Q.F. FIELD EQUIPMENTS ON THE CONTINENT. 
155 
It will be noticed that Colonel Schumacher gives the manufacturer' 
no easy task, as he requires a high velocity with a 12*8 lb. shell and 
only allows 11 cwt. 24 lbs. weight for the gun and carriage. The 
shrapnel shell also, to fulfil his requirements, must have 50 per cent 
of its weight in bullets; 41 per cent is about the highest for any ex¬ 
isting shrapnel of about this weight with a base burster. 
His paper is however very interesting, and he gives descriptions of 
various Q.F. field equipments which have come under his observation, 
though he does not offer an opinion as to their merits; it is not clear 
that he had actually seen them tried. 
In 1897, the Bureau of Federal Artillery published a list giving 
full details, weights, ballistics etc., of some twenty-one Q.F. field 
equipments, designs of which had presumably been obtained from the 
various firms. 
At the end of May and beginning of June 1898, trials of four differ¬ 
ent equipments were carried out at Thoun. These equipments were 
provided by Creusot, (Canet); Cockerill, (Nordenfelt, Paris);Krupp and 
St. Chamond. The first equipment was withdrawn early in the proceed¬ 
ings. The Cockerill, (Nordenfelt) carriage had a hydraulic buffer, 
wheel brakes and a trail spade. The Krupp gun had the wedge breech 
mechanism ; the carriage had a large spade connected to it by springs, 
and like most of Krupp's field carriages of which any account has been 
published, no hydraulic buffer.* The St. Chamond carriage appears 
to have been of the type usually provided by that firm, namely, with a 
long buffer under the trail carrying a spade at its extremity. The 
trials appear to have been exhaustive, but no details have been pub¬ 
lished of the results. In addition to the firing trials, the equipments 
were put through a travelling test of some 400 kilometres. It appears 
that Colonel Schumacher's views as to the desiderata of a new field 
gun have not been adopted in totohy the experimental committee as their 
requirements are now said to be as followst :—weight behind team 
33 cwt. 51 lbs. with at least thirty-two rounds, weight of shell 13*9 lbs. 
to 14*4 lbs. M.Y. 1640 f s. After the above trials, it was decided to 
purchase a complete Krupp battery with ammunition and wagons. It 
is also intended to continue trials of a carriage made in Switzerland 
and of the Cockerill-Nordenfelt gun. New powders are also being 
tried. J 
The present state of the field artillery armaments of continental 
powers appears to be as follows :—the Germans have completed their 
re-armament, and the French are pushing theirs on as fast as possible. 
Russia and Austria have introduced improvements into their existing 
equipments so as to increase their rate of fire; Italy proposes to do 
the same for her field artillery; and these three nations as well as 
* A description with sketch of a trail spade with spiral springs, patented by Krupp in England 
is given, in Engineering 15th April, 1898, and in Revue d’ Artillerie, May, 1898. For other 
carriages tried by Krupp see Revue d’ Artillerie, February, 1899. 
f Revue de VArmie Beige, May-June 1898. 
t Revue d J Artillerie, November, 1898. 
u 
