THE MYSTERY OF THE KÖNIGSBERG GUNS
IN GERMAN EAST AFRICA DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR
by Chris Dale, Bob Wagner, Oliver Eicke and Holger Kotthaus

The SS Goetzen Gun
"She's the boss of the lake 'cos she's got the biggest gun in Central Africa!"
Humphrey Bogart in the 1951 film 'The African Queen'

SS Graf von Goetzen fitted with a SMS Königsberg Gun on Lake Tanganyika
Photo by Kapitän Zimmer © Frankfurt University Koloniales Bildarchiv

Deployment on the SS Goetzen and the Battle of the Lakes
This gun was originally one of the turret mounted guns on the SMS Königsberg and as such had a barrel flange the small shield of which was never removed. It is the only gun from the Königsberg always seen with its barrel shield in position and is thus easily identifiable in photographs.

After its refitted in Dar Es Salaam, it was one of two guns (along with the gun positioned on the Elephant's Foot in Kigoma) sent to defend Lake Tanganyika against the British and Belgians who held the opposite coast. The defence of the lake was trusted to Korvetten-Kapitän Gustav Zimmer (formerly of the SMS Möwe) and came under the overall command of Generalmajor Kurt Wahle's Western Schutztruppe.

"After July 1915, when the SMS Königsberg was sunk by the English, two of the 10.5cm guns were sent to Kigoma. From there, one was used on Lake Tanganyika and the other was emplaced on a mountain overlooking Kigoma."
(Original Quotation from P15 "Die Möwe-Abteilung auf dem Tanganjikasee in DOA 1914 – 1916" by Gustaf Zimmer, Marine Archiv, Berlin 1931)

Both guns were transported from Dar Es Salaam to Kigoma on the Central Railway via Dodoma and Tabora. One gun was fitted into an emplacement at Kigoma, the other was mounted in its original turret on the foredeck of the German steamer SS Graf von Goetzen in August 1915. Also added to the Goetzen was one of the 8.8cm Königsberg guns and two 3.7cm Revolver Guns from the survey ship SMS Möwe. This made the SS Goetzen by far the most powerful ship on the lake, easily outgunning their Belgian opponents.

The Goetzen was a steamer ship originally intended for civilian passengers and cargo on Lake Tanganyika. She was built in early 1914 in Germany then dismantled and sent in 5,000 separate parts by ship to Dar-Es-Salaam then via the Central Railway to Kigoma where she was unboxed, reassembled and finally launched on 5 February 1915, by which time the First World War had broken out and the Goetzen was pressed into military service and captained by Oberleutnant d.R. Theodor Siebel.

The other two German ships on the lake were the Kingani and the Hedwig von Wissmann (the sister ship of the Hermann von Wissmann on Lake Nyassa). German dominance of the lake caused the British to sent two motor gunboats from England. Much like the Goetzen they were carried overland in parts and assembled on the lakeside.

Their eccentric Commander Geoffrey Spicer-Simpson initially requested their names be HMS Cat and HMS Dog but when this was rejected by the British Admiralty he changed their names to HMS Mimi and HMS Toutou (French childish names for the sounds made by cats and dogs). These gunboats captured the Kingani (which was then renamed HMS Fifi by Spicer-Simpson)and sank the Hedwig von Wissmann, thus altering the balance of power on the lake in favour of the allies.

The Crew of the Hedwig von Wissman in Belgian Captivity
Photo © Imperial War Museum

Despite now being the only German ship on the lake and confined to port, the Goetzen still maintained a stalemate on the lake as her 10.5cm gun still out-ranged anything the British or Belgians could put on the lake. Eventually the British and Belgian advance by land from the North threatened to cut off Kigoma and on 18 May 1916 the Goetzen's guns were removed to prevent their capture and to be more useful on other fronts. Replica fake guns were installed on the ship and the Goetzen was left with only a single real 3.7cm gun to defend herself from Belgian air attacks. Before the allies took Kigoma the Goetzen was very carefully scuttled in Katabe Bay on 26 July 1916 by her assembly crew, no doubt expecting to recover her when the war won.

