The backbone

When Britain went to war against Germany in 1914, the first response was to deploy to France the new formation known as the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), a self-contained unit with supporting forces, including artillery at the level of four brigades per division. These were subdivided into three batteries, each of which was equipped with six pieces of artillery. One brigade had 4.5” field howitzers, with the remainder being horse-drawn, mobile 18-Pounder field guns. It was credited as being the best-trained and equipped force the British army had ever put into the field. Later in the war, this structure would change as tactics evolved.

Field gun
By that time, the horse-drawn Quick-Firing Mk I 18-Pounder Field Gun had been in service with the army for ten years, having been introduced in 1904. It had been conceived as a result of lessons learned during the Boer War (1899-1902), but it did not come from one single design. Instead, it emerged by taking all the ‘best’ bits from designs for a new weapon submitted by Vickers, Elswick Works, and Woolwich Arsenal. For example, the wire-wound barrel of 83.8mm (3.3”) was supplied by Armstrong, while Vickers provided the recoil system, and the Royal Ordnance factories supplied the sighting system and elevating gears. A compromise was made over the size of the wheels, which were reduced in diameter by 4”, down from 5ft.
Field trials conducted by four batteries of the Royal Artillery during 1903 proved the gun to be satisfactory for service. The next 10 years proved to be a peaceful decade for the British army, with weapons being fired under controlled conditions during training. All that training was put to the test between August and September 1914 during the opening engagements of the war. The 18-Pounder was capable of firing up to 20 rounds per minute in an emergency, a rate only possible because the ammunition was of the type known as ‘fixed’, meaning it was all in one. The more sustainable rate was four rounds per minute, but the early battles, with high rates of firing, revealed a weakness in the recuperator springs, which broke under the stresses imposed by continuous firing.
The problem was solved by fitting hydro-pneumatic systems into the recoil housing of all the guns, which took time but greatly improved reliability. Originally, the gun fired only high explosive (HE) or shrapnel ammunition, but by the end of the war, several types of shell were available, including gas and illuminating. The expenditure amounted to some 100 million shells fired by batteries equipped with 18-Pounder guns. During the Battle of the Somme in 1916, lasting from 1 July to 18 November (a total of exactly 20 weeks), approximately ten million 18-Pounder shells were fired. At the time, HE shells cost 63p each and shrapnel shells cost 95p.
The 18-Pounder was already in service with the armies of Australia and Canada before the war, providing a commonality of artillery among Commonwealth forces. The importance of the weapon and output of ammunition can be gauged from the numbers of both used during the war. For example, in 1917, almost 48 million rounds were produced, of which well over 38 million were fired in that time. During the Third Battle of Ypres in 1917, around 1,098 18-Pounder guns were deployed across a frontage of approximately 9.5 miles at the rate of 117 guns per mile, which equals one gun per yard.

Changes were made
The original design was a gun with an ammunition limber drawn by a team of horses and operated by a crew of six, with four other men remaining with the service wagon, ready to carry forward resupplies of ammunition and to replace any wounded crew members. The gun was fitted with a single tubular trail arm, which connected to the ammunition limber carrying 24 rounds ready to fire. Together, they weighed two tonnes. The pole trail limited the angle to which the barrel could be elevated, which led to the introduction of a box trail. Over the years the gun remained in service, further modifications were introduced, including changes in the breech mechanism and a new recoil system.
All of these changes make the gun a fascinating subject to study for ballistics experts, military enthusiasts, and even from an engineering point of view. The weapon would go on to be used in the early stages of WWII, and some 216 were lost during the Dunkirk campaign in 1940, and in the Far East, they were still in service in 1942. Some of the last units were in service with the Indian Army and the Army of the Republic of Ireland as late as the 1960s, a remarkable achievement.

The surviving guns
During its service life of almost 40 years with the British army, almost 10,500 18-Pounders were produced, yet remarkably very few examples are on display in museums. In Britain, there are just a handful, including one in the IWM at Lambeth in London, but more survive in Australia. There is a unique example held by the Royal Armouries site at Fort Nelson, just outside Portsmouth in Hampshire, which is believed to be the only example capable of firing blank charges. This example is used to present gun-firing displays at public events on-site, with the crew in full period uniform to complete the image.
Collecting the ammunition and other items connected with the gun, such as the sight unit, tools, and instruction manuals, is sometimes possible. The ammunition is particularly interesting because of the range of different types. The HE version can be displayed complete with a fuse fitted, either as a collector’s exhibit or by a re-enactment group depicting an artillery unit of WWI. Examples of ‘sectionalised’ shrapnel shells, which expose the inner workings and components of the projectile, are particularly interesting. Inside, you will find 374 metal balls at the rate of 41 to the pound, giving a weight of just over 9lbs, fused to produce air bursts.
This was the type most frequently fired against barbed wire in the opening barrage of the Somme, and it failed to destroy it because the balls were designed for anti-personnel purposes. The gun had a flat trajectory, which would have been devastating against troops in the open, but against men in deep trenches, it had little effect. Shells filled with gas did have an impact because they could be delivered more precisely to a specific target area. There were cases when gas shells were fired against the horses of the German artillery, killing the animals and preventing the guns from being moved. The other types of ammunition, such as the anti-tank shell, came in later and are important items to add to a collection to show continued development. Because it is not always possible to have an actual 18-Pounder gun for a talk at shows, an explanation about the effects of the ammunition still provides interesting history.