A unique World War II cannon has been excavated in Kolobrzeg - video

On 18 December 2017, in the port area of Kolobrzeg, an action was carried out to excavate a cannon dating back to World War II. The 75 mm calibre cannon was located on the wreck of the German landing ferry F 193. The vessel sank during the battles fought for the city in the early spring of 1945.

The action of excavation of the historic cannon began at high noon and proceeded without any particular complications. As a result, the Schneider wz. 97 cannon set on a naval base was smoothly brought to the surface. Precise answers concerning the find will be provided by further research and conservation works.

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Exactly such equipment was used by the Polish Army in the defensive war of September 1939. Schneider guns wz. 97 were among others used on the training ship “Mazur”, gunboats “Komendant Piłsudski” and “General Haller”, minesweepers “Żuraw” and “Czapla”, river monitors ORP “Warszawa”, “Horodyszcze”, “Pińsk” and “Toruń”. They were also used in the armoured trains of the Land Coastal Defence and in the anti-tank batteries of the coastal artillery.

[blockquote style=”2″]”Everything seems to indicate that we have retrieved a Polish cannon from September 1939 from a German wreck which sank in 1945 near Kołobrzeg. We may be tempted to say that we have the “Independence Cannon” and thus the Museum of Polish Arms in Kołobrzeg inaugurated the 100th anniversary of regaining independence by Poland in a rather original way.” – said Aleksander Ostasz, director of the Museum of Polish Arms in Kołobrzeg[/blockquote].

After the occupation of Poland, the Germans dismantled and stored all the weapons that were still usable. In the following years of World War II, they supplemented the shortages with it according to their own needs. It is therefore presumed that the excavated cannon has a Polish origin, especially as it is indicated in a German ferry service manual from 1943. It lists the 75mm cannon wz. 97 (Poland) in the armament list.

The following photograph should be mentioned as an interesting fact. Two great figures of pre-war Poland were photographed against the background of the described cannon – President Ignacy Mościcki and Commander Józef Unrug. The photograph was taken in Gdynia during the Sea Days celebrations in 1937.

The excavation of the cannon took place as part of the programme carried out by the Museum of Polish Arms “Wrecks of Kołobrzeg”. The wreck of the landing ferry F 193, from which the cannon was taken, was inventoried during archaeological works in 2016.

The whole action was conducted under the patronage of Marek Gróbarczyk, the Minister of Maritime Economy and Inland Navigation, and Tomasz Tamborski, the Starost of Kołobrzeg.

A photo report and video footage of the extraction can be found on museum website.

Source: museum.kolobrzeg.pl