For more on the Battle of Lake Tanganyika, see Tanganjikasee - A Gunboat War in Deutsch-Ostafrika 1914 - 1916 by Dennis L Bishop and Holger Dobold.

Deployment on Land and the Battle of Kondoa-Irangi
Meanwhile in May 1916 gun was urgently needed by von Lettow-Vorbeck on other fronts. At the Battle of Kondoa-Irangi a Königsberg gun had a misfiring and was put out of action. The Goetzen gun was taken back down the Central Railway from Kigoma to Dodoma, then overland to Kondoa-Irangi where the Schutztruppe had temporarily halted Van Deventer's southward advance.

At Kondoa-Irangi the gun was put under the command of the former Königsberg officer, Oberleutnant z.S. Reinhardt Kohtz, who had commanded the previous Königsberg gun at Kondoa-Irangi until its misfiring.

Private Eric Thompson of the 7th South African Infantry Regiment (one of the regiments Smut sent to reinforce Van Deventer's position) at Kondoa-Irangi recorded in his diary for 27 May 1916, "Woke up at daylight and lit the fire and cut the steaks for breakfast. The Germans must have brought up one of their big guns during the night as they began bombarding the town as soon as it was light enough. They were shooting at a very long range and fired a good many shots."
(Quotation from "A Machine Gunner’s Odyssey Trough German East Africa: January 1916- February 1917" by ES Thompson published by the South African Military Society)

For use on land the gun was mounted on one of the gun carriages made in Dar Es Salaam for use on land. A photograph of the gun taken in this period show it with logs tied around its wheels presumably to stop it sinking into soft or wet ground in the rainy season.

However as the rainy season abated in July, Van Deventer prepared to break out of Kondoa-Irangi and von Lettow-Vorbeck's Schutztruppe were once again forced to retreat south towards the Central Railway. From Dodoma, Kohtz and the gun were taken back down the Central Railway to Tabora to support Wahle's Western Front.

Back to the Western Front and the Gun's Destruction
In the west, the Schutztruppe under Generalmajor Kurt Wahle was gradually retreating from the Belgian Force Publique under Tombeur who had launched an offensive from the Belgian Congo into German East Africa to the north of Lake Tanganyika in June 1916.

From Tabora on the Central Railway the gun was sent northwards overland to Ngogwa as part of Abteilung Hauptmann Wintgens. The gun saw action against the Belgian advance until a lack of transport forced it to make a last stand near Korogwe in the Kahama district in early September 1916. Bruno Koppe a Schutztruppe veteran of the Western Front recalled-

"The 10.5 cm gun was already written off by us as a loss because it was no longer transportable due to a lack of draft animals. As a kind of abandoned scarecrow it could only serve as a bulwark to hold down the Belgians for as long as possible. Its ammunition was fired and it was blown up with its own last round, falling to the enemy as a sensational trophy."
(Quotation from "Hptm. Wintgens Rueckzug von Ruanda nach Tabora und die Kaempfe um Tabora" by Bruno Koppe, Koloniale Rundschau, Leipzig 1919)

Former Goetzen Gun Captured by Belgian Troops, Korogwe 1916
Photo © Ministere des Colonies de Belgique

Capture and Post-War Display
Soldiers of the Belgian Force Publique came across the gun abandoned near Korogwe in on 2 September 1916, making it the sixth of the ten Königsberg guns to be put out of action. The town of Korogwe is now simply known as Kahama on modern maps.

The Belgians took the gun back to the Congo to display. At some point in transportation, they dismantled the gun but when it was put back together it was done so with the barrel the wrong way up. Photographs of the newly captured gun show the shield shaped flange attachment with its flat upper edge and barrel the correct way up while later photos in the Belgian Congo show it inverted with the recoil pistons now above instead of below the barrel and the rounded lower edge of the barrel shield uppermost.

