The number of different types of artillery pieces used in the First World War to defend forts and fortresses is very large and is a reflection of the different approach to their armament in different countries. In many of them, the attitude towards forts and fortresses was similar to our Russian attitude towards dachas. For some, it is a warehouse of old things, all that is troublesome to store in an apartment, but it is a pity to throw it away. Others, on the other hand, keep the dacha in perfect order, primarily for representative purposes.
In this case, the forts were armed with the latest heavy weapons, although in the remote, quiet corners of the great empires, smooth-bore "Napoleons" still stood on the forts. The feature film "Winnetou - the leader of the Apaches" is a clear illustration of this! We must not forget about such a phenomenon as fashion! For example, the British series of 9.2-inch cannons were delivered everywhere! Field guns, although not well suited to the role of fortress guns, were also used to complement the stationary weaponry of forts. Usually they were placed in fortifications behind a low parapet and used for direct fire at enemy infantry approaching the fort.
During the heyday of smooth-bore weapons, most of the fortress guns were installed on low, with small wheels, machines, very similar to those used at that time on ships, although more complex carriages were used, similar to those that can now be seen in the exposition of the Sevastopol Museum "Mikhailovskaya Battery". Such guns, already obsolete by 1914, were nevertheless used (!). For example, the Turkish smooth-bore guns, God knows what antiquity, fired at the British battleships with stone cannonballs! On many old gun carriages, the same Turks installed new rifled guns, but it is clear that one could not expect great efficiency from such installations!
The problem of installing guns was directly related to their security, and security - to finances. For example, casemate installations of the same Mikhailovskaya battery had high security, but small guidance angles along the horizon, which required a lot of such weapons. The guns, located on the bastions behind the parapets, had large aiming angles, they needed fewer, but their vulnerability was also high.
On coastal forts, such an installation of guns was the most preferable and why it was so is understandable. The Turkish forts of the Dardanelles used this type of installation of guns, but their crews suffered very heavy losses from the fire of British and French warships. At least one of the German forts (Fort Bismarck) also suffered from Japanese shelling (in this case from heavy ground siege weapons). Some American coastal forts, if they ever came under fire, could have suffered the same way.
With the introduction of an effective recoil compensation system at the end of the 19th century, it became possible to mount smaller guns, which was compensated for by their faster firing. For example, six-pound (or 57mm) cannons are often found on forts as typical anti-assault weapons, prized for their high rate of fire. A typical casemate mount had a curved armored shield that rotated with the cannon and, in principle, did not differ much from the 6-pounder mount on the British MK I.
Some forts had a high angle of elevation of the barrels of guns, which, thanks to this, could shoot at a long distance. But at the same time, near targets were inaccessible to them! A number of American coastal forts were equipped with huge long-barreled 12-inch guns, complemented by heavy mortars housed in large concrete pits in groups of four. It was believed that their shells, falling from above, would be very dangerous for the deck armor of cruisers and battleships.
In a combat situation, the personnel of these guns were completely protected from direct fire. However, if the enemy could organize, as they said then, "exchange fire", then he would be in great danger. The concrete pit walls would only enhance the effect of the projectile's explosion on impact. By the way, the shock waves from the shots were also reflected from its concrete walls and did not add health to the calculations.
Then came the era of descending counterbalanced guns. These carriages were produced until 1912 and were installed in coastal forts around the British Empire. This was partly the result of launching a series of "Russian horror stories" - battleships named after saints: "Three Saints", "Twelve Apostles", which, due to inaccuracies in translation, turned into 15 (!) Newest ships in British newspapers at once. There was a fear that the Russian Empire would try to expand its possessions in the Pacific Ocean at the expense of British, Australian and New Zealand territories. And although the British army declared declining guns obsolete as early as 1911, many of these guns were used in the First World War.
The same cannons were installed in a series of coastal fortresses on the east and west coasts of the United States, as well as in Hawaii and the Philippines. In 1917, on the Pacific coast, where there was no naval threat, many of them were dismantled and sent to France, where they were placed on conventional carriages. They were returned and re-delivered to these forts after the war. America retained its "disappearing guns" during the Second World War. In particular, six forts equipped with these cannons took part in the defense of Corregidor Island from the Japanese in 1942. Enviable longevity, isn't it?
One of the potential problems with these guns was the impact of overhead fire. It was partially solved by installing the guns in round pits with an upper shield mounted on the gun carriage. This shield had a hole in the embrasure through which the gun barrel rose and fell. However, photographs indicate that most of the American cannons were not protected from overhead fire.
The process of replacing guns on descending machines was slow, and in the same England it was not completed in 1914. But they began to replace them with barbet installations, similar to those used on the then warships. The Panama Canal Forts, where huge 14-inch cannons were mounted in barbets, were a good example of such installations.
In 1882, a combined Anglo-French fleet bombarded the Egyptian fortified batteries of Alexandria. The results were disastrous for the Egyptians. And this lesson was not in vain: now the guns of the forts were increasingly installed under an armored dome or turret (as in a warship), so that even a kind of "tower arms race" began.
Guns in the towers began to be installed on the forts of Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. It got to the point that General H. L. Abbott gave a talk at the American Academy of Sciences, warning of the weakness of coastal forts and their vulnerability in the event of an attack from the British navy based in neighboring Bermuda (a 19th century threat quite similar to the Cuban missile crisis of the last century!). In his opinion, it was necessary to cover all the heavy guns on the forts with armor, that is, to place them under tower-like covers!
The US Congress, however, was not impressed by his ideas. They calculated the cost of such systems and did nothing. The same costs could be more efficiently used, others noted, if coastal guns were placed in casemates.
When the test of war came, it turned out that armored domes are a weak defense against heavy siege artillery shells, and can be pierced by a direct hit. Slips can pierce the surrounding concrete or masonry and damage the turret swing mechanism. Sometimes the weight of the cast dome itself was too heavy for its support and slewing gear bearings. Many photographs of the lost forts show us the destroyed domes and also their concrete foundations.
A further development of the idea of full protection was the retractable or disappearing tower. The same counterweight and hydraulic mechanisms made it possible to remove the tower after firing so that its top would be flush with the concrete base of the fort. This reduced the enemy's chances of hitting the tower with a direct shot, but again it did not protect against hitting the top of the dome. In addition, the lifting mechanisms of these towers seemed to be prone to jamming even without enemy fire.
At the entrance to Manila Bay, the Americans built Fort Drum, armed with towers from a battleship and 356-mm guns, but the fort surrendered when it ran out of fresh water!
This overview of the armament of WWI forts would be incomplete without mentioning the "mobile tower" or Fahrpanzer. This was the development of the Gruzon firm, which was an armored turret equipped with a rapid-fire cannon (57 mm), which can move on four small wheels on a 60 cm narrow-gauge railway inside the fort. They were used in German and Austro-Hungarian fortresses. Usually the rails ran in a trench or behind a thick concrete parapet so that only the upper, rotating part of the tower was exposed to enemy fire.
The Fahrpanzers were designed to be easily transported by a horse-drawn carriage so that they could be quickly deployed outside the fort. They were used in field and trench fortifications on many fronts, but the same Germans never figured out that if an armored casemate was attached to this tower in front for the driver, in the back - for the engine and put all this on tracks, then they would be very good for that time the tank!
