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The largest weapon with fire ever built is without question the 80cm Kanone (E) builds in the Krupp workshops for III Reich.
A monster of 1345 tons with a tube of a gauge of 80 cm and a length of 32,5m being able to draw from the projectiles up to 48 km.
Such a weapon had a length of 43m for a width of 7m and a height of 12m (gun in position of loading to horizontal).
The weight and dimensions except standards obliged the engineers to sit the weapon on 4 railway carriages of 10 axles each one circulating on 2 ways of railroad parallels with an axial spacing of 4m
Contrary to the railway guns large gauge K (E) could not be assembled on a revolving bridge to carry out the pointing of the weapon. To be done, the ways of support formed an arc of circle and the gun advanced or was moved back to regulate the axis of shooting.
To respect the tradition to name the heavy guns with the first name of the members of the Krupp family, 80cm K(E) was baptized Gustav in reference to the elder director Gustav Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach. The complete name is "Schwerer Gustav" (heavy Gustav) and was called "Gilded" by the garrison assigned to the weapon
perforating shells and a cartridge of powder
Two types of ammunition were developed for this gun.
High-explosive shells of 4.8 T with a load of 700kg of explosives with a maximum range of 48 km and perforating shells of 7.1 T, 3.75m length with a load of 200kg of explosives and a maximum range of 37 km. The perforating capacity of this shell was one meter steel or concrete 7m or movable ground 30m.
The craters formed by the high-explosive shell measured with 30 feet broad and 30 feet of depth while the perforating shell is able to penetrate with 264 feet of concrete reinforced before the explosion.
Maximum propelling load consisted of 10,584 pounds of powder.
Work on the giant weapon started since 1934, when the German artillery requires a projectile able to bore Belgian underground defenses of Sudetenland and the line Maginot Frenchwoman in court of completion.
For this purpose the Krupp company studied guns for gauges of 70cm, 80cm, 85cm, and 100cm.
The preliminary plans of a gun were carried out by the ballistic of Krupp and introduced experts
in March 1936 during the visit of Hitler come to get information about the feasibility of weapons with fire giantess.
The design of a gun of 80cm was finished in 1937.
In 1937 following the direct order of Adolph Hitler the ministry of armaments placed an order of 3 guns of 80cm, the first weapon being deliverable for spring 1940.
Krupp built a model of test (at the end of 1939) and sent it to the polygon of shooting of Hillersleben.
After the test routines of the weapon with fire were completed about the middle of 1940.
But A first weapon was delivered in November 1941 and carried out its tests of acceptance of service to the camp of artillery of Rugenwalde.
With the late date of delivery two principal systems of fortification, Sudetenland defenses and the Maginot Line, for which the gun had been built were already conquered. There was no more broad outline of fortification in Europe justifying the use of the weapon with fire.
To justify work and the effort which the construction of this enormous gun had required it was necessary to find a target.
One then thought of using this weapon against Gibraltar. It was projected to attack this fortress with the mouth of the Mediterranean held by the English and which locks the access to this inland sea (the Operation ' Pelix '). But Spain being neutral, the authorization to cross Spain was to be obtained from the General Free. A meeting between Hitler and Franco showed that the Spanish dictator was not going to plunge his country in a European major conflict.
On the face Is the invasion of the Soviet Union (the Operation ' Barbarossa ') took place during second half of 1941 and at the beginning of 1942 the advance of the German army was so fast and deep that the face was going soon to reach the naval base of Sebastopol defended by many fortifications and considered impregnable.
The German planners included/understood the show of force which could be the destruction of the Sebastopol fortress.
One projected to concentrate on Sebastopol all the German heavy artillery included/understood Schwerer Gustav there.
Thus in January 1942, the unit (railway) heavy 672 of artillery was formed by a complete detachment of 1,420 men under the ordering of a General to serve the 80cm K (E), and was transferred in the area from Sébastopol in April 1942 as all the weapons large gauge.
The transfer alone of the 80cm K (E) required 5 trains with a collective length of 1.653 meters. The weapon broke up into 25 parts to assemble gone up on special flat cars. In addition to the 25 coaches of the weapon itself the convoy included/understood additional cars, workshops, coaches of ammunition and two cranes especially designed for assembled the weapon.
Overhead travelling cranes raising the 290 tons of the tube
Well before the arrival of the convoy an army of earthwork started to prepare the site of selected shooting close to Bakhchisaray, a small village with ten miles in the North of Sebastopol.
The site broke up into 3 parts.
