Garland mortar

[John D Salt]

Does anyone happen to know, off the top of their head or from any more reliable source, the mass (or weight in Earth gravity) of the Garland mortar, as used notably in the Gallipoli campaign?

All the best,

John.

[Etranger]

It may be worth asking the Australian War Memorial, as they’ve got one (& a half) in their collection. https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/RELAWM07849 https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C212181

Presumably you’ve caught up with this thread?  https://www.greatwarforum.org/topic/183243-the-garland-mortar-enigma/

[John D Salt]

Etranger wrote:

It may be worth asking the Australian War Memorial

Very sensible suggestion. I have fired off a research enquiry to them.

As I can find nothing in the National Archive catalogue, the only other hope might be to badger the IWM to let me take a look at the Garland Papers, but it looks as if they are mostly about his service in the Hejaz with Lawrence.

I am beginning to suspect that there are fewer mortar nerds than there ought to be, given how ubiquitous and deadly a class of weapon they are.

All the best,

John.

[John D Salt]

The Australian War Memorial have come up trumps, I have an e-mail this morning giving my answer.

If anyone else is interested, the Garland mortar weights about 80 lbs for the Mk I, 100 lbs for the Mk II, or 36.32 Kg and 45.4 kg in rational units.

On the numbers I have, this makes it almost, but not quite, the least efficient mortar of the 20th century.

All the best,

John.

[MartinR]

That is certainly quite a load to lug around. Not as heavy as a 120mm though?

"Mistakes in the initial deployment cannot be rectified" - Helmuth von Moltke

[Jim Webster]

It may have been the first (on the grounds it was probably in action before the Stokes Mortar) and replaced a lot of very ad hoc expedients.
I think it has to be regarded as an improvement on the rifle grenade (if only because it didn’t damage your rifle 🙂 )

https://jimssfnovelsandwargamerules.wordpress.com/

[John D Salt]

MartinR wrote:

Not as heavy as a 120mm though?

No, but heavier than some 81mms, and only flinging a jam-tin grenade. It’s the sort of thing that makes the Brixia 45mm mortar look adequate.

Jim Webster wrote:

It may have been the first (on the grounds it was probably in action before the Stokes Mortar) and replaced a lot of very ad hoc expedients.

Having just flung together a bunch of data on mortars for a class exercise in Military Operational Analysis Appreciation, I was intrigued to discover the sheer variety of calibres abounding in WW1 and to some extent persisting between the wars. I was aware that the Stokes mortar was an invention (albeit practically accidental) of sheer quivering genius, which set the pattern of mortar design for over a hundred years to come, but I did not realise quite how many other quaint ideas were around before the Stokes design (together with M. Brandt’s bomb shape and Newton’s idea of increments) swept them all away, at least in calibres of 60mm and over.

Perhaps the ubiquity of the Stokes-Brandt pattern of mortar for such a long time explains the scarcity of mortar nerds.

All the best,

John.

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