Thursday, March 01, 2012

The Australian guns finally silenced: 22 April 1941

The two Australian guns on the side of the mountain, in an exposed position, had dueled with the German artillery for eight hours. The guns were 25 pounders. One gun finally had a recuperator oil leak and had to stop firing. The officer in charge, a young lieutenant, noticed that there were German infantrymen unloading from trucks that were too close to fire upon. The gun was sited in a pit, so they lifted the trail onto the back edge. That allowed them to fire on the infantry with reduced charges. They could have easily flipped the gun with full charges. That fire brought down medium artillery fire that disabled the remaining gun. The artillery duel had lasted eight hours by the time, at 4pm, when the gun was disabled. The men exposed on the hillside were finally hit by German fire and there were men killed and wounded. This is based on the account in Vol.II of the Australian Official History.

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