It was initially shown with its limber on the parade ground in front of the barracks at Boma. the then capital of the Belgian Congo. Photographs show it was there in 1923.

Former Goetzen Gun at Leopoldville or Stanleyville, Belgian Congo
Photo by Jean-Pierre Sonck © Stanleyville.be

At some point it was probably removed 200 miles upstream to Leopoldville (modern Kinshasa and the capital of the Congo from 1926). Photographs from 1936 to the early 1950s are captioned as it being at Leopoldville and show it on display there on a plinth with its original gun limber. From the backgrounds to these photos it would appear that was near an army barracks too.

In the early 1950s the gun was then moved further upstream on the Congo River to Stanleyville (modern Kisangani). It was displayed there on a plinth at a traffic junction appropriately named the Place du Canon without its limber from around 1953. Some historians, Bob Wagner among them debate as to whether the gun ever went to Leopoldville and suggest that it went directly from Boma to Stanleyville in the 1920-30s.

The Last Known Photograph of the Former Goetzen Gun, Stanleyville 1973
Photo by Jacques Dassy © Stanleyville.be

In 1960 the colony gained independence from Belgium as Zaire (more recently re-titled as the Democratic Republic of the Congo). In the early 1970s President Joseph Mobutu (Mobutu Sese Seko) declared a policy of Zaireinisation, part of which meant disassociating themselves from their colonial past. To this end many Belgian place names were changed (eg. Leopoldville was renamed Kinshasa and Stanleyville became Kisangani). Colonial relics and memorials were also disposed of as part of this process.

The gun was almost certainly a victim of these political changes. It was last photographed in 1973 and after that was removed from display and probably scrapped or possibly simply dumped out of sight. While the Place du Canon is still named after the Königsberg gun that once stood there, photographs since 1982 show that the plinth is now empty and more recently an advertising stall now stands where the gun once was.

Empty Plinth at Place du Canon, Kisangani 2008
Photo by Mamayo © Stanleyville.be

SS Goetzen's Legacy and The African Queen
Back in Lake Tanganyika, after the war the SS Goetzen was re-floated by British Royal Navy engineers in 1924. It was found that the ship was in remarkably good condition her engines having been carefully greased and her cargo holds filled with sand by the scuttling crew. In 1927 she was put back into service on Lake Tanganyika and still operates to this day (as of 2015) as a ferry on the lake under the name MV Liemba. She is the last ship of the Imperial German Navy still in operation, though it is reported that she is currently in desperate need of repairs.

The story of the SS Goetzen on Lake Tanganyika inspired the 1935 novel 'The African Queen' by CS Forester, which itself inspired the 1951 film of the same name starring Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn (for which the former won his one and only Oscar). The book and film tell the fictional tale of a mismatched couple who fall in love while on a mission to destroy the Goetzen (re-titled the Queen Louisa in the film). It has also been suggested that a part of the plotline around improvised torpedoes in the prow of a boat was inspired by photographs of a similar captured vessel in Bagamoyo taken along with another captured Königsberg gun.

