed and that drawing fits very well with the one from the manual that I have - unfortunately I only have photographs because the last time I had this in my hand I was already copying a whole lot so I decided to leave it for another time, but right now it's inaccessible, because the Bucharest Army Museum library is being audited so it's closed to the public.

So we can call one problem solved.
Now let's hope someone else has something about the Gruson howitzer, although I'm a bit pessimistic, because I don't think anybody else adopted it besides us...

 

[AKON_]

Maybe it will come in handy...

 

[fert]

I have this in archive, I never identified.
unfortunely no dimension but look very similar to 12cm M88 L13
regards

 

[Hoeksel]

Isn't there a digital archive somewhere with "Revista Artillerei"? When I google I do find some on Arcanum Digitheca (requiring an account).

 

[wingsofwrath]

Thanks for the answers!

@AKON_ the tables are very useful because we don't currently have the gun itself available either - we know where three of them are located at two WW1 monuments, but they're in the middle of nowhere and there used to be a gun at the Military Museum in Bucharest, but it was last seen on display in the 50s and the museum moved locations twice since then... Most likely is in the museum's storage yard at Targoviste, but there be dragons, because that's part of an active military base and access is restricted even for museum staff, let alone random artillery enthusiasts like myself...



@fert yes, that's it, 100%.
Very glad to have a contemporary picture of one and especially a headstamp. One of the manuals (unfortunately one which doesn't have drawings, just text) mentions that for most of WW1 the main ammunition used by these guns was actually the same 120mm French "D" shell as used by the 120mm DeBange, because shell and casing are loaded separately, and this also confirms French productions of cartridge casings.

Finally, I think I cracked it, because, when falling asleep last night it came to me in a flash that the only other country that went absolutely ham for Gruson fortress guns besides Romania was Switzerland and I remembered this wonderful document scanned by @sgdbdr showing all manner of interesting Swiss ordnance, so I had a look through it...
And there it was, on page 34, the very casing I was looking for! (ok, so a blank training one, but nonetheless)



It fits almost perfectly to the little mock-up I had made in CAD, and, using page 21 from the same document as an extra reference -the Swiss had two 12cm howitzers - one was L/13 like ours, the other was L/25 and had a 124mm long cartridge, but with the same rim diameter, at 140.2mm - I was able to correctly scale the drawing, and it came in with a lenght of 114.5mm.





And there we have it folks, all present and correct.
In the next months I intend to delve deeper into these guns including my reconstructions of the projectiles, etc, so, as they say in Media, "watch this space".

 

[wingsofwrath]

Isn't there a digital archive somewhere with "Revista Artillerei"? When I google I do find some on Arcanum Digitheca (requiring an account).

Nope, unfortunately there isn't, you have to go there in person. And since the library is closed right now for an audit (and has been for over a year), you can't even do that. besides, the numbers of this publication available on Arcanum are from 1927 onwards. The really interesting ones are, in my opinion, those before WW1.

I keep wishing the Bucharest Military Museum finally steps in the 21st century, but, so far, there's been a lot of institutional inertia, not helped by the fact the Museum is classed as an active army unit and the director is a military officer that changes every few years...

EDIT: also, thanks for the mods for moving this to the correct forum. I owe you one!

 

[AKON_]

here is the barrel profile but without the cartridge dimensions..





Source : Gruson ...SFK und deren .... , 1890 , Zweiter teil.

 

[wingsofwrath]

Yes, that's definitely it, specifically this L/13 fretted barrel for use in armoured cupolas. I'm assuming the breech is identical between the "field" L/12 and the "fortress" L/13 - certainly the chamber itself seems to fit.

And I think we managed to puzzle out the cartridge dimensions as well.

 

[AKON_]

When I was browsing through sources for the 12 cm Gruson, I found something else I wasn't looking for: the 12 cm howitzer from the Belgian company John Cockerill S.A. in Seraing: here is the text about it.....

Akon

 

[fert]

again, swiss case german made

 

[wingsofwrath]

I have found that the text of the Gruson book actually gives the accurate dimensions for the cartridge case, so with this we can rest assured this is as precise as we can get without an original Gruson drawing.

Interestingly, it seems all of these had a pressed primer rather than the large removable screw type primer more typical German export ordnance from Krupp, for example.





And while we're at it, let's talk about the charge - according to the Romanian manual, there were three of them - the first one was 110 grams of smokeless powder (described in the Gruson book as "Rauchloses Pulver C/89" with a 1.5 mm grain), the second was 200 grams and the third was 70 grams.

 

[Hoeksel]

I re-checked my shell case reference list and can add the 128x84R140 is also found in South-Africa from the Boer war.
I also have a 120x115R140 Gruson L/12 L/13 M1888 M1890 in my list as GB (probably Boer war as well). I probably got this from a Boer war forum, not sure. Maybe a typo, or a GB made shell case for a captured gun. No image so can't verify.

 

[wingsofwrath]

The Boers also had a Krupp L/12 very similar to our own but with a completely different cartridge case, because theirs is 128X105R140 instead of 128x84R140 as can be seen from this drawing. Also, when it comes to the ammunition, the shells have the same height, but everything else is different - for example, their shell has a R255mm ogive, ours is R230, their shell has a solid driving band located 20mm from the bottom ours is 35mm and has two grooves, the length of the cylindrical section is different etc.
It has the same Krupp. M.1891 fuze though, although I've seen theirs also with what we call the M.1880 fuze that is on the 87mm field guns - and, by the way, I noticed Krupp fuzes of the 1890s are designed to be interchangeable in a way very few others from other manufacturers are.

For example, Gruson pretty much had bespoke fuzes for different calibres and sometimes even for the same calibre. I won't get into it now, but neither the shells themselves nor the fuzes for the Gruson 120mm "Kugelmorser" (Speherical mortar) L/7.5 and the 120mm L/13 howitzer are the same or even interchangeable.

 

[Hoeksel]

I am aware of the ordnance you show and indeed often found in South-Africa. I owned some myself in the past. I do have a note about the 128x84R140 found in South-Africa, but as I collect information found "everywhere" it can be very well be wrong. And I think it is ;-).

 

[Hoeksel]

From a Chinese document I have information on a Japanese 12 cm shell case for a so-called 12 cm type 38 howitzer. It looks a lot like the 128x84R140 with a length of 83,2 mm. The 12 cm type 38 is indeed a Krupp L/12 design that entered Japanese service in 1905/1906 according internet.

 

[AKON_]

Hi *
Maybe it won't be of any use, but..
I was interested in the dimension of the outer diameter of 128,, RESPECTIVELY 128.5 mm on the neck of the cartridge ..., I found in the warehouse a drawing of the view of the 12cm cartridge, only a general view without a section (according to the signs Turkey? or Persia?) 128.5mm x 160 R 137. See attachment:general view ...

Akon