Fort Meade Museum sends massive WWI weapon to Fort Sill

FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. (Sept. 13, 2012) -- For decades a pair of 21-cm Morser 16s was on display outside the Fort Meade Museum, exhibiting the German weaponry of World War I.

In the early 1990s, however, the weapons were moved into storage to prevent further damage from the weather.

But on Sept. 6, one of the massive guns was brought back outside and sent on a long ride to Fort Sill, Okla.

The Fort Meade museum donated the German howitzer to the U.S. Army Field Artillery Museum at Fort Sill, which will restore and display the 17,500-pound weapon in the museum's Artillery Park. The 1916 weapon will become the museum's oldest remnant of German artillery from the first world war.

"It's going to work within our collection," said Zane Mohler, an exhibit specialist at Fort Sill. "We have artillery pieces from the Civil War all the way up to present day. We do have a few German howitzers from World War I, and this will complete some of our collections."

The howitzer came to Fort Meade through First Army's historical collections in 1966. The unit captured the weapon at the Battle of the Argonne Forest in France in 1918.

"A lot of these historic collections started off as souvenirs captured during battle," said Dave Manning, the collections manager at the Fort Meade Museum who is responsible for the historic property.

The collection moved around with First Army. When the unit was assigned to Fort Meade in 1966, all of its historic property came to the installation as well, including the two German Morser 16s.

For more than 25 years, the guns were on display outside the museum before they were moved into a storage warehouse. They remained in storage until a few months ago, when the Fort Sill museum began the process of moving one of the guns to Oklahoma.

Manning said it was an easy decision for the museum to send one of the two Morser 16s to Fort Sill.

"This is a significant piece within the history of modern artillery and they don't have an example of it," he said. "We're more than happy to send one down there where they'll able to better utilize it. ...It'll give it better exposure."

The process began when Zane traveled to Fort Meade to take measurements for the construction of carts that would help move the 17,500-pound weapon. Using the carts and a forklift, the gun was placed outside a warehouse near Meade High School last week.

The nearly 9-ton howitzer left its mark outside the warehouse, making large craters in the parking lot from wheels on the cart.

A crane lifted the gun onto a flatbed truck. After several attempts to secure the awkwardly shaped cargo to the truck, the howitzer was chained down and began its more than 1,400-mile journey to Oklahoma.

After arriving at Fort Sill, the gun was taken to the Fort Sill Paint Shop where it will be restored. U.S. Army Field Artillery Museum curator Gordon Blaker said the weapon would be sandblasted; rusted out portions would be repaired and repainted.

The process is expected to take about a month at a cost of $10,888. Once restored, the howitzer will join 85 other artillery pieces in Artillery Park.

"Acquiring the Morser 16 is very important to the museum because it will be our first example of a World War I German piece of heavy artillery," Blaker said. "Currently, our largest WWI German gun is a 150 mm. Additionally, the Morser 16 was one of the most heavily used German howitzers of World War I.

"We are working towards having a good representative collection of U.S., Allied and enemy artillery used in all of America's wars."

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Fort Meade, Md.