Poster for The African Queen, 1951
Picture from SwapSale.com

Sources

Tanganjikasee - A Gunboat War in Deutsch-Ostafrika 1914 - 1916 by Dennis L Bishop and Holger Dobold
"Die Operationen in Ostafrika im Weltkrieg 1914-1918" by Ludwig Boell, Verlag Walter Dachert, Hamburg 1951
"Königsberg- A German East African Raider" by Kevin Patience, Zanzibar Publications, Bahrain 1997
"Das Offizierskorps der Schutztruppe für Deutsch-Ostafrika im Weltkrieg 1914-1918" by Wolfgang-Eisenhardt Maillard and Jürgen Schröder, Walsrode 2003
"Meine Erinnerungen aus Ostafrika" by Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, KF Koehler Verlag, Leipzig 1920
"Erinnerungen an meine Kriegsjahre in Deutsch-Ostafrika 1914- 1918 by Kurt Wahle, O. Ortsang. 1920
"Die Möwe-Abteilung auf dem Tanganjikasee in DOA 1914 – 1916" by Gustaf Zimmer, Marine Archiv, Berlin 1931
"Hauptmann Wintgens Rueckzug von Ruanda nach Tabora und die Kaempfe um Tabora" by Bruno Koppe, Koloniale Rundschau, Leipzig 1919
"Mimi and Toutou go Forth" by Giles Foden, Penguin History Book , London 2005
"A Machine Gunner’s Odyssey Trough German East Africa: January 1916 – February 1917" by ES Thompson published by the South African Military Society
"Kampf im Rufiji-Delta, Das Ende des Kleinen Kreuzers Königsberg" by RK Lochner, Wilhelm Heine Verlag, München 1987
"La campagne anglo-belge de l'Afrique Orientale Allemande" by Charles Stiénon, Paris 1918 shown at Archiv.Org
"The First World War in Africa" by Hew Strachan, Oxford University Press 2004
Revue du Touring Club de Belgique #19, 1 October 1936
Axis History Forum Discussion on the Hedwig von Wissmann
Axis History Forum Discussion on Kurt Wahle
1914-18.InvisionZone Discussion of Vizesteuermann Edel
Stanleyville.be with lots of photos of the gun on display in the Belgian Congo
Axis History Forum Discussion on the SMS Königsberg Guns in English
Panzer Archiv Forum Discussion on the SMS Königsberg Guns in German

Thanks on this page to Jean-Luc Ernst of Stanleyville.be and Per Finsted for their additional help.

INTRODUCTION
Mystery of the Ten Guns
SMS Königsberg & WWI in East Africa
10.5cm SK L/40 Naval Guns
Deployment of the Guns on Land

HISTORIES OF THE TEN GUNS
The Railway Gun - Tanga to Kahe
'Big Bertha' - Dar to Kondoa-Irangi
The Lake Victoria Gun - Mwanza
The Hove Gun - Dar to Bagamoyo
The River Gun - Dar to Mkuyuni
The SS Goetzen Gun - Kigoma to Korogwe
The Elephant's Foot Gun - Kigoma to Tabora
Apel's Gun - Dar to Kibata
Wenig's Gun - Dar to Mahiwa
The Last Gun - Tanga to Masasi
and the
Two 8.8cm Naval Guns
One 6cm Landing Gun

CONCLUSIONS
Last of the SMS Königsberg
Mystery of the Mombasa Gun
Mystery of the Pretoria Gun

WEBSITE
Return to Index Page
Credits, Sources and Links
On-Going Research Forum at AHF
Contact
German Colonial Uniforms

Theodor Siebel
Siebel was captain of the steamer Mwanza of the German East African Line (Deutsche-Ostafrika Linie) on Lake Victoria. When war broke out he was enlisted as Oberleutnant zur See der Reserve. In 1915, he was given command of the SS Goetzen on Lake Tanganyika armed with two Königsberg guns, one of the 10.5cm guns and an 8.8cm gun on the aft. With this armament Siebel was initially able to command the lake. When the Goetzen was scuttled in 1916, Siebel was given command of the Schutztruppe's 29. Feldkompagnie. He was captured by the British while ill in 1917 and held in Mahenge and Dar Es Salaam returning to Germany in 1920, where he again became a merchant naval captain for the Deutsche Ost-Afrika-Linie and the Woermann-Linie. In this time he captained the SS Watussi. Siebel died in 1936.

