Support wagons for 87mm Krupp guns

The Krupp field artillery batteries bought by the Bulgarian Army at the end of 19^th Century were provided with two different kinds of store wagons, that loaded weighted more than 2000 kg. They both were drawn by six horses, and looked like the ammunition wagons. The limber has the same sizes of the gun limber, while the wagon body was larger than the caisson of the ammunition wagon, and was partitioned off.

These two store wagons were manufactured along the same broad outline, differing in materials carried and inner arrangements. At first, the Bulgarian eight-guns batteries were equipped with both the wagons, but later, when the number of the guns was reduced to six, only one of them was attached to every battery. Therefore part of the items carried were removed and placed on other carts, while the wagons were standardized, modifying their arrangements.

The store wagon Nr. 1 carried two wheels, hung on the walls of the wagon body, a box of grease, the doctor’s and the veterinary’s boxes, with drugs and surgical instruments, a box with screws, nuts and bolts of various kinds, a box with carpenter tools (with axes, saws, planes, screwdrivers, ecc.), a box with sighting devices; 15 sickles, 11 anvils and grindstones; a stock of 30 tunics and trousers, 20 pairs of boots, a spare saddle, a spare breech-block, a box with tools to repair the breech mechanism.

The store wagon Nr. 2 carried two wheels, hung on the walls of the wagon body, the bag of the saddler, a box with writing implements, 6 blankets for sicks, 10 foddersacks, 2 ropes, 4 horsecloths, a spare saddle, a portable table with a chair, an officer tent, an icon, a laboratory tent, a box with laboratory tools (a balance, 11 differents weights, templets to verify shells and shrapnel and various tools to clean, paint and fill them), an iron board for the limber, a folding pole, 3 splinter bars and spokes.

The spare carriage wagon, weighting 1860 kg, had the same limber as the gun, and carried the same number of projectiles. The wagon body carried three wheels with their accessories, a shaft, an axletree, a draught pole, a swingletree, a splinter bar, a traversing lever, and two chests. The wheels were fitted on a pivot bore by the cover of the wagon, while the axletree was fixed between the two boxes, secured by a linchpin with chain and grommet. The chests carried a tools and spare parts to repair the wheels and to adjust fuzes and primers.

The field forge weighted 1625 kg. Its limber looked like that of the gun, while the wagon body was composed by a frame, a ventilator with its box, a blast-furnace, a grindstone, a vice and a sheet iron chest. The wagon carried 25 kg of coal, a great number of horseshoes, 25 kg of iron in pieces of various shapes and sizes, and every kind of blacksmith tools.

Store wagon	Field forge