Thursday 17 December 2009

Bulgarian Artillery

This is proving to be a little bit of a challenge. According to Vachkov in his book 'The Balkan War 1912 - 1913' Bulgarian field artillery was based primarily around the 75mm QF Schneider - Kane 1897 ordered from Creusot. He also includes a photo of the said gun which looks suspiciously like the famed French 75mm. There are some photos of Bulgarian Artillery in action with a gun that looks very much like the French 75mm. My sources are a little thin on this subject but my feeling is that the gun the Bulgarians were using was in fact a Creusot manufactured version of the famous French 75mm that was similar to look at - especially in 15mm. I am unable to find any reference to this and so am wondering if this was in fact a cheaper, almost export version of the 'Soixante-Quinze'. The Krupp gun supplied by Irregular looks identical to the 1912 Schneider 75mm supplied to Serbia but I cannot be certain. Bulgaria made use of 75mm Krupp artillery of a non QF variety so I think that some further research may be needed. In any event, I am able to use the models provided although I will be acquiring the Creusot built Schneider 75mm as they are better suited to the army.

Should any readers be able to shed any further light on this I would appreciate it - as would my 15mm Bulgarian gun crews!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello,

the following models from the REALLY USEFUL GUNS range are used for the Balkan armies:
Turks 1a, 6d
Bulgars 1d, 4c
Greeks & Serbs: 1a, 4c or 51 as a field gun.

Hope this is of help.

David Crook said...

Hiya, Many thanks for this - I will check out the Irregular list and see what comes about!

All the best,

Ogrefencer