Captured Guns..where are they now?

[Guest alkens]

Hi,

hope someone out there can help me. In the battle of Loos, the 20th Londoner's captured two large guns. The date was September 26th 1915. According to the Lewisham Borough News, dated 12 November 1915, they were on display at Horse Guards Parade.

Does anyone out there happen to know what ever happened to these guns? According to the newspaper article, the guns might be on there way to to the 20th's headquaters at Holly Hedge House, Blackheath.

hope someone can help

Paul

[Charles Fair]

Paul - you are right they were on display at Horseguards. The national papers at that time had a lot of pictures of them. I believe they they were allocated to towns and cities as trophies immediately after the war, however most were used as scrap in WW2.

I have come across postcards of these guns, there appears to have been quite a series. Here is one overall shot showing guns captured by 15 and 7 Divs nearest the camera...

[Charles Fair]

... and here is another with two 85mm guns captured by the 20th behind the TM in the foreground. The Notice reads:

"85mm German Gun

Captured at Loos

by 20th (County of London) Bn

The London Regt

(Blackheath & Woolwich)

47th (2nd London) Division

Territorial Army

on Sept 25th 1915"

[Charles Fair]

Here is another one - not in the same series - of one of the 20th London trophies in a different location. I dont know where this is - presumably somewhere in the Blackheath or Woolwich area. Perhaps someone like Teapots might know where this was?

[Guest Pete Wood]

Sorry, I don't recognise the railings. I wish I did

I am happy to follow up any leads, but I can't think where the 'Blackheath' gun(s) would be today - if they even survived being melted down.

[Terry_Reeves]

I can't help directly with this particular post, but the War Trophies Committee was formed in November 1916. The terms of reference were "to deal with all questions in regard to the distribution of trophies and to watch th interests of the Imperial War Museum."

There was was great competition amongst units, particularly for captured guns. Because of this, a rule was laid down "that substantiated claims for trophies by units were to be only those having received War Office Authority."

Once a claim had been substantiated, the unit in question was asked its view as to where the trophy should go with the proviso that it should be a regimental depot, a recognised public body, or a museum. In practice this vary widely, from a public site, provided by a local council, to local schools. The distribution of such items was generally left to local authorities.

By April 1920, 3,595 artillery pieces, 15,044 machine guns, 75,824 small arms and 7,887 other trophies had been distributed.

As for their allocation in WW1 , a search of the local council minute books will often give some information. As far as final disposal is concerned, many were sent for scrap in 1939 as Charles has already mentioned. Again, the local authority minutes books will often mention what happened to them.

Quotations are from "Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire During the Great War, p 780.

Terry Reeves

[tintin1689]

Captured weapons were often given to local authorities as a reward for successful performance in fund raising drives

Hemel Hempstead where I used to live got a British tank (no longer any use to the army - early mark or just clapped out?) It stood guarding the War Memorial until it was scrapped in WW fore the war effort. Bradford I believe had a pair of 77mm field guns in one of the parks which met the same fate. Blackburn had some 08 German Maxims which are still in the museum (or they were in the late 80s)

The strangest fate of any war trophy must be the pack howitzers captured by the Jewish Legion of the RF. Many of the Legion settled in the Jerusalem area (the colours were laid up in Jerusalem) and formed the Menorah Club to commemorate it.Two guns (Austrian?) were given to the club as gate guardians. In the war of independence in 1948 they went into service with the Israel Defence Force.

[Geoff Parker]

One German artillery piece was placed outside the church in Cheam Village Surrey,

unfortunately the locals were unhappy that they got a German gun instead of a

British one and one night after a few drinks it was disposed of in the local quarry.

Whether it was every recovered from their I dont know

Geoff

[Jim Gordon]

Something similar occurred in Dornoch, Sutherland where the majority of the inhabitants refused to have anything to do an artillery piece of any description or nationality adorning their Square. It was accordingly dumped in a spot known as The Witch's Pool and forgotten about until a few years ago, when the Pool was drained to allow for expansion of the Golf Course. To the best of my knowledge it is still in Sutherland and still no one wants it.

In contrast, in my home village school, a German Field Gun stood throughout my childhood in the 30s' on which we played the usual war games. Like others, it was due to be sent away for scrap in WW2 but a group of locals stole it during the night before it was due to depart. It lay concealed until the 80s' when it was "found" again and offered to the Local Museum which had just been inaugurated. The offer was turned down on the grounds that there was no room to exhibit it. Like the Dornoch gun, I believe it is still in existence and unwanted.

Regards

Jim Gordon

[Tim Birch]

Why weren't captured guns utilised by our armies and added to our own arsenal, paticularly when there were shortages of artillery pieces? I can understand that ammunition would have been a problem, but where a lot of guns of the same calibre were captured surely it wouldn't have been too much of a problem to introduce a production line for suitable shells within our's and the American ammunition manufacturing factories?

I understand that later in the war (1918) enemy ammunition dumps were also captured.

