Skoda Heavy Artillery- Plate 2

This is the second plate from the book "Built at Skoda Werke" - Siege Artillery in the Collection of the Military Museum of Bucharest" and shows the same gun as the first plate wingsofwrath.deviantart.com/ar… dismantled for transport.

For ease of manoeuvre, the piece is split into three parts - the barrel, secured to its trailer by a metal and one leather strap, the gun cradle/carriage, which has the wheels attached directly to the frame, and the platform, which is hinged and folds down to allow the negotiation of narrow roads, bridges and tunnels.

Each of the three pieces weighed more than twenty tons each but the whole assembly-disassembly sequence took only a few hours and needed only simple tools along with four jacks.

After unloading, some of the trailers were used in the normal gun operation. The most pertinent example is the platform carrying one which became a crane for unloading shells from the transport trailers to the waiting trolley.

A complete set of trailers of this type exists in the Belgrade Army Museum as well as an artillery storage facility in Targoviste belonging to the Military Museum of Bucharest, the latter unfortunately not available to the public.

Other plates in the series:

The cover

Plate I

Plate II


Plate IV

Plate V

Plate VI

Plate VII

Plate VIII