The Lake Victoria Gun at Mwanza
"If possible bring the 10.5cm gun on a steamer to Njantelessa. If not, blow it up!"
Orders to the Gun's Commander Oberleutnant Vogel

10.5cm SMS Königsberg Gun Captured at Mwanza, July 1916
Photo © Imperial War Museum
 

Deployment to Mwanza
The Mwanza Gun (serial number 362) was originally one of the side guns mounted in cupolas on the SMS Königsberg and there fore had no barrel flange. This is the only one of the ten Königsberg guns that we can be 100% certain of the combined history and serial number of.

After being salvaged and repaired at Dar Es Salaam, it was sent via the Central Railway to Tabora, then dragged by 32 oxen (with another 16 in reserve) overland over 200km to Mwanza (Muansa in German) on the shore of Lake Victoria, the source of the White Nile.

Lake Victoria was a very useful strategic point in the campaign as it bordered German and British territory. The British in Uganda and British East Africa were on the northern side of the lake, German East Africa was on the South with Mwanza as it's biggest port on the lake. The British held the upper hand on the lake with more ships and a landing at Mwanza was expected by the Germans.

The Schutztruppe commander, Oberstleutnant von Lettow-Vorbeck described the position in his memoirs- "Warfare near Lake Victoria was very difficult for us. There was always the danger that the enemy might land at Mwanza or some other place on the south coast, seize Usukuma and threaten Tabora. If however our troops remained near Mwanza, the country around Bukoba and therefore also Rwanda. would be in danger."
(Quotation from P88 'Reminiscences of East Africa' by Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, Naval & Military Press Ltd 2004)

On 12 September 1915 the 10.5cm SMS Königsberg gun arrived at Mwanza and was soon installed overlooking Lake Victoria in a fixed position on its original naval pivot stand. The gun was commanded by Oberleutnant d.R. Dr. Alfred Vogel. This was an important defensive position and would have deterred British attacks. Photographs of the gun shortly after its capture show that it was fitted with an improvised gun shield, camouflaged by leafy branches.

The peacetime Schutztruppe garrison at Mwanza consisted of part of the 14. FK, in wartime the town became a major recruitment centre for new askaris (five new companies were recruited from the Wassukuma people in 1915) and the area came under the German Western command of Major General Kurt Wahle.

Schutztruppe Feldkompagnie on Parade in Mwanza before the War
Photo by Kurt von Schleinitz © Frankfurt University Koloniales Bildarchiv

The Battle of Mwanza and the Loss of the Gun
In early 1916 the Allies were ready for simultaneous offensives against German East Africa. In March 1916, South African and British forces drove the Schutztruppe back from their North Eastern border around Kilimanjaro and on to Kahe. In April 1916 the Belgian Force Publique began an offensive from the Belgian Congo around the North of Lake Tanganyika into Ruanda meeting up with the British Lakeforce under Sir Charles Crewe advancing from Uganda.

This pushed Wahle's outnumbered Western Schutztruppe onto the retreat. Mwanza was the main British aim to gain control of Lake Victoria and from there it was a matter of time before Tabora and the Central Railway could be taken. 

On 13 July 1916 Belgian and British columns advanced towards Mwanza and the Königsberg gun opened fire on the enemy at night. Oberleutnant Vogel received orders to try to withdraw with the gun- "If possible bring the 10.5cm gun on a steamer to Njantelessa. If this is not possible, blow it up!"
(Quotation from P284 "Kampf im Rufiji-Delta, Das Ende des Kleinen Kreuzers Königsberg" by RK Lochner, Wilhelm Heine Verlag, München 1987)

Due to a bad telephone connection he misunderstood the order to read that he should cover the retreat of other German forces, namely Abteilung Leutnant von Gynz-Rekowski, before destroying the gun. Accordingly the gun remained in action until the 14th when it was blown up before British troops (the 4th Kings African Rifles Battalion with elements of the Uganda Police Service Battalion, the Baganda Rifles and local details) seized the city. It therefore became the third of the ten Konigsberg guns to be put out of action.

