Swallows of Death:
The Artillery
by Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
April 2023

The French Army’s defensive doctrine in 1940 rested on its artillery. “Firepower kills,” went Philippe Pétain’s mantra, and the new war would be decided by the weapons that won the last one. One weapon in particular.

The Puteaux Arsenal’s 75mm Model 1897 field gun had entered service more than four decades before the outbreak of World War Two. Over 12,000 of them had been manufactured, and in September 1939 the French Army still had 5,500 of them in service. Two generations of French officers saw Madame Soixante-Quinze as le canon roi, notre glorieux soixante-quinze.

Few officers wished to dethrone the king of cannons, despite its increasing age. The French 75 still offered an enormous rate of fire and the very real advantage of familiarity to her crews; even the oldest artillerymen called back to the colors for a new war knew how to operate it. With the interwar French Army trying to build a mass army reliant on hastily-trained reservists, the familiarity of their tried-and-true 75mm field gun spoke loudly in favor of retaining it in service.

Panzer Grenadier: 1940: Swallows of Death shows how a division armed with the French 75 could perform on the defensive. The 1st Moroccan Infantry Division, organized on the same pattern as metropolitan French divisions, relied on French reservists to man most of its batteries, though it did contain Moroccan artillerymen. The need to bring in these part-time soldiers who had not trained alongside the Moroccans meant that the artillery did not perform to the same standard of excellence as the long-service Moroccan infantry.

While the French 75 remained the world’s most famous field gun, the French Army’s artillery park relied on two other veterans of the Great War. The Schneider Model 1917 155mm howitzer might have had less fame, but 2,600 of them remained in French inventory. For longer-range fire, the 155mm GPF rifle still had impressive range though its enormous weight (14 tons) made it difficult to employ.

French doctrine called for centrally-controlled artillery to form the defense’s backbone. If heavier guns were needed than those held by the division, they came from some of the 56 artillery regiments of the general reserve, attached to corps- and army-level commands. The divisional artillery would give support during normal operations, but when faced with a large-scale enemy attack it would be these additional tubes that created the “zone of death” described in the 1936 regulations for large-unit tactics.

A French infantry division, including 1st Moroccan Infantry Division and the other divisions in which individual Moroccan regiments served, included a light artillery regiment of three battalions, each of these battalions including three four-gun batteries for a total of 12 guns per battalion and 36 per regiment. A heavy artillery regiment added two more battalions, each with three four-gun batteries, for a total of 24 155mm Model 1917 medium howitzers.

The general reserve artillery regiments had three battalions: on paper, one with 155mm GPF long-range rifles, one with 105mm Model 1913 cannon and one with 105mm Model 1936 long-range cannon. In practice, only the motorized regiments met the standard pattern, while the horse-drawn regiments (the majority of them) often had two battalions with 105mm Model 1913 cannon and one with the 155mm Model 1917 medium howitzer.

A Model 1917 155mm howitzer captured by Australian troops in Syria, 1941. This piece has been modernized with rubber tires to allow towing by tractors.

All but one of these four heavier weapons had served during the Great War, and while that gave the advantage of familiarity to the reservist gunners who would man most of the batteries it left French artillery out-ranged by the more modern German 105mm light field howitzer that armed the batteries of German divisions. These were also heavy guns and difficult to move; French artillery could not easily move its batteries. In a mobile campaign like that of May 1940, French infantry divisions often had no means to carry out their artillery-based defensive doctrine.

The French Army had a 105mm field howitzer, which began to appear in the late 1930’s, the Schneider Modern 1934 and the much-improved Bourges Model 1935. But the Bourges Arsenal, the manufacturer of both howitzers, only made 144 of the Model 1934, half of which were sold to Lithuania. The French Army ordered 610 of the Model 1935, of which 232 had been delivered when production switched to the 47mm APX anti-tank gun in 1939. The howitzers served in the artillery regiments of the mechanized and armored divisions, and three of the five horsed cavalry divisions.

The 75mm field gun could still fire at extreme speed; a crack crew under ideal conditions could pump out 15 shells per minute (for a short burst, until the barrel overheated). When deployed near the front in concealed positions, the venerable guns could still pour fire on an attacker and they had reasonable anti-tank capability against the panzers of 1940.

But the field gun fired over a flat trajectory, unable to provide plunging fire against enemy fortifications. The 105mm howitzer offered greater range, high-angle fire, and a shell three times the size of the field gun rounds. The howitzer was only slightly heavier than the field gun, coming in at 1,600 kilos against 1,500 kilos for Madame Soixante-Quinze.

When Prime Minister Leon Blum offered to find the funding for new artillery, the French generals demurred. The Great Depression came later to France than most other countries, which put the nation in deep budget difficulties just as it most needed to re-arm in the late 1930’s. But Blum understood the importance of artillery to the Army’s defensive doctrine and knew that it needed new materiel.

Army commander Maurice Gamelin reluctantly accepted the concept of a new howitzer, resulting in the Models 1934 and 1935. But he gave it much less priority than new tanks. While new, much more effective 75mm field guns appeared in Germany, Italy and Czechoslovakia, the French made no moves toward a replacement for the Model 1897.

A French crew and their 75 in Greece, 1916.

Instead, some steps toward modernizing the old gun added a splinter shield and rubber tires to allowing towing by tractors rather than horses. The Model 1897/33 put the 75mm barrel on the same carriage used by the Model 1935 howitzer, while the Model 1897/38 added a shield and pneumatic suspension to the original carriage. Following a design developed in Poland, which had 1,400 Model 1897 field guns, the French Army also adopted an innovative mounting that gave full 360-degree traverse for the anti-tank role. A few French infantry divisions had this weapon in 1940 in place of the 47mm gun in one of their anti-tank companies. A high-angle mount allowed the old gun an anti-aircraft role as well.

The 1st Moroccan Infantry Division had the same artillery organization as the standard French infantry division: 36 75mm field guns and 24 155mm medium howitzers, with no light howitzers. It shared the same problem of other French infantry divisions, lacking motorized or mechanized transport for the guns, relying on horses in the midst of a mechanized battlefield.

When deployed in North Africa and Syria, Moroccan gunners had also used the 65mm Model 1906 mountain gun. Though not authorized to bring them to France in 1939 a few appeared on the battlefield anyway with the Spahi cavalry in place of the 60mm mortars they should have deployed.

While French infantry had the organization if not the training to match the Germans in 1940, French artillery simply did not have the weapons it needed. The 105mm Model 1935 offered nearly the same range as the German leFH18 that dominated the battlefields of 1940, and was actually a lighter weapon. Re-arming the French light artillery batteries with this weapon would have been an enormous undertaking. Blum might not have been able to deliver on his promises given the fiscal realities of the Great Depression or the political reality of the French Navy’s lobby soaking up huge sums for battleships and aircraft carriers that could not be deployed in Belgium. But the opportunity was there.

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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 a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, three children, and new puppy. He misses his lizard-hunting Iron Dog, Leopold.

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