Schwerer Gustav

File:SchwererGustav.jpg

Preparing to fire the gun

Schwerer Gustav and Dora were the names under which the German 80 cm K (E) railway guns were known. They were developed in the late 1930s by Krupp in order to destroy large, heavily fortified targets. They weighed nearly 1,344 tons, and could fire a shell that weighed more than 7 tons at distances up to 37 km (23 miles). Designed in preparation for World War II, they were intended to be used against the Maginot Line. But instead of a frontal assault, the Wehrmacht outflanked the line during the Battle of France. One of the guns was used in Russia at the siege of Sevastopol during Operation Barbarossa. It was destroyed near the end of the war to avoid capture.

In the history of artillery, only the American 36-inch Little David and the german V-3 cannon have had a larger caliber.

Development

An 80-cm shell compared to a Russian T-34 tank at the Imperial War Museum, London.

In 1934 the German High Command (OKH) gave to the firm of Krupp of Essen, Germany the problem of designing a gun to destroy the fortresses of the French Maginot Line which was then nearing completion. The gun had to be able to punch through 7 meters of reinforced concrete and an armoured plate 1 meter thick, and do this from a range that kept it out of reach of enemy artillery. Krupp engineer Dr. Erich Müller calculated that the task would require a weapon with a calibre of around 80 cm, firing a projectile weighing 7 tonnes from a barrel 30 meters long. As such the weapon would have a weight of over 1000 tonnes. The size and weight meant that to be at all movable it would need to be supported on twin sets of railway tracks. In common with smaller railway guns the only barrel movement on the mount would be elevation, traverse being managed by moving the weapon along a curved section of railway line. Krupp prepared plans for calibres of 70 cm, 80 cm, 85 cm, and 100 cm.

Nothing further happened until March 1936 when Hitler visited Essen during which