Vizesteuermann Edel
Edel served as third officer on the SS König, a mail steamer of the Deutsche-Ostafrika Linie. As a member of the naval reserve in East Africa he joined the Schutztruppe at the outbreak of war, together with three officers and forty sailors of the Deutsche-Ostafrika Linie. Edel first worked to set up the the wireless stations at Dar Es Salaam and Tabora before being posted to Lake Tanganyika. On the lake he firstly served on the Hedwig von Wissmann, where he was in command of a raiding party that was sent on 1 February 1915 to retrieve Belgian porters loads that had been dropped in a previous raid by the Hedwig- falling into an ambush in the attempt. Later Edel served as first mate on the the SS Goetzen.
Photo © Frankfurt University Koloniales Bildarchiv

Geoffrey Spicer-Simpson
(1876-1947)
Spicer-Simpson joined the navy in 1889 and specialised in surveying. In 1901, he served on the North Borneo Boundary Commission, from 19 on the River Yangtze in China and from 1911-14 in the River Gambia in West Africa. His career was however not without incident. He had been reprimanded for taking shore leave without permission in 1894 and had later allowed a destroyer under his command to collide with a sailors' liberty boat. On the outbreak of the First World War he was back in England and was given an active command but one of his gunboats was torpedoed in daylight two weeks later. Spicer-Simpson was then taken off active service and given a desk job in the Admiralty. When the plan to send two gunboats to Lake Tanganyika to defeat the SS Goetzen was hatched, Spicer-Simpson was given command of the mission. By this time he had earned himself a reputation as a something of an eccentric and in East Africa he lived up to that expectation. He was heavily tattooed from his time in Asia and wore a kilt on active service. He kept a pet chimpanzee called Josephine that came on campaign with him. Most famously, he teasingly tried to have his gunboats named HMS Cat and HMS Dog. Settling on the names HMS Mimi and HMS Toutou, Spicer-Simpson surprised his doubters by scoring several successes on the lake with his daring command of the gunboats. He captured the Kingani (which was now renamed HMS Fifi by Spicer-Simpson) and sank the Hedwig von Wissmann thus altering the balance of power on the lake in favour of the allies, although his gunboats with their 3 Pounder, 4.7cm guns were unable to attempt defeat SS Goetzen with her 10.5cm gun. After the war he worked as a translator between British and French delegations at the Treaty of Versailles and was appointed secretary-general of The International Hydrographic Bureau set up to ensure that the world's oceans and navigable waters are accurately surveyed and charted. He later retired to British Columbia, Canada. Josephine meanwhile, went to Cape Town Zoo.

Kurt Wahle (1854-1928)
Wahle was a retired general from the Royal Saxon Army which he had joined as a cadet in 1867 in the aftermath of their defeat by Prussia in the Austro-Prussian War. He was promoted through the officer ranks until he retired in 1910 which the rank of Generalmajor commanding the 45th Infantry Brigade ( 45. Infanterie-Brigade (1. Königlich Sächsische)). In the summer of 1914, he took a holiday to visit his son Ralph, who was then a plantation owner in Tanga. When the war broke out, Wahle put himself under Oberstleutnant von Lettow-Vorbeck's command despite technically outranking him. Wahle was first put in command of German forces near Morogoro and Dar Es Salaam but in 1915 was given command of the Western Front against the Belgian and British. Wahle continued to serve with the Schutztruppe as they invaded Portuguese East Africa in 1917 and eventually surrendered due to sickness in October 1918 at the age of 64 and only one month before the end of the war and the campaign in Africa. Wahle is often credited as the oldest official combatant of the First World War. He returned to Germany in 1919 and took part in the parade of the East African veterans under the Brandenburg Gate in 1919 (as seen above). He then wrote his memoirs ("Erinnerungen an meine Kriegsjahre in Deutsch-Ostafrika 1914- 1918") and retired to private life.
Photo © Staatsbibliothek Berlin on Bwana Lettow Blogspot

Charles Henri Marie Ernest Tombeur de Tabora (1867-1947)
Tombeur studied at the Royal Belgian Military Academy and upon qualification served as Capitaine-Commandant in the Force Publique in the Congo Free State from 1902. He returned to Belgium in 1909 as Ordinance officer to King Albert I but went back to the Congo in 1912 as administrator for the province of Katanga. From 1915 he was appointed commander of the Force Publique and led the successful offensives against German East Africa that ended with the fall of Tabora in September 1916. For this action his was awarded the title Baron Tombeur of Tabora ten years later. He retired his command of the Force Publique after capturing Tabora and instead became vice-governor of the Belgian Congo in 1917. He also remained as administrator of Katanga until his retirement to Belgium in 1920.

