Trench artillery appeared with the onset of positional warfare. The 1912 “Instruction on the Action of Field Artillery in Battle” recommended that every artillery commander had to “take measures to immediately destroy or damage every machine gun noticed or indicated.”

The first trench guns were introduced in the summer of 1915, and by the end of the year the production of a trench gun specially designed by Major General Mikhail Feodorovich Rosenberg was launched. Such guns were intended for foot infantry as more powerful weapons than rifles and machine guns. They also had a longer range than hand grenades, but were at the same time relatively light and portable.

To develop the new weapons, it was decided to use as prototypes training barrels for 6-inch Canet guns, which had been used in naval fortresses and in the navy since the 1890s. A “supplementary barrel” was inserted into the breech of a standard gun barrel to practice loading and firing techniques. Unitary cartridges with a high-explosive grenade from 37 mm Hotchkiss cannons were used for practical shooting. The latter in several modifications entered service with the Russian fleet and were produced by domestic factories.

The Rosenberg 1915 model trench gun, which was also simply called the “37 mm trench gun model 1915”, met all the requirements: it could be fitted on any machine gun nest, had an infantry sight and could be serviced by infantry soldiers. The gun had sufficient accuracy and could penetrate the shields of enemy guns and machine guns. This was its main purpose. According to the official description, it was to be used “for aiming from infantry trenches on the targets that are little vulnerable to rifle or mortar fire.”

Two types of unitary cartridges were used for the trench gun: a grenade cartridge and canister shot. The grenade cartridge was almost no different from the shells for the French 37 mm Hotchkiss guns, various types of which were used in the Russian navy. The Navy Department had stocks of such cartridges, so they were initially used. As they had been stored for a long time, however, the capsules deteriorated, which caused frequent misfires. In 1916, cartridges produced in the Russian Empire began to enter the army.

The buckshot cartridge was quite different: a cylindrical case made of thin tin was inserted into the cartridge neck instead of a grenade. It could fit 75 buckshot pellets.