Panama Mount surfaces…in Panama City
At the outbreak of WWII, the Army had 979 Great War-era French 155mm GPFs still on hand although they were being replaced by the new and much more modern M114 155 mm howitzer (many of the latter are still in use in the Third World today).
With the relegation of the old GPF to the reserve, when the balloon went up and German and Japanese subs started crawling just off the U.S. coastline, these vintage guns were pressed into service on what were termed “Panama Mounts,” a semi-fixed installation atop a circular concrete mount that allowed the gun to revolve and rotate in place.
155mm GPF gun on a Panama mount. Notice the concrete inner and outer rings.
Capable of sending a 95-pound shell out to 17,700-yards every 15-seconds with a well-trained crew, they could shatter the hull of a U-boat with ease or give a surface raider far from home at least a moment of pause. The mounts were so named because they had been first used in the Canal Zone.
Taken in 1943, this picture shows one of two 155 GPF guns that were mounted on top of the fort. Placed on Panama mounts Fort Morgan (Fort Morgan Collection)
Well, it appears that a long lost Panama Mount, manned by the 166th Infantry Rgt of the Ohio National Guard in 1942-43, was exposed after it had been buried in the sand along St. Andrews State Park, uncovered by Hurricane Michael last summer.
That’s the funny thing about history. It never really stays buried forever.
Just to clarify, the 155mm GPF and it’s U.S. made copies were guns, not howitzers, and would be replaced in service by the 155mm M-1, M-1A1 and M-2 guns or “Long Tom”. After the war the M-1A1 and M-2 would be redesignated as the M-59 gun. The original French GPFs were built at Rueil (ordnance) and Renault built the carriages. A gun has a longer ordnance and fires a shell on a flatter trajectory than a howitzer which is meant to fire shells on a more parabolic trajectory.On the other hand, the M-1 and M-1A1 155mm field howitzers (later redesignated as the M-114 and M-114A1) would replace the 155mm M-1917 and M-1918 field howitzers, NOT the GPFs. These were the Schneider weapons you referenced. The M-1917 was the French “Canon de 155 court Mle. 1917 Schneider” aka. C17S which was adopted by the US as the US 155mm M-1917 field howitzer. The M-1918 was a U.S. licensed copy of this weapon with some changes to simplify manufacture here in the US, most notably the use of a straight shield instead of the curved version used on the French made guns. These weapons were not used for coast defense and were lighter and much shorter barreled than the GPF or the much larger and heavier 155mm M-59 gun (the Long Tom).