World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

The Ordnance QF 25 pounder field guns, also known as 25-pdr field guns, were designed to replace the 18-pdr field guns and 4.5-inch howitzers predecessors. They were designed in the 1930s with the tight budget, and they entered service in teh late 1930s. A standard crew of a 25-pdr field gun consisted of four or five men, usually leading by a sergeant. They usually fired high explosive shells, but it was not rare to see them firing smoke, star, flare, and propaganda leaflet shells. During WW2, they were among the most numerous field guns in British and Commonwealth forces, with each division fielding somewhere between 20 and 72 of them. 25-pdr field guns were usually towed by a Morris C8 4x4 Field Artillery Tractor ("Quad"), but after 1944 some of them were converted to be self-propelled with a Ram tank chassis (new designation: Sexton). Baby 25 pr field guns, an Australian pack gun variant of the design, were produced between 1943 and 1945; the guns and the carriages were made smaller to suit jungle combat in the South Pacific, with the ability to be broken into 13 sections for ease of transport through thick jungle growth by troops. After receiving overwhelmingly favorable reviews during WW2, they remained in active service in the United Kingdom and some of the Commonwealth nations until the 1960s, and served as training weapons or reserve weapons until the 1970s. One of the last combat uses of the 25-pdr field guns was by Kurdish forces in Northern Iraq in 2003. Ammunition for the weapon is currently produced by Pakistan Ordnance Factories.

Ordnance QF 25 pounder Field Gun Interactive Map

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1.  Alan Chanter says:
11 Jul 2009 02:31:29 AM

British Field (and RHA) Artillery Regiments during the Second World War were organized into three gun Batteries, each of eight guns in two troops of four. Three such Regiments would be allocated to Infantry and Armoured Divisions giving a nominal total of 72 gun(3 x 24)per Division. In the Western Desert however (due to a shortage of trained personnel to operate the Battery HQs it was not uncommon however to find Regiments consisting of just two batteries with six guns each.

5.  C. Peter Chen says:
13 Jun 2010 01:13:20 PM

Seagate, thanks for visiting the site and leaving your comment! 1800 kg = 1.8 tons

9.  David Stubblebine says:
17 Jan 2018 10:12:04 PM

PJ (above):
The British artillery naming custom is to name the gun for the weight of the projectile it shoots. So, a 25-pounder launches a 25 pound shell (11.3 kg).