The Book of Armaments:
Soviet 152mm Howitzers, Part One
by Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
June 2021

During the Great War, the Imperial Russian Army deployed 152mm howitzers in army-level artillery regiments, and also in the Supreme Command’s special-purpose artillery reserve. That remained the practice of the Red Army of Workers and Peasants until the 1930’s, when the big guns were added to the howitzer regiments of rifle divisions as well as the higher-level formations.

As with the 122mm howitzer, the Imperial Army had fielded two similar 152mm pieces, the Model 1909 fortress howitzer and Model 1910 field howitzer, both designed by the French firm Schneider and produced at the Putilov Works. The Model 1909 was a heavier weapon (since it was not expected to be mobile) that offered slightly better performance, but otherwise the two models differed little – but buying two separate weapons systems did allow for twice the graft.

Both models were modernized in 1930. With only 101 examples of the Model 1910 left after losses in the Great War and the Russian Civil War, only minimal changes were imposed on the old weapons. They received a new breech and chamber, to allow them to fire new ammunition, and some had their wooden wheels replaced with modern rubber truck tires. Otherwise, the carriage and barrel remained the same; they looked so similar to unmodernized weapons that their barrels were inscribed to note the change. The 99 modernized howitzers (some sources place the total at 120), now labelled the Model 1910/37, were issued to rifle division heavy howitzer battalions and participated in the early stages of the Great Patriotic War; though not as effective as more modern weapons, they were much lighter than even the 122mm howitzer which made them easier to use. Most appear to have been lost by the end of 1941.

The 152mm Model 1909, from the French firm Schneider’s catalog.

Many more examples of the Model 1909 survived the calamities of 1914 – 1922, and the Red Army therefore undertook a somewhat more extensive modernization program. Like the Model 1910, the howitzers received a new, larger breech, rubber tires and some modifications to the carriage. But the changes did not add a suspension to the carriage, which kept towing speed very slow, and did not increase the angle of fire above the original 41 degrees.

While the Kiev Arsenal re-built older weapons, Plant No. 92 in Gorkiy began production of new pieces in 1931, with the project moving to Perm’s Plant No. 172 in 1937. Between them the two factories pumped out 2,188 pieces by the time production ended in early 1941; counting refurbished weapons the Red Army had 2,607 of them on hand on 22 June 1941.

The Model 1909/30 entered the Great Patriotic War as the Red Army’s standard medium howitzer, serving in the howitzer regiments of rifle divisions, in corps artillery regiments and in the separate howitzer regiments of the RVGK (the Supreme Command Artillery Reserve). Even with improvements, the Model 1909/30 remained far behind the state of artillery art, lacking the range and firepower of contemporary Czech-, German- or French-made heavy howitzers of similar caliber. It was also difficult to move, and too heavy to be drawn by horses or trucks. But it was available in large numbers, could be manufactured with the limited skills of the Soviet industrial work force of the early 1930’s, and could be operated by Red Army gun crews with limited experience and training. Heavy losses among Soviet artillery units and the slow arrival of new-model 152mm howitzers at the front kept the aged Model 1909/30 in front-line service until the end of the war.

Training with a 152mm Model 1909/30 howitzer.

The Red Army’s Artillery Directorate put an old howitzer back into production because the Soviet Union lacked the technical expertise to draft a new one from scratch, or even to make major modifications to an older design. Secret agreements allowed the German Reichswehr, the Weimar Republic’s armed forces, to build test new weapons at Soviet sites, weapons not allowed by the Treaty of Versailles. In exchange, the Germans provided technical expertise to the Soviets, and the Red Army turned to the German firm Rheinmetall to design a new 152mm weapon system.

The result was the Model 1931 mortar, intended to fill the roles of mortar, heavy howitzer and cannon. Like most such multi-purpose systems, it failed to really fulfil any of those roles satisfactorily.  Its only real virtue was its small size and weight, which allowed it to be drawn by trucks or horses and manhandled into position by its crew. Its range was abysmally short, actually slightly less than the 120mm regimental mortar which came into service a few years later and less than half that of the aged Model 1909 and 1910 howitzers even before modernization.

By necessity, it was a breech-loading weapon – no crewman could be expected to heft its 40-kilo (88-pound) high-explosive bomb to the top of the 1.4-meter barrel and drop it in. The breech-loading mechanism also assured that the crew would not try to drop a round into an already loaded barrel in the heat of combat. While the weapon was expected to use the existing stocks of 152mm high-explosive howitzer ammunition, these rounds had to be modified for use in the heavy mortar, which cancelled that benefit. A special fragmentation round just for the heavy mortar was also manufactured.

The failed 152mm Model 1931 gun-mortar combination.

Despite the disappointing performance, the Model 1931 went into series production at Plant No. 172 in Perm. It proved very difficult to build, and many units suffered defects from poor workmanship. The plant management could not unravel the complicated instructions provided by Rheinmetall, and once the Nazis took over Germany in 1933 no technical advisors were available. The plant ended up building the weapons using handcraft techniques rather than an assembly line. Those that did reach the troops were issued to the heavy howitzer battalions of rifle divisions. Of the 129 delivered, only 51 were still in service in June 1941 and despite the Red Army’s lack of heavy weapons those that survived the battlefield had been returned to storage by the end of the year.

The Red Army would eventually return to the divisional heavy mortar, but without expecting it to fill the roles of cannon and howitzer as well. Rheinmetall modified the Model 1931 design and successfully sold it to the German Wehrmacht as the sIG33, and it became the standard German heavy infantry gun with over 4,600 of them produced.

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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published eleventy-million books, games and articles on historical subjects. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, three children and his dog, Leopold.

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