Canon de 19 C modèle 1875
The Canon de 19 C modèle 1875 was a coastal defense gun designed and built in the 1870s. A number of guns were also converted to railway guns during World War I in order to meet a need for heavy artillery. Design. The Canon de 19 C modèle 1875 were typical built-up guns of the period with mixed construction consisting of a rifled steel liner and several layers of iron reinforcing hoops. In French service guns of mixed steel/iron construction were designated in centimeters while all steel guns were designated in millimeters . However, reference materials do not always distinguish the difference in construction and use either unit of measurement. The guns used a de Bange breech and fired separate loading bagged charges and projectiles. The mle 1875 was mounted on a number of different models of garrison mounts with limited traverse. One exception was the GPC mount which was a rectangular steel firing platform which sat on top of a large circular steel track embedded in concrete behind a parapet. A rectangular steel firing platform with four wheels rotated on the track and gave 360° of traverse. The recoil system for  the mle 1875 consisted of a U shaped gun cradle which held the trunnioned barrel and a slightly inclined firing platform with a hydro-gravity recoil system. When the gun fired the hydraulic buffers slowed the recoil of the cradle which slid up a set of inclined rails on the firing platform and then returned the gun to position by the combined action of the buffers and gravity. Railway guns. In order to address a need for heavy artillery a number of mle 1875's were converted to railway guns. The conversion entailed removing the gun cradle from its carriage  and mounting it on one of three different types of rail carriage. Carriage Types: United States service. During World War I several US Army railway artillery units in France used this weapon, commonly called the "19-G". One of these was the 43rd Artillery, Coast Artillery Corps.