A small marshalling yard made it possible to send the good coaches to the good moment the surface of assembly located in its prolongation during the phase of assembly and disassembling of the weapon.
It is on the surface of assembly that the 25 parts of the gun by means of two overhead travelling cranes were assembled which had been designed for this task.
The surface of assembly was finished by the two ways necessary to the support of the weight of the weapon and forming a curve allowing the pointing of the weapon.
The edges of the way had been raised by slopes to provide a better protection to the weapon with fire.
Six weeks were necessary to assemble the weapon with fire.
The ramming of Sebastopol began on June 5 1942. ' Schwere Gustav ' was the principal voice in an enormous chorus which announced one of the largest artillery bombardments and heaviest of all the time.
June 6, ' Schwere Gustav ' engaged the fort the White Cliff, it was an underground store of ammunition under the Severnaya Bay, placed there by the Soviets to be invulnerable with the conventional weapons.
Schwere Gustav fired 9 projectiles on this underwater target, the projectiles crossed more than 30 m (100 feet) of water before penetrating the bottom and perforating the concrete to burst inside the warehouses. When Gilded drawn its ninth discharge, the fort was in ruin and on the surface all the small sailing ships of bay had been sink in the explosion.
June 17 Dora fired the last 5 offensive shells against the strong Maxime Gorki.
The 1 er July the city went to German.
During the 13 days of operational use, the gun fired 48 shells on more than 7 targets.
In the good days the weapon carried out 14 shootings per day with one period of recharging and preparation to the 45 minutes shooting.
All the shootings were observed by a special flight of Luftwaffe assigned with the weapon with fire.
From the 48 projectiles fired, only 10 fell to less than 60 meters from their target. The projectile most distant from its target fell to approximately 740 meters. Nevertheless, the damage was enormous.
When Sebastopol fell, it was calculated that not less than 562,944 artillery projectiles had fallen on the port, this total does not enter that the shootings of the guns large gauge and heavy howitzers, it do not include the flood of artillery rockets and the additional weight of artillery of infantry.
Sebastopol once conquered the train of German seat was dispersed everywhere in Europe.
Plans were established to use Dora with Stalingrad (Volgograd) in September 1942. The gun could have even remained in the surroundings of the city before being returned to the camp of Rügenwalde for a revision.
The tube of the schwere Gustav is turned over to Essen for remanufacturing and a tube of replacement was assembled. In March 1943, 4 shootings of test were carried out. Hitler personally attended 2 shootings on March 19, 1943 and was largely impressed in particular by the 2nd shooting or a range of 47km was reached.
The second gun ordered with the Krupp workshops was finished, but no crew was affected to him.
Later during the war, to answer the obsession of Hitler to bombard London research on the giant guns was going to continue, but with a less level of priority, parallel to those on the rockets V-1 and V-2.
The request was made with krupp so that the third ordered gun also is finished but equipped with a 48 meters length barrel of 52 centimetres and to increase the range, the gun was to be called "Langer Gustav" (long Gustav), studies had been made to shelter the weapon in tunnels especially built in the North-Not of Calais. However the weapon was found not finished in its workshop when the American forces took Essen.
It was also planned to use the gun of 80cm with shells rocket. The range envisaged was of 160km.
A project even more insane envisaged to sit the 290 tons (tube plus cylinder head) on a self-propelled crawler unit.
In 1945 the Germans realizing that the capture of the weapons was close, dispersed the two guns and destroyed them with loads of demolition.
April 22 the 45 remainders of a first gun were discovered by the Americans scattered on several kilometers along a railway. The first remainders were discovered ten thousand in the North of Auerbach, then with the camp of formation of Grafenwohr Panzer then at the village of Vorra and finally in a tunnel twenty five thousand in the south towards Weiden. The near total of the coaches of the weapon was found summarily destroyed.
At the beginning of June, 1945, the second weapon was discovered *** TRANSLATION ENDS HERE *** en secteur russe dans les environs de Chemnitz (karl-marx-stadt).
Les parties du Gustav Geschutz trouv é es par les Am é ricains ont é t é abandonn é es sur place apr è s inspection et probablement refondues par les Allemands pour combler la p é nurie de m é taux de l'apr è s-guerre. Personne ne sait en revanche ce que les Russes ont fait des restes de la seconde arme. Elle pourrait avoir é t é fondue aussi, ou avoir é t é reconstruite.
Aujourd'hui les seuls restes connues du' schwere Gustav ' sont quelques projectiles inertes dans des mus é es.
