Printable View
Other than what is called on a WW2 Website a German Rail Gun what Size of Shell and Distance can this Beast Reach ? I don't think I've ever seen one on another Website, but this Beast looks like it can destroy from several hundred yards aways I'm guessing.
Have not seen that particular pic but from the carriage (That pic I feel is photo shopped) it appears to be Gustav 80cm rail gun used in the seige of Sevastopol in WWII it fired 2 types of shells a 5 tonne and 7 tonne from memory the 7 tonne shell could be hurled 19 miles it was made by Krupp, one shell penetrated 100' of earth to destroy a Russian ammunition dump. It had a mate Dora same configuration info can be found on Google about them. They were white elephants and required a crew of 1300 men to man, lay the tracks for the firing site and man the beast/air defense batteries etc. The tracks were laid in a curve so the piece could be aimed as it had no traverse on it it weighed @1200 tonnes. The Bovington tank museum in England has one of its 7 tonne projectiles.
It would be the ultimate in useless equipment I should think. Lots of manpower tied up for one single purpose.
I read somewhere the projectiles were also partly made of concrete.
With what you just mentioned...Yeah I can see this as being a White Elephant.Too many men to tied up for this Beast. It's crazy that back then they had a Shell that would penetrate 100' of Earth. It also looks like it can fire then work it's way down low on the Trench Rails for Cover. It was right before the Iraq war when we Made a Real Bunker Buster and tested one of the unhabited Islands in the Keys. Do you remember that. I think it was in the early to mid 90's. I would love to see this up close.Quote:
Originally Posted by CINDERS
Aberdeen had Leopold, now at Ft Lee VA. I have pics of me on it but they're analog.
He is impressive up close but what was even more impressive was the coastal defense arty piece on the other side of the field. Which is a 16' battleship gun mounted on a turn table.
If you have a good little digital camera you can take pics of pics and it works out fine. Just watch the glare and no flash...Quote:
Originally Posted by WarPig1976
I's an impressive piece; but I can't help thinking that the recoil would tip it over if fired in that position:madsmile:
Looks like a work of fiction really, the "legs" appear unnecessary and the recoil of such guns would surely damage them.
I haven't seen another one like it and I been looking for awhile. I did see this captured one by the French in '45.
ex French 27,4 cm K(E) 592(f) German Railroad Gun Captured at Rentwertshausen 1945
This isn't a picture of an 80 cm cannon . It is a much smaller piece . The "legs " were raised just before firing to bring the piece above a rampart for a clear shot . When fired , the recoil was used to collapse the pistons , lowering the gun back down below cover to be reloaded . We used the same technology on many of our hidden coastal defense guns .
Chris
Emmagee ~ please see pics of Gustav including the one of it firing also the unshopped one take note of the camouflage netting sorta looks familiar doesn't it to the one that has the legs. As even the Germans would not build something so ludicrous as that depicted piece it is a fuphy bloke nothing more. (sorry the pics are small but you can see what it is big!)
Those are Monsters....Capable of killing everything Close to where shell hits...
On a lighter note and apologies for hijacking the thread...................yes it was real before you ask, Pakisatni mobile artillery unit:thup:
And...air portable!Quote:
Originally Posted by Gil Boyd
Here is the 16" Coast Artillery version of the battleship gun posted by WarPig1976. It is the only one that was not scrapped at the end of WWII. Two of this type were installed in Battery Lewis (part of Ft. Hancock) atop the hill at Atlantic Highlands, NJ in WWII. They had interlocking fire with a similar battery at Ft. Tilden, Brooklyn, NY. Many more ringed important ports in the U.S. on both coasts. ;) I now find that the old battery Lewis has been undergoing a clean-up as a part of the Monmouth county parks program. They applied for and received a 16 inch barrel used on the battleship USS New Jersey in WWII. It is now on display at the south end of the 600 foot long Battery Lewis.
Attachment 75610
A couple of those size projectiles are sitting outside the HQ building in Seal Beach Cali. I think the CO said they were 15" though, just a bit smaller though you'd never tell from looking.
Here is a pic of the projectile at Bovington I would say the chap is average height so say 5'8" - 5' 10" notice the driving band that had to engage with the rifling in the barrel before they fired the thing....:eek:
British Army officers pose next to projectiles fired by the "Dora" railway gun. Dora and its sibling "Gustav" were 80 cm guns developed in the late 1930s by Krupp as siege artillery for the purpose of destroying the French Maginot Line fortifications. The guns could fire shells weighing seven tonnes to a range of 47 km (29 mi). Gustav was captured by US troops and cut up, whilst Dora was destroyed near the end of the war in 1945 to avoid capture by the Red Army.