C. S. Forester (1899-1966)
Forester was born in Cairo as Cecil Louis Troughton Smith and grew up in London, failing his army medical during the First World War. He moved to California during the Second World War writing propaganda for the allies. In total he published over 40 books plus numerous short stories mostly historical or historical fiction. Among his better known works are the novels on the fictional Napoleonic sailor, Horatio Hornblower and his 1935 novel, the 'African Queen'. The story of 'The African Queen' follows a mismatched couple, a missionary's sister and a boat mechanic who find themselves falling in love at the outbreak of the First World War while on a mission to destroy a German ship named the Queen Louisa, which commands a nearby lake. The ship is loosely based on the SS Goetzen and their means of destroying it (with improvised torpedoes pushed through the front of a small boat) was almost certainly inspired by a photograph of a similar boat seen alongside a captured Königsberg gun at Bagamoyo. The African Queen was made into a film starring Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in 1951. Bogart won the only Oscar of his long career for his performance.

Mobutu Sese Seko (1930-1997)
Mobutu came to power in in the former Belgian colony of the Congo in 1965, intially backed by Belgian forces who assisted him in a coup against the democratically elected President Patrice Lumumba, who was then executed. Mobutu took dictatorial power as President of the Congo, which he renamed Zaire in 1971 and ruled over until his death. In this time he reformed the country, removing signs of the former colonial administration, ruthlessly crushing opponents in his one party state and amassing a personal fortune at the expense of the economic deterioration of his country.

PHOTO GALLERY

SS Goetzen Under Construction at Dry Docks, Kigoma 1915
Photo by Kapitän Zimmer © Frankfurt University Koloniales Bildarchiv

SS Graf von Goetzen fitted with a 10.5cm SMS Königsberg Gun on Lake Tanganyika c1915-16
Note the dark turret of a Königsberg gun with a sunlit metallic shine can be seen on the foredeck of the ship. This is in fact one of the Königsberg's 8.8cm guns, which was on the Goetzen before the 10.5cm gun arrived to take its place on the fore deck. The 8.8cm gun was then moved to the aft deck. These guns gave the Germans an advantage in firepower against British and Belgian forces operating from the Western shore of the lake.
Photo by Kapitän Zimmer © Frankfurt University Koloniales Bildarchiv

10.5cm SMS Königsberg Gun in action on the SS Graf von Goetzen, Lake Tanganyika c1915-16
This photograph shows the gun's crew posing as if loading her in preparation to fire. This photograph is interesting for several reasons. Firstly it gives a clear view of the original Konigsberg turret and its riveted construction. Another interesting point is the gun's breech block slid to right in the open position by the loading lever. All post-war photographs of the guns show them with the breech block removed entirely to disable the gun. As the some of the ship's mast and rigging can be seen in the background, the gun firing to the ship's aft and port.

The gun crew are also very interesting with their mixture of naval, civilian and Schutztruppe uniforms typical of the Königsberg, Möwe and other naval crews in East Africa during the First World War. Photographs show that while on the SMS Königsberg crew wore neat naval white uniforms, once on land or seconded to other ships such as the Goetzen their formerly neat appearance gradually dwindled.

On the far left is a sailor with white naval cap and working trousers but with a civilian chequered shirt. He has one of the shells in a leather carrying bag. Next to him is another sailor loading the gun, he wears a white naval cap, blue naval shirt and either naval or Schutztruppe khaki trousers. They are tucked into naval gaiters, usually worn by landing parties.

