Romanian military equipment of World War I
Between 1914 and 1916, 59 Romanian factories along with numerous private contractors produced a total of 400,000 artillery rounds and 45 million small-arms cartridges.
[1] At the beginning of the war, the Romanian factories in Bucharest were producing small quantities of ammunition, mostly for training purposes.
[5] As elsewhere, in order to create new artillery units, the Romanians resorted to disarming their fortifications, a decision prompted in part by the quick German destruction of Belgian forts in 1914.
[6] For instance, the Romanian officer Ștefan Burileanu invented an effective anti-aircraft system for the Hotchkiss 57 mm (2.2 in) rapid-fire gun.
By 1918, the heaviest Romanian fortress guns had been converted for field use, as exemplified by the Iași (Krupp) Model 1888/1918 210 mm howitzer.
[9] The first artillery panoramic field lenses, later adopted by all the armies of the world, were invented by the Romanian General Toma Ghenea.
[14] The Ghenea sight was peculiar because the pedestal itself was mounted on a transverse horizontal pivot to which the drum on which the elevation was set was attached.
In the Romanian Army, Ghenea's sight was fitted to the 75 mm Krupp L/30 field gun, being used for both direct and indirect laying.
[15] The Ghenea sight allowed the gun layer to adjust the range during the return of the piece in battery, by lightly turning the elevation screw which was just in front of him, without having to take his eye off the level.
During the following year, the monitors joined the army artillery in holding the line against the Germans in Moldavia throughout the summer and autumn of 1917.
Vlaicu's design had a chain-driven propeller at either end of the wing, the rudder at the front of the aircraft, a triangular tail and a 50 hp Gnome et Rhône engine.
At an Austro-Hungarian aircraft contest in the summer of 1912, Vlaicu's "strange-looking monoplane", a "refreshing oddity", took the first prizes for landing in the smallest circle and for accurate "bomb dropping".
Although the model was subsequently purchased by the Romanian Army, Vlaicu was killed in a crash during September 1913, which also destroyed his second aircraft.
[24] Before Romania's entry into World War I, a Romanian factory started manufacturing Farman aircraft under licence.
On 7 October, two assembled fighters were already in service at Sulina, and by the end of the year, four more operational and two non-operational aircraft were added.
[32] The Romanian-born inventor Henri Coandă designed several models of aircraft for the British Bristol Aeroplane Company.
Powered by an 80 hp Gnome et Rhône engine, the aircraft had a four-wheeled undercarriage and incorporated wing-warping for lateral control.
[35] Coandă invented a new bomb-dropping device for these biplanes, containing twelve bombs which could be released by a hand lever in the observer's seat.
The design proved moderately successful, a manufacturing licence for it being subsequently acquired by the French firm Bréguet.
The Romanian engineer George Constantinescu, working with Vickers in the United Kingdom during the war, invented what would become the main synchronizing device for the Royal Air Force.
[42] Although initially designed to fire only one machine gun, the Constantinescu gear was soon adapted to operate two, mounted parallel to each other.
The Romanian design made the Vickers machine gun a superb aircraft weapon, given that it was a reliable synchronizing gear.
[45] In August 1917, American representatives sent to Europe by the War Department acquired two Vickers aircraft machine guns equipped with the Constantinescu synchronizing gears.
