These guns, the
17 cm SK L/40 gun, were designed as the secondary armament of the - and
pre-dreadnoughts, but they were transferred to the
Army from the Navy (
Kaiserliche Marine) when those ships began to be relegated to training duties in 1916. It was first adapted for land use by mounting it on an improvised carriage as the
17 cm SK L/40 i.R.L., but it proved to be extremely heavy, often too heavy to be moved by horse, even after being broken down into three loads. The solution was to mount the guns, still on their carriages, on rail cars to increase their strategic mobility. The gun's firing platform (
Bettungslafette) was used as a model for the mount on the rail car. A metal ring was fixed to the surface of the car on which the wheels rested. At the center of this ring was a large pivot pin from which tension rods extended to the carriage's trail which rested against a circular section of rail. The gun was traversed by means of a gear that engaged pins on the outside of the rail. The trail rested on two spring-supported rollers, which would compress during firing and allow the shock of recoil to be transmitted to the floor of the car. To prevent damage to the
trucks during firing cast-steel wedges were placed on the railroad ties under matching wedges on the car and the car was moved up on them. Some sources quote its maximum elevation as 47.5°, but Miller says that the sight on the gun itself was only calibrated to 45°. If more traverse was needed the gun's original firing platform was carried on a separate car and the gun could be dismounted to use it.
Ammunition The shells for this gun were loaded by two men using a tray. It had eyes which engaged hooks on the
breech of the gun and then the shell and powder was manually rammed. It used the German naval system of ammunition, where the base charge was held in a metallic cartridge case and supplemented by another charge in a silk bag that was rammed first. == Combat History ==