Putilov-Garford Main Gun

[Dan Brock]

Anyone have a clue as to the why of the giant trough that seems to surround the main gun.

To catch short rounds possibly?

Kidding about that last.

Maybe to provide a protected (sort of) channel for aiming/observing direct fire, which is, I assume, the only sort of firing these ever did.

And was this 76.2mm they used for this a field gun or a Naval gun?

In closing, it seems to me that this archaic monster - but for the fact these MG's are all.30 - wouldn't have been much outgunned by a 2nd war Sherman.

Bit under-armored though.

Dan Brock

[CharlieBris]

Anyone have a clue as to the why of the giant trough that seems to surround the main gun.

To catch short rounds possibly?

Kidding about that last.

Maybe to provide a protected (sort of) channel for aiming/observing direct fire, which is, I assume, the only sort of firing these ever did.

And was this 76.2mm they used for this a field gun or a Naval gun?

In closing, it seems to me that this archaic monster - but for the fact these MG's are all.30 - wouldn't have been much outgunned by a 2nd war Sherman.

Bit under-armored though.

Dan Brock

How about an add on blast shield for the gun. The muzzle blast from the gun would probably damage the roof of the vehicle, the Garford-Putilovs were made

from thin (6-8mm from memory) plate to keep the superstructure weight down. The book "Armored Units of the Russian Civil War: Red Army" by David Bullock

says the gun was a 76.2mm Model 1910 anti-aircraft gun.

Regards,

Charlie

[Dan Brock]

How about an add on blast shield for the gun. The muzzle blast from the gun would probably damage the roof of the vehicle, the Garford-Putilovs were made

from thin (6-8mm from memory) plate to keep the superstructure weight down. The book "Armored Units of the Russian Civil War: Red Army" by David Bullock

says the gun was a 76.2mm Model 1910 anti-aircraft gun.

Regards,

Charlie

Anti-aircraft gun, one I hadn't thought of.

Thanks

[centurion]

It's to protect the recuperator (recoil mechanism) from small arms fire

[CharlieBris]

It's to protect the recuperator (recoil mechanism) from small arms fire

I'm not sure about this hypothesis since:

- The recoil/recuperator assemblies in WW1 guns were usually fairly substantial - they had to be since many guns used

large springs under compression as the recuperator. I've seen a 15cm sFH at Rosewood in Queensland where the towing loop

and spade were blown off the gun by a (presumed) artillery hit - all the sheet parts of the gun were perforated by shrapnel but the recoil/recuperator

only had a few small nicks.

- There is an image on Landships (http://www.landships.freeservers.com/jpegs/put-garf.jpeg) that shows a front on view of the gun.

The shield seems to protrude a long way further out than the recoil/recuperator assembly. There is a fairly large space between the shield

and the gun - I can't see this as effective protection of the recoil/recuperator.

Regards,

Charlie

Edit - sorry freeservers.com won't let me remote link the image

[centurion]

Bit blurry but there seems to be additional protection of gun and mechanism inside the shield

[RodB]

It extends way beyond the muzzle... flash suppressor ? Or to direct the smoke from firing upwards & away from the vehicle ? Necessitated by the short barrel ? At full recoil the muzzle would be right back... Otherwise the whole vehicle could be engulfed in smoke, especially the mg, for several seconds after each round..

[Old Tom]

A formidable AFV. I wonder what it weighed and what its cross country performance was like? The trough might be a rather large traverse stop to avoid the main gun engaging the front turret.

Old Tom

[Dan Brock]

A formidable AFV. I wonder what it weighed and what its cross country performance was like? The trough might be a rather large traverse stop to avoid the main gun engaging the front turret.

Old Tom

Nine tons and apparently no cross-country capabilty to speak of.

Probably like driving an upright piano off-road.

Off the assembly line in Elyria, Ohio, they looked like this:

I can't decide whether I feel the Russians spoiled her looks or not.

Re the trough, maybe I was right the first time and it's intended to catch short rounds.

Otherwise they'd go to waste.

[centurion]

Nine tons and apparently no cross-country capabilty to speak of.

Probably like driving an upright piano off-road.

Navy version had thicker armour and weighed in at 11 tons. Top speed (or trundle) of the army version was 12 mph. I've also seen somewhere that there was no reverse gear (so don't drive down a cul de sac) which is difficult to believe.

[Rob Connolly]

The German Pz Mk IV of WW2 vintage had a "blast deflector" under the main gun when this weapon was a short-barrelled 75mm version. Could the Putilov-Garford's "trough" be an extemporised version to prevent blast damage to the chassis? It would also, at a guess, reduce the risk of overturning the truck if fired off to the side, possibly at the cost of straining the suspension more.

[centurion]

makes sense but doesn't explain the little 'roof' over the gun inside the trough

[bob lembke]

Another question/problem.

I am presently reading Knox's memoire of his time with the Russian Army 1914-1917 (He was the British Military Attache to the Russian court, very smart, multi-lingual, access to everyone), and in late 1914 he stated that there was only one anti-aircraft unit in the Russian Army, protecting the Royal Family, with, I believe, 18 cannon and six MGs. So would there mave been a Model 1910 anti-aircraft gun? They only made 18?

Bob Lembke

[centurion]

If it was to protect the 'little father' quite probably - some Russians took the Royal family very very seriously. Zhizn' za tsarya (A life for the Tsar) was taken much more literally than For King and Country.

[CharlieBris]

There were enough of the Model 1910 guns around that the Germans captured some and used them on the A7 Flakpanzer (2 or 3 built).

The Model 1910 gun, in the few images I've seen of it, seems to have been a pedestal mounted gun. If the Putilov engineers just bolted the pedestal

mount to the tray of the Garford truck some of the puzzling features on the turret gun of the armoured car can be explained.

Looking at the side shields of the gun it looks like they move with the gun since the profile of the top of the cut out in the turret seems to match the side shield.

The side shields seem to be made of fairly thick plate - certainly much thicker than the trough. There also seems to be plate inside the turret which follows the gun

and covers the cut out in the turret wall.

One could speculate that the turret didn't have any traverse gear but was simply pushed around its track by the gun's traverse gear.

The trough still looks like a blast shield to me.

Regards,

Charlie

[bob lembke]

In the "Armored Cars in Russia Vein", I just read about two British-made armored cars in Russia while reading the memoirs of Knox, the UK military attache to the Russian court. He spent most of his time up at the front, and most of his events are ones that he actually observed, or at least was with a Russian staff close to the events. Here is my entry in my time-line.

March 4, 1915 - “Two armored cars supplied by Messrs. Austin suffered severely in one of the attacks of the Ist Corps.” Then a paragraph on the cars getting badly shot up. The cars delivered from England had the specified thickness of armor, but when received the Russians decided that it was not thick enough, and fitted heavier armor. However, the new armor did not fit together very well, and in action bullets entered and killed or wounded seven of the 10 crewmen, including all the men who knew how to drive. The cars were abandoned, but that night some infantry were led to the site and were able to man-handle the cars back into the Russian lines. Knox, Alfred W. F., With the Russian Army 1914-1917, 1971 (reprint), Arno Press & The New York Times, New York, 760 pages, pp. 257-58.

Bob Lembke