IBG 1/35

Suomessakin käytössä ollut kenttätykki

The French 75 mm field gun is a quick-firing field artillery piece adopted in March 1898. Its official French designation was: Matériel de 75 mm Mle 1897. It was commonly known as the French 75, simply the 75 and Soixante-Quinze (French for "seventy-five"). The French 75 was designed as an anti-personnel weapon system for delivering large volumes of time-fused shrapnel shells on enemy troops advancing in the open. After 1915 and the onset of trench warfare, impact-detonated high-explosive shells prevailed. By 1918 the 75s became the main agents of delivery for toxic gas shells. The 75s also became widely used as truck mounted anti-aircraft artillery. They were the main armament of the Saint-Chamond tank in 1918 and the Char 2C. 

When Finnish - Soviet Winter War started in end of November 1939 Finnish Army found itself in serious shortage of artillery weapons and their ammunition. To fix the situation Finland was willing to buy just about any field artillery pieces, that any country was willing to sell. As part of this Finland contacted France asking possibility to purchase weapons. France offered only limited number of modern artillery pieces, but proved willing to donate large number of old "Mle 1877" and "Mle 1878" field guns, which the French had no use and could be delivered with large stockpile of readily available ammunition. Germany being in war with France made transporting the guns from France to Finland difficult and the used transport route quite long: First guns were shipped from France to Narvik in Norway. From Narvik the guns were transported by railway through Norway and Sweden to Finnish border in Torneå / Tornio where they had to be reloaded to Finnish trains, as gauge of Finnish railways was different from Norwegian and Swedish. In Finland the guns were taken to depots, where they were checked before being issued. Due to the long and time-consuming transport route only small number of guns reached Finland before Winter War ended. These French guns proved to be in much better shape then the Russian guns also originally introduced in 1870's. Not only were the guns in notably better condition, but also French ammunition was typically more recent production and in much better shape than Russian artillery ammunition intended for equivalent Russian guns captured in year 1918, which made the French ammunition notably more reliable.