QF 6 Pounder Hotchkiss - US History

US History

This is an outline that will be expanded upon, please be patient. What is needed in this history is details, not suppositions, the below is offered in order to serve as merely a baseline. It is believed that much can be gleaned from the annual reports of the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy and with those resources being more available than before, perhaps an accurate accounting can be made of the Hotchkiss six pounder guns.

The history of the Hotchkiss six pounder (called the Rapid Fire gun rather than Quick Firer in the US) in United States Navy and Army service is apparently a complex story. It was used in in conjunction with other makers design, its primary rival being the Driggs-Schroeder six pounder. Oddly, one shipbuilding and naval supply company, Cramp & Son's, had a license to build both the Hotchkiss and Driggs-Schroeder and sold both to the Navy in parallel. It appears that Hotchkiss type guns had an edge in production in the first half of the 1890s but by 1895 Driggs-Schroeders were being produce in quantity to equip a considerable number of newly commissioned ships. However, the initial purchases by the Navy were in small lots each year and there was no mass-production pf these guns like one would see in smaller weapons. Both Hotchkiss and Driggs-Schroeder guns used the same ammunition and eventually the Navy made certain that the ammunition for both was identical. There is no question that the Driggs-Schroeders were predominant in the new protected and armored cruisers that were being commissioned by 1895, however the USS Texas, a second class battleship commissioned in 1895, carried a mixed six pounder complement of ten Driggs-Schroeders and two Hotchkiss guns. The USS Maine, an armored cruiser (but really more of a battleship) exclusively carried Driggs-Schroeder six pounders although it had a mixed one pounder battery of both Driggs-Schroeder and Hotchkiss. Ships known to have carried exclusive Driggs-Schroeder six pounders are the USS Olympia, Brooklyn, New York, Columbia. Although from photographs of particular guns on the vessels in question, it appears that the Battleships Indiana BB-1, Oregon BB-3, and Iowa BB-4 carried exclusively Hotchkiss six pounders with the USS Massachusetts BB-2 carrying Driggs-Schroeders. The six pounders would start seeing general replacement by 3 in (12 pounder)RF naval guns starting around 1910.

The US Army also used the Hotchkiss six pounder. As the primary defender of coastal fortifications and harbors, the US Army had the need for lighter guns to supplement their shore batteries, of course the Army tended to be in an experimental phase like the Navy, trying and testing new weapons in an era when military budgets were expanding after decades of Congressional stinginess. It appears that the US Army and US Navy, while both using the "Mark" system, assigned their designations to different ordnance.