One of the guns responsible for smashing the German lines on the Western Front during the closing years of World War I is now on public display at the Australian War Memorial as part of the Centenary of ANZAC commemorations.
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The 7.5-tonne, 9.2-inch (233.7mm) howitzer was lowered onto its plinth in the AWM's sculpture park on Wednesday morning.
It shares space with the stern gun from Her Majesty's Queensland Ship Gayundah, which dates back to 1884, and the AWM's priceless 15-centimetre Kanone 16, a German Krupp product that was captured by AIF troops near Morcourt in France on August 8, 1918.
AWM director, Dr Brendan Nelson, said the installation of the guns marked the completion of the $32 million redevelopment of the WWI Galleries.
The WWI display is to be officially opened by the Governor General, Sir Peter Cosgrove, at 9am on Sunday.
"Les Carlyon will be speaking and Lee Kernaghan will be performing "Spirit of Anzacs"," Dr Nelson said. "Everybody is welcome."
Believed to have been used by the 55th Siege Battery (later the 2nd Australian Siege Battery), the 9.2-inch howitzer's calibre dwarfs that of the heaviest guns currently in service with the Australian Defence Force.
Now pointed in the general direction of the parliamentary triangle, the decommissioned behemoth was designed to launch a 150-kilogram projectile 9.2km in a ballistic trajectory.
Howitzers, unlike regular field artillery which shoot projectiles in a flat trajectory, send their shells high into the air. It was their ability to lob high explosives, shrapnel and even poison gas over hills and defences that made them so popular with commanders.
In Britain the 9.2-inch howitzers, like many of the heavy Allied guns of WWI including two massive 18-inch (450mm) railway howitzers, owed their survival to Winston Churchill who returned to government after his post-Gallipoli service in the trenches to become minister for munitions in 1917 and 1918 and minister for war and air in 1919.
Appreciative of the massive investment in money and material the weapons represented, he had the super guns mothballed and the smaller (but still massive and state-of-the-art) 9.2-inch and 12.2-inch howitzers retained in service.
The decision proved prescient with many of the guns doing sterling service in WWI.
The AWM's gun is a Mk I. It was a replaced by the Mk II which had a range of 14km in the last years of the war.
Dr Nelson said the weapons would be on display for the next three or four years before returning to the storehouse at Mitchell for further conservation work and longtime preservation.
