laststandonzombieisland

76,2mm armata forteczna wz.1938/1939. Note the machinegun saddle mount behind it

At the Polish Army Museum in Warsaw they have a few neat examples of a 76.2mm armored gun emplacement salvage from a bunker at Slucz junction at Hulsk, some 10 km southeast Zwiahel. A Soviet emplacement on the so-called Molotov Line of defenses of the CCCP’s far Western border with Poland, it started life as a 3″/30 caliber M1902 Pulitov field gun.

The saddle mount (Schartenlafette) was actually designed by the Tsarist Army in 1913 and manufactured during WWI, but wasn’t used until the early 1930s when Stalin created the Molotov line.

The base plate was made of two halves, each of which was a 30 mm thick cast, reinforced by horizontal and vertical edges. The gun itself was shortened to 22-calibers and, when using AP rounds, had a maximum firing range of 4.8 thousand meters of armor penetration on a 500m distance of 55 mm.

More on the mount here (German)