Mystery Colonial Italian Gun?

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Askari Miniatures Gun 'A3'

Can you identify this mysterious Italian Mountain Gun…? Askari Miniatures produce the illustrated Italian Mountain Gun – and while it is modelled on actual photographs of Italian guns it has not been positively identified exactly what model and calibre the weapon is.

Askari describe it thus: “Italian Mountain gun from the 1890s. Used by the Italian Askari camel and mule-mounted gun companies.

I am attempting to identify exactly what weapon it is, when it entered service with the Italians (and for how long, i.e. was it still in use in WW1 or even WW2) and whether it may have been used by Nations other than the Italians (if it was for example an exported Krupp or DeBange gun or similar).

It has been suggested the square breech would seem to strongly suggest a Krupp design of some description – but there is nothing else to confirm this. The following are some of the historical photos used by Askari Miniatures to create the model:

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The unidentified Gun the Model is based on
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Another shot of the unidentified Gun the Model is based on with an Askari artillery unit
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And a third image of the unidentified Gun in an Italian Askari unit

On the Italianisti Group David Eddington forwarded the following photo, suggesting this may be the same gun – the photo features (what appear to be WW1 or perhaps WW2) re-enactors with a gun described as Cannone da 70A and which features a Brass Barrel and is obviously designed for Mule Pack transport.

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Italian Cannone da 70a Mountain Gun manned by WW1 Re-enactors

If you have any information as to what the above gun may be please let me know by leaving a comment below.

4 thoughts on “Mystery Colonial Italian Gun?”

    1. I see one of the pics above (middle of the 3 B&W ones) is on the Wikipedia page for the Cannon 7 BR Ret. Mont. with the following caption: “Two 7 BR Ret. Mont. of the 1st indigenous mountain artillery battery of Major Ciccodicola in Asmara in 1889”.

  1. The gun by Askari Miniatures is I believe the Krupp mountain gun. The Italian gun had a shorter barrel and carriage.

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