Afghan artillery in the Third Afghan War

[Hoplophile]

I'm having a lot of trouble finding information on the artillery pieces used by the regular Afghan forces in the Third Afghan War. I see lots of references to Krupp 75mm mountain guns and Krupp 100mm (105mm?) howitzers, but I have yet to find pictures. Neither do I have any information about how these weapons got to Afghanistan. Were they purchased before the outbreak of World War I or obtained during the war from Persia or the Ottoman Empire?

Any help would be welcome!

[Pete1052]

One of Byron Farwell's books, I believe Queen Victoria's Little Wars, has a photo of captured Afghan artillery, but I'm not sure which of the wars it was.

[nigelfe]

Probably refers to the guns captured in the 2nd Afghan War.

[Pete1052]

Byron Farwell was an officer in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in World War II and Korea. His father was a British officer during the Boer War. The son returned some of his father's war souvenirs to the South African government around 1980-90. I traded letters with the guy in around 1992 or so. I asked him to speak to our local Civil War Roundtable then but he declined; my impression at the time was that he had a fear about public speaking. His last published book was on the AEF during the Great War. Toward the end of the book it had a certain kind of disgust about the waste of lives, as though he'd become utterly disillusioned by the cult of Victorian manliness that he'd spent his life writing about.

[bushfighter]

Hop

To revert to your question.

I believe that the guns were pre-WW1 purchases because I think that getting then into Afghanistan during the war would have been too difficult.

Page 128 of Maj Gen BP Hughes' History of the Royal Regiment of Artillery. Between the Wars, 1919 - 39 describes one incident when the Afghan artillery out-gunned the British.

The guns referred to are described as "two 10cm Krupp field howitzers and seven 7.5-cm Krupp pack guns".

Harry

[Hoplophile]

Many thanks to all who replied!

I've seen other, quite credible references* to the two 10cm Krupp field howitzers and the seven 7.5 cm Krupp mountain guns used by the Afghan forces in the siege of Thal and so am convinced that they were in Afghan hands at the time of war. The question that remains, then, is how these weapons made their way from Essen to Afghanistan.

*The reference that is closest at hand is G.N. Molesworth, Afghanistan 1919, (New York: Asia Publishing House, 1963), p. 115.