German Heavy/Massive Arty Question

[GIZMO8Z]

Interesting thread, looks like the guy in the middle could be AH himself. John

I would assume so! He loved his exotic/ massive/ wonder weapons.

[relicz]

Interesting thread, looks like the guy in the middle could be AH himself. John

I was going on the assumption that it was him. Advances in attack aircraft technology did to these big guns what the invention of the machine gun did to the Calvary charge..........rendered them obsolete.

[lithgow]

The 80cm guns were an immense waste of resources-Sevastapol was the only use of them-had originally been intended to attack the Maginot line but as A. the gun wasn't ready in May 1940 and B. the attack was delivered in the Ardennes using the blitzkrieg technique, they had no real purpose but used up a great deal of resources to make and maintain them-if you want to see a truly impressive weapon try Barnes Wallis' 12,000 lb 'Tall Boy' and 22,000 lb 'Grand Slam' bombs-true war winners carried by the Lancaster over far greater ranges with much greater flexibility.

[GIZMO8Z]

Just the fact that the rail guns were restricted to the range of railway lines would be a deal breaker for me....

[Wagriff]

7 Million Reichmark was the cost of the Dora gun(Gustav was free from Krupp). I can only imagine just how much Each 8 ton Shell must have cost to fire....

[Wagriff]

A good website on these 2 giant cannons is:
Dora:Railgun

[lithgow]

The 80cm weapon wasn't really a railway gun-was transported in pieces to a railhead then assembled over time for use and then the process was reversed to move it again-couldn't just be fired from an existing railway like the smaller guns.

PS A local hobby store (Stanbridges) displays models built by enthusiasts and they had the Dragon 1/35th Dora gun model on show for several months-a very impressive piece but without a display case a bit of a dust trap.

[GIZMO8Z]

The 80cm weapon wasn't really a railway gun-was transported in pieces to a railhead then assembled over time for use and then the process was reversed to move it again-couldn't just be fired from an existing railway like the smaller guns.

But it wasn't feasible to move it far away from the railhead, right?

[lithgow]

Yes Joe-you had to build the line to where the firing position was then lay the additional parallel lines for the assembled weapon to sit on and be moved for fine adjustment. As prev mentioned the original purpose of the gun was to be for attacking the Maginot line-the rail system in central/western Europe was very extensive and suited to deploying rail guns but the Soviet Union was a very different matter with the vast distances involved.

[Wagriff]

A few fun facts on these guns: The initial cost was 7 Million Reichmark(Some say 10!). The 2 guns were designed and built Specifically to destroy the French Maginot forts with their boasted impenetrable armor-but were never fired at them. It took 2000 men six weeks to get these things ready to fire-Once they got it to where they wanted it to be first, of course. Not to mention the 250 men it took to actually Fire it...which took 30 minutes Per Round. 2 shells in an hour...at a max range of 29 miles. New railroad tracks had to be laid down Every time these guns were moved. The shells stood a full 17 feet high with the shell and head together and traveled 2,700 feet per second. They each weighed 8 tons. It required a small spotter plane to aid in it's trajectory. It required a Ton of gun powder to fire each shell and when striking ground, they produced a 90 foot wide crater that was 30 feet deep(well large enough to contain an average house). They were particularly effective in obliterating Russian forts and batteries.