The Long Tom was manufactured by the French and purchased by the South Africans in 1897 for the use during the Boer War. They purchased only 4 of them so the last of the big spenders lol.
The one in the photographs is from Lydenburg near the Long Tom Pass. This was the last time the Boers's used them against the British as it was used to cover their escape. After the Long Tom Pass battle they disbanded and started using Guerilla tactics. Hauling a big gun around wouldn't have been a quick hit and run tactic.
The bar/shop that is at the gun sight today is actually in one of the craters and unfortunately never thought to even photograph that,next time. The area around here is very hilly and it must have been a mission to haul this lumber some gun around. It nearly fell into British hands during the battle except two Irishman on the Boers side managed to save the day. What is it with the Irish always fighting the British.
The gun weighs 6500 kg's so this is no light weight beast. each shell weighs 43 kg so just the ordnance for this thing would take a small army to fire and man. The maximum rounds per hour would be 20 and the maximum range would be 9 000 m or 9 Km which is impressive for 1900.
16-20 oxen were required to pull this thing around with another two wagons just for the ammunition. There were 3 types of ammo used on this gun depending on the circumstances you were in.
The normal shell for long range where you try and keep your enemy at bay for as long as possible. This is why they used Long Tom pass as it was fairly easy to defend as it was like a narrow ravine which forced the enemy troops through a narrow gorge.
The Fragmentation Shell which had a range of 6800 m and had a time fuse. The only thing was that time fuses were not exactly trustworthy back then and many shells never even exploded.
The last shell was called Case shot which was when you were seriously in trouble and the enemy was getting rather close. Case shot would be an exploding shell that would be like a large grenade effective up to around 400 meters.
During the early stages of the war these guns gave the Boers an advantage as they had a longer range than what the British had at their disposal. As they lost the Forts where these guns were positioned they destroyed them so they wouldn't end up in enemy hands.
!pinmapple -25.163001 lat 30.136295 long Long Tom Cannon d3scr
