Historic context :

During the war, most fighting nations faced the lack of artillery material. This issue was obviously more accute for the countries that had no real industrial production capacity for such systems. Thes latter nations had to be inventive and part of it was to avoid scrapping the used or damaged guns and recycle them the best they could. Turkey was i that situation. It had acquired from Germany numerous old '9cm K 73' fieldguns, and these surviving guns seem to prove some of the guns were transformed into a rustic trench mortar or close-defence grape-shot weapon.

No data could be found on the origin and use of these strange weapons that have been captured by the ANZACS in Palestine, but they are most probably 9 cm K 73 used tubes, re-bored at 9.5 cm by erasing the barrel rifles, making it 'smoothbore'. The original carriage has been modified in shortening its tail, perhaps in order to allow the bell-curve typical trajectories of the trench mortars, or simply to make it less cumbersome and more integrable in narrow trenches.

In this database of the surviving WW1 guns, these weapons have been assigne arbitrarily with the name '9.5cm Gleich Kanone' (smoothbore 9.5 cm gun). The nature of the projectiles they were shooting, the way tehy were firing and the gun performances remain an enigma…

Technical data :

• Complete description : Smooth bore gun 9.5 cm
• Design year : 1914
• Calibre : 95.00 mm
• Weight in firing position : unknown
• Weight for transportation :
• Tube length in calibres : 0.00 unknown
• Grooves : 0 (smoothbore)
• Projectile weight : inconnu
• Initial speed : unknown
• Fire rate : unknown
• Range : unknown
• Elevation range : unknown
• Direction range : unknown