The French 75mm Field Gun
—Jason

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Battlefield artillery is a key component of a nation’s military for both offensive and defensive engagements.  During the final decade of the nineteenth century, the French developed one of the most devastating field guns in history: the Matériel de Soixante Quinze, 1897, or French 75mm field gun.  This artillery piece gave the French army and navy a massive advantage during military campaigns.

Following France’s humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, their generals placed orders for new artillery piece.  The Prussians and their German state allies had decisively encircled the French Army and captured Emperor Napoleon III at Sedan within the first weeks of the war.  Following this debacle, the Prussians declared the creation of German Empire at Versailles on 18 January 1871.  Alongside war reparations, the Germans also stripped away the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine further enraging the French.

French military strategists developed a plan to liberate their lost provinces and destroy the German Empire.  This strategy involved not only heavily fortifying their common border with Germany, but also plans to launch aggressive offensive operations.  Plans were drawn up to expand the French Army at home and make allowances for the recruitment of tens of thousands of troops from colonial possessions to reinforce them.  It was an ambitious plan and would take until the end of the Great War to come to fruition.

One of the keys to achieving these goals was the development of a new artillery piece: the French 75mm.  This gun was designed as a field gun, meaning that it fired its shells on a mostly horizontal trajectory, unlike howitzers which fire at a high angle, near to vertical attack.  The French 75s were to be incorporated into the infantry regiments for rapid fire support while the soldiers advanced.  Access to this type of firepower potentially could be a battle winning tool.

The main type of ammunition the French 75s used was designed for anti-infantry purposes.  High-explosive and fragmentation shells were the primary ammunition at the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, though by 1918 they could also fire chemical warheads.  The ingenious hydro-pneumatic recoil mechanism, which stabilized the gun, while firing, allowed a trained crew to fire up to fifteen shells per minute with a range of over five miles.  At this rate, an enemy infantry advancing over open ground could be decimated.

Production of the French 75 began in 1898 and by the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 the French Army was initially equipped with 4,000 of these guns.  By the end of the war, over 12,000 French 75s had been delivered and another 2,000 were handed over to the American Expeditionary Force.  The German forces that encountered the French 75s in 1914 quickly felt the impact of such a devastating weapon system.  This became a highly feared artillery piece because it could delay and annihilate even veteran units.

The French 75s were not retired after the end of the Great War, rather they became the inspiration of a new generation of field guns.  The 75 mm caliber became a standard size for new artillery pieces and eventually would be mounted in the turrets of many Allied and Axis tank types.  The French 75s were retained by the French Army during the interwar period and was modified so it could be towed by trucks, as well as horses.  They once again appeared on the battlefields of France during the German invasion of 1940.  However, despite their distinguished pedigree, they were not able to halt the fast-moving German military units.