Local rice trader and veteran of the East African campaign, Carl Jungblut described the fall of Mwanza and the fate of the gun- "Plumes of smoke rose from individual points of Mwanza town. The remaining rice stocks in my mill had been ordered to be destroyed, as had the radio tower and the 10.5cm gun as far as possible with dynamite (which unfortunately failed)."
(Quotation from P100 "Vierzig Jahre Afrika 1900-40" by Carl Jungblut, Spiegel Verlag Paul Lippa, Berlin-Friedennau 1941)

Unlike in Kahe, the barrel did not split in a spectacular fashion. A photograph of the gun immediately after its capture shows the breech block missing and the recoil springs removed but very little other visible damage. According to a British officer's diary (Major JJ Drought), four hundred shells were also captured with the gun.

German Flag Captured at Mwanza, July 1916
Collection of Duncan Bickerton originally shown on the 1914-1918 Invisionzone.com/Forum 

Post-War Display
The British recovered the gun, its recoil springs and breech block and originally displayed it on its pivot stand in Kampala, British Uganda, across Lake Victoria. In the Summer of 1932 Carl Jungblut made a trip to Kampala and mentioned that- "Kampala has the appearance of a Northern Italian town... In the middle of the city stands our old naval gun from the cruiser Königsberg. It was formerly at the entrance of the port of Mwanza but was carried off by the British as a trophy during the war."
(Quotation from P192 "Vierzig Jahre Afrika 1900-40" by Carl Jungblut, Spiegel Verlag Paul Lippa, Berlin-Friedennau 1941)

The gun was later removed from Kampala to stand outside the 4th Kings African Rifles barracks in Jinja, Uganda (where the young Lieutenant Idi Amin once trained). The barracks is now known as the Qadaffi Barracks (since Amin's alliance to the former Libyan Dictator) and is the home of the Uganda Junior Staff College. The barracks were built in 1939 but not occupied until 1948, so the gun was probably moved to Jinja around that time. Albert Whitwell (formerly of the Black Watch and 4th Kings African Rifles) remembered the gun being there back in 1956.

Its presence however had been largely unnoticed by historians until it was rediscovered and photographed by Bob Wagner in 1998 on a traffic roundabout at the barracks. At the time Bob just got a very brief look at it- "I was there for about two minutes when I visited the Jinja Gun in the late 1990’s. I read the plaque and walked around it one time. My host used my camera to take my photograph. I took the photo of the plaque. Then, back into the vehicle and go."

The gun remains on display at the Qadaffi Barracks outside Jinja to this day (as of March 2014) and along with the guns at Pretoria and Mombasa is one of the three Königsberg guns known to still exist.

Bob Wagner with the Mwanza Gun at Jinja 1998
Photo © Bob Wagner

Sources

"Kampf im Rufiji-Delta, Das Ende des Kleinen Kreuzers Königsberg" by RK Lochner, Wilhelm Heine Verlag, München 1987
"Vierzig Jahre Afrika 1900-40" by Carl Jungblut, Spiegel Verlag Paul Lippa, Berlin-Friedennau 1941
"Reminiscences of East Africa" by Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, Naval & Military Press Ltd 2004
"Das Offizierskorps der Schutztruppe für Deutsch-Ostafrika im Weltkrieg 1914-1918" by Wolfgang-Eisenhardt Maillard and Jürgen Schröder, Walsrode 2003
Capture of Mwanza at KaisersCross.com
Charles Crewe Biography at ThePeerage.com
Jugblut Biography- "Ein Kolonial Skandal: Settler Carl Jungblut's Campaign for a Lake Victoria Rice Milling Monopoly, 1906-16" by Laird Jones at ResearchGate.net
Idi Amin Biography at News.BBC.co.uk
Mwanza Flag first shown at the 1914-1918.InvisionZone.com/Forums

Mwanza-Weg street sign in Würzburg, Germany 2008
As the sign says the two cities of Mwanza in Tanzania and Würzburg in Bavaria are now twinned.
Photo from Wikipedia.org