Next to him with his back to us is probably a naval NCO or officer though his rank cannot be seen. It may well be Theodor Siebel, the ship's captain. He wears a khaki naval tunic with white trousers. Notice how he aims the gun through a sight to the left of the barrel. The figure behind him wears a Schutztruppe grey field cap with white East African band. The next figure opening the breech lever wears a naval dark blue cap but Schutztruppe khaki uniform stripped of insignia with naval gaiters and short boots.

The figure on the far right is Vizesteuermann Edel, the First Mate on the SS Goetzen. He wears a naval officers white cap, naval officers khaki tunic and white trousers with short white boots.
Photo from WikiCommons

The Former Goetzen Gun Captured by Belgian Troops, Korogwe 1916
This photograph shows the gun immediately after its capture being inspecting by officers and askaris of the Belgian Force Publique. Note the low slung Dar-Es-Salaam gun carriage, spoked tractor wheels and improvised braking system on the front of the wheels to stop it moving during recoil. The gun has also been dug into the ground to further stop it moving. Of interest is the barrel flange with its small shield currently the correct way up with a flat top edge. The gun aiming sights are also still intact in this photograph as is the elevation wheel, seen behind the LANZ wheel.
Photo from the former Belgian Colonial Ministry, Ministere des Colonies de Belgique

The Former Goetzen Gun Captured by Belgian Troops, Korogwe 1916
This photograph shows the gun immediately after its capture being inspecting by askaris of the Belgian Force Publique. Note the low slung Dar-Es-Salaam gun carriage, spoked tractor wheels and improvised braking system on the front of the wheels to stop it moving during recoil. The gun aiming sights are also still intact in this photograph. The most noticeable sings of damage to the gun caused by the German before abandoning it are, the clearly missing breech block and the angle at which the barrel and recoil cylinders appear to be facing. It looks as though the trunion has become partially detached from the gun bucket on the left had side. This may provide a clue as to why the gun was later displayed with its barrel permanently upside down.
Photo originally published on P2454 of "La campagne anglo-belge de l'Afrique Orientale Allemande" by Charles Stiénon, Paris 1918 shown at Archiv.Org

The Former Goetzen Gun on display in Boma, Belgian Congo c1923
The gun and its limber can just be seen in the left background behind two Belgian officials. The original caption on the card says “Batiment du District. Boma” and is dated 1923.
Photo © Stanleyville.be

The Former Goetzen Gun Display in the Belgian Congo in the 1930s
There is some debate as to exactly when and where this photograph was taken. It was certainly in the Belgian Congo, either in Leopoldville or Stanleyville and probably in the 1930s. Either way, it is certainly the gun captured by Belgian forces and later displayed in Stanleyville. Note the riveted front of the Dar Es Salaam made gun carriage and the upside down barrel. The LANZ traction engine wheels can be clearly seen here on both the gun and its limber.
Photo © Jean-Luc Ernst at Stanleyville.be

The Former Goetzen Gun on Display in Stanleyville, Belgian Congo c1950s-60s
This clear photograph shows the gun on display on a plinth at the Place du Canon roundabout in Stanleyville. The spoked traction engine wheels can clearly be seen as can the small flange shield and recoil pistons on the upside down mounted barrel. By now the limber of the gun has been discarded.
Photo by Melo Stan © Stanleyville.be

The Former Goetzen Gun, Stanleyville in the Late 1950s
Note the clear view of the spoked wheels, the pistons above the barrel, the horizontal breech facing the wrong way, the twisted aiming sight and the collapsed gunners platform still attached by hinges to the gun carriage. Also clearly seen here is the straight riveting pattern of the Dar Es Salaam improvised carriages and the double row of rivets joining a seam midway down the tail of the carriage. This pattern was not used on the gun abandoned at the Ruvu River crossing but is used on the Pretoria gun.
Photo by Michel Courteville © Stanleyville.be

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