The Brandt Mle 1935 60-mm mortar (french: Mortier de 60 mm Mle 1935) was a company-level indirect-fire weapon of the

French army History Early history The first permanent army, paid with regular wages, instead of feudal levies, was established under Charles VII of France, Charles VII in the 1420 to 1430s. The Kings of France needed reliable troops during and after the ...

during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

. Designed by Edgar Brandt, it was copied by other countries, such as the United States and China, as well as purchased and built by Romania. Modified in 1944, the mortar continued to be used by France after the war until at least the 1960s.

Description

The Brandt Mle 1935 was a simple and effective weapon, consisting of a smoothbore metal tube fixed to a base plate (to absorb recoil), with a lightweight bipod mount. The team of the Mle 1935 was made of five men: a leader, a firer, an artificer and two suppliers. When a mortar bomb was dropped into the tube, an impact-sensitive primer in the base of the bomb would make contact with a firing pin at the base of the tube, and detonate, igniting a gunpowder charge, which would propel the bomb out of the tube, and towards the target. HE mortar bombs fired by the weapon weighed 1.33 kilograms. A French infantry company in 1940 was allocated one Mle 1935 mortar. This weapon provided a pattern for other light mortars used during World War II. Among the best known is the U.S. 60-mm M2 mortar. Captured examples were used by the Germans as the ''6 cm Granatwerfer 225(f)''. 60 mm Brandt M1935 Bucharest

Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, S ...

also purchased and license-built the Mle 1935 mortar prior to and during the Second World War. The mortars were produced at the Voina Works in

Brașov Brașov (, , ; german: Kronstadt; hu, Brassó; la, Corona; Transylvanian Saxon: ''Kruhnen'') is a city in Transylvania, Romania and the administrative centre of Brașov County. According to the latest Romanian census (2011), Brașov has a pop ...

,Great Britain. Foreign Office, Ministry of Economic Warfare, 1944, ''Rumania Basic Handbook'', p. 27 with a production rate of 26 pieces per month as of October 1942.

Notes

References

* * Ferrard, Stéphane. ''Les mortier Brandt de 60 et 81 mm dans l'Armée française en 1940''. *

External links

worldwar2.ro article on Brandt 60-mm mortar
World War II infantry mortars of France 60mm mortars {{Artillery-stub