Are you suggesting a fake picture ? Why would you think someone would do that ?Quote:
Originally Posted by CINDERS
https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...thogzfkq-1.jpg
Chris
So that's where the idea of the Imperial Walkers in Star Wars came from! :)
As the post in earlier this page states, these are indeed white elephants but when you consider they were purpose built it makes more sense. These two behemoths were designed and built solely for the purpose of trashing the French Maginot Line. However, the German surprise attack through the Ardennes and French lack of organization meant the MAginot Line fell rapidly, and from behind as I recall, so the guns were never needed to break a "siege". Remember most wars are fought based on the previous one, and in the 1930's the assumption was that a war between France and Germany would risk becoming another bloody useless stalemate, so the equipment was designed on that assumption. Once France fell, other uses had to be dreamt up, and these guns did a fine job (or Gustav anyway) hammering Leningrad. Ludicrously large siege pieces, yes, but then, how much of military equipment and design is ludicrous anyway?
Ed
Yes I guess the other end of the spectrum like boltaction says about useless designs I wonder if the person whom designed the FRED got an award.........
Definitely photo shop. The gun was real and was mounted on a normal carriage when in firing mode. Not as in the photo
At least we're finding out more about this animal. The only thing that when I saw this photo on the Web I wouldn't put it past the Germans to have something like this. The Germans were always building the first of everything that's what made the US and Russia up its game. To have the type of planes with twin Rocket engines, the a V2 Rocket, if they didn't screw up going into Russia in Winter these programs they had were way more advanced than we were. That's why the US and Russia took there engineers and had them build there type of weapons they didn't get a chance to finish.Quote:
Originally Posted by Daan Kemp
Oh, the German's nearly held a monopoly of unusual and often unnecessary technological endevours.
Take the German Tiger I (and others) it had a Maybach HL230 engine, a 23 Litre displacement gasoline engine, you know what it needs?
Quote:
The aluminum crank case and cylinder block casting housed a circular web crank shaft in seven roller bearings.
Quote:
The motor failures that did occur were all the same nature, bearing damage and broken connecting rods.
Why roller bearings when standard bearing would have done perfectly well?Quote:
British Army report in June 1944 reported that a German POW had stated that the engines in one Panther battalion had an average life span of only 450 miles (724 km).
Does any-one know what sort of life the barrels of these 800mm (80cm) guns had i.e. what sort of number of shells on average were the barrels capable of firing before they needed replacement. I seem to recall hearing or seeing somewhere that the barrels of these massive guns had a very short life. The barrel would have been difficult, time consuming and expensive to manufacture and then difficult to actually transplant onto the actual gun.
I don't recall but I do remember reading, that the great Krupp siege guns like Dicke Bertha and the larger pieces had progressively larger diameter shells to be fired in sequence as each shot would erode the bore.Quote:
Originally Posted by Flying10uk
I think this was covered in "The Arms of Krupp" book but I may have mis-remembered.
Yes...It's true that the life span were very short on there massive heavy Artillery weapons...Just look at size of the Projectiles being shot out of them, but I figured with there horrible labor camps and stripping other countries of there materials to make replacements parts and barrels and other equipment needed to keep a supply of parts. But since they weren't rolling out hundreds of these Monsters that is the only reason I thought they would have replacements barrels and the other items. Thank God they didn't. I don't know about the Germans logistics I can only assume. I know you guys are more educated in this I only figured cause of the many Battle Ships we had in the Pacific a lot came in for a few days to replace such worn out parts.
I have seen a section of barrel from one of Saddam's "Super-guns" at a museum here in the U.K.. The barrels were of a smooth bore and manufactured in relatively short sections and with a drilled flange at each end in order to attach to the adjoining section. If memory serves me correctly the section of barrel which I looked at was at the Imperial War Museum's Duxford site. This was some years ago and so I do not know if this exhibit is still there.
Is that the Barrel that was built by Gerald Bull ? He also built it on tracks for the recoil and the Projectile could reach Israel. If I'm not mistaken Gerald Bull was assassinated.Quote:
Originally Posted by Flying10uk
I think they used a plane crash to do it.Quote:
Originally Posted by imntxs564
From wikipedia the Mossad were implicated in the assassination of Bull as he agreed to assist Saddam in extending the range of the SCUDS which made him an enemy of Israel also the range for the HARP ~ The project was based on a flight range of the Seawell Airport in Barbados, from which shells were fired eastward toward the Atlantic Ocean using an old U.S. Navy 16-inch (410 mm), 50 caliber gun (20 m); it was later extended to 100 caliber (40 m). In 1966 the project installed its third and final 16-inch gun at a new test site in Yuma, Arizona. On November 18, 1966 the Yuma gun fired a 400 lb (180 kg) Martlet 2 projectile at 7,000 ft/s (2,100 m/s)[1] sending it briefly into space and setting an altitude record of 180 km (590,000 ft; 110 mi); that world record still stands as of 2013.[2]
As for Gustav this about sums up the two of them, however I did not know one of these rounds capsized a large ship in the harbor though ~ The largest gun ever built was the "Gustav Gun" built in Essen, Germany in 1941 by the firm of Friedrich Krupp A.G. Upholding a tradition of naming heavy cannon after family members, the Gustav Gun was named after the invalid head of the Krupp family - Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach. The strategic weapon of its day, the Gustav Gun was built at the direct order of Adolf Hitler for the express purpose of crushing Maginot Line forts protecting the French frontier. To accomplish this, Krupp designed a giant railway gun weighing 1344 tons with a bore diameter of 800 mm (31.5") and served by a 500 man crew commanded by a major-general.