Tim

[Robert Dunlop]

Part of the answer is that there were not enough men. By the time German artillery pieces were being captured in significant numbers, the Royal Regiment of Artillery was struggling to maintain sufficient crews for all the weapons they did have, let alone crew other weapons. Which is not to say that German guns were not turned on their owners. Both MGs and field guns were used in this way, not necessarily by artillerists in the case of the latter.

[Kate Wills]

The 2/20th Londons also captured two German field guns, this time at Solesmes, east of Cambrai, on 20th October 1918, and presented one to Greenwich Borough Council for public exhibition. The council parked it in their depot in Shooter’s Hill Road, where it gathered dust, until, following a reunion dinner in April 1920, a 200-strong group of veterans invaded the council depot, liberated “their” gun and dragged it back to Holly Hedge House.

[Drummy]

Kate,

Interesting story, do you know what happened to the gun after that? Has it survived. Cheers Neil.

[Kate Wills]

I don't know, Neil. The reunion took place in April 1920, and is recounted in the final appendice to the battalion history. The Preface is dated May 1920, so the story was hot off the press. The Kent Mercury is mentioned as having covered the unit's adventures during the war, so maybe they carried something about this event, and the gun's later life. Perhaps it was melted down during WW2.

[Robert Dunlop]

Quite a number of German field guns and other ordinance can be seen in various small towns around New Zealand. They are in various states of disrepair, the salt-laden New Zealand coastal airs sometimes playing havoc with the metal work.

[CROONAERT]

Blackburn had some 08 German Maxims which are still in the museum (or they were in the late 80s)

They still are (I can only remember ever seeing two). They were captured by the 11/East Lancs.

Dave.

[Tom Morgan]

The Museum of the Staffordshire Regiment, at Whittington Barracks, also has a captured Maxim.

Tom

[Yorts]

The museum of The Royal Dragoon Guards and The Prince of Wales's Own Regiment of Yorkshire in York has a Maxim with an inscription on the shield detailing where the gun was captured.

Rgds,

Alex.

[George Armstrong Custer]

In the 1970's two German field guns lay abandoned in an overgrown area of the Botanical Gardens in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. Their iron-rimmed wooden wheels were in an advanced state of decomposition, with one wheel of each gun completely collapsed.

Ciao,

GAC

[Geoff Parker]

Why weren't captured guns utilised by our armies and added to our own arsenal, paticularly when there were shortages of artillery pieces? I can understand that ammunition would have been a problem, but where a lot of guns of the same calibre were captured surely it wouldn't have been too much of a problem to introduce a production line for suitable shells within our's and the American ammunition manufacturing factories?

I understand that later in the war (1918) enemy ammunition dumps were also captured.

Tim

Tim

While researching gas shells over the weekend I came across an interesting

piece.

During the Battle of St. Quentin in 1918 the RA apparently fired an unknown

quantitiy of German yellow gas shells using captured artillery pieces.

Geoff

[Deptfordboy]

Hi Guys,

According to the notes of 'Love & War', the letters of a 20th London man, the guns captured at Loos were unfortunately melted down as part of the war effort in WW2. Not conclusive proof, but hopefully this helps.

Cheers

Gilbert

[PFF]

The 2 pack Howitizers captured by the "Jewish Legion" {Royal Fusiliers} I read the same story in that popular history of "O Jerusalem" years ago.

1} Were these 75mm howitizers?

2) Were they captured in Sept 1918 when the Jordan River fords were crossed by the 38th and 39th Battalions of the R.F?

[Hoplophile]

The Ottoman Army used five different types of 75mm pack artillery pieces during World War I - one model from Krupp, two from Ehrhardt/Rheinmetall, one from Schneider (France) and one from Skoda (Austria-Hungary).

According to the classification schemes used by most armies of the day, these pieces were all howitzers. However, they are often referred to in English-language sources as "mountain guns."

[clive_hughes]

Hi,

I may be mistaken, but I seem to remember reading that the WW1 Memorial Plaques were made out of scrapped enemy artillery. That must have accounted for quite some tonnage of guns & bronze!

It fits in with a sort of tradition: the statue of General Nott in Nott Square, Carmarthen, is made from one cannon captured at the Battle of Maharajpore 1843 (Gwalior Campaign) and which was donated for the express purpose by the Hon. East India Company. They used others to cast the campaign medals - the Gwalior Stars.

Then there's the well-known use of Crimean and Chinese opium war guns for making VCs. Some of these survived the scrap drive in WW2 - there's a nice Sebastopol cannon outside Ludlow Castle which was presented to the town in 1856 - though others like the commensurate piece which stood by the R. Welch Fus. Crimean memorial in Carmarthen have gone. And the old Khedive's Star (1882 Egyptian campaign) was likewise made from melted down artillery, albeit authorised by the Egyptians rather than the War Office.

My home town of Bangor, Gwynedd, had a WW1 tank near the Town Hall until scrapped in WW2. When I worked in London I also used to hear rumours that a tank had been secreted by burying it under a mound of earth in the grounds of the old Crystal Palace, London...anyone got a metal detector handy??!

LST_164