Two types of projectiles were fired using a 3000lb. charge of smokeless powder: a 10,584 lb. high explosive (HE) shell and a 16,540 lb. concrete-piercing projectile. Craters from the HE shells measured 30-ft. wide and 30-ft. deep while the concrete piercing projectile proved capable of penetrating 264-ft. of reinforced concrete before exploding! Maximum range was 23 miles with HE shells and 29 miles with concrete piercing projectiles. Muzzle velocity was approximately 2700 f.p.s.
Three guns were ordered in 1939. Alfried Krupp personally hosted Hitler and Albert Speer (Minister of Armaments) at the Hugenwald Proving Ground during formal acceptance trials of the Gustav Gun in the spring of 1941. In keeping with company tradition, Krupp refrained from charging for the first gun - 7 million Deutsch Marks were charged for the second (named Dora after the chief engineer's wife).
France fell in 1940 without the assistance of the Gustav Gun, so new targets were sought. Plans to use Gustav against the British fortress of Gibraltar were scrapped after General Franco refused permission to fire the gun from Spanish soil. Thus, April 1942 found the Gustav Gun emplaced outside the heavily fortified port city of Sebastopol in the Soviet Union. Under fire from Gustav and other heavy artillery, Forts Stalin, Lenin and Maxim Gorki crumbled and fell. One round from Gustav destroyed a Russion ammunition dump 100 feet below Severnaya Bay; a near miss capsized a large ship in the harbor. Gustav fired 300 rounds during the siege wearing out the original barrel in the process. Dora was set up west of Stalingrad in mid-August but hurriedly withdrawn in September to avoid capture. Gustav next appeared outside Warsaw, Poland, where it fired 30 rounds into Warsaw Ghetto during the 1944 uprising.
Dora was blown up by German engineers in April 1945 near Oberlichtnau, Germany, to avoid capture by the Russian Army. The incomplete third gun was scrapped at the factory by the British Army when they captured Essen. Gustav was captured intact by the U.S. Army near Metzendorf, Germany, in June 1945. Shortly after, it was cut up for scrap thus ending the story of the Gustav Gun.
Flying10UK,
Yes it is still there on show at the IWM Duxford. How things might have been so different had that gone into use before it was spotted!!!!:surrender:
Yes and I am quite sure Saddam would not have used conventional explosives in the rounds rather nerve agents and plague type diseases mind you with the amount of Nuclear subs left rotting in the Soviet union whose to say uranium or plutonium was not accessible to him, money and promises do funny things to people............
I might have this wrong, but I thought it was being built in a direction to drop "whatever" onto Isreal.
Now that would have been a different outcome to where we have spent the last 15 years in both Iraq and Afghanistan!!
What was slightly brilliant about some of Bull's designs of shells for some of his large calibre guns was the thick outer protective sheathing which was fired with the shell. This then parted company shell shortly after it left the muzzle and then dropped away. This meant that the diameter of the shell was significantly smaller than the bore of the gun but also allowed for the provision of stabilising fins to be incorporated into the design of the shell. I would guess that these fins would more than compensate for the lack of a rifled barrel.
Jim, You might be correct. There were several ways mentioned as to how he was assassinated. Several years back I saw this Special on the History Channel about the Doomsday Gun. This man they interviewed said he was walking towards his apartment and was shot 3 times in the back and 1 behind his ear with a .22., but it could of been a story to not tip off who had done it, but I think a lot of people knew it was done my Massad. They even mention when they found him in his briefcase there was documents, schematics and 20,000 thousands in cash. Go Figure somebody didn't want that gun pointing towards somewhere.Quote:
Originally Posted by browningautorifle
Money and promises a bad idea that some one did not like, I have seen doco's on the Mossad apparently they are renown for blending in and getting away.
A 28-cm German railway gun exists at the Batterie Todt Museum near Calais. It slumbered in a French artillery depot after the war until disposed of to M. Davis Krupp K5 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
That movie "MUNICH" showed how well they blended in.Quote:
Originally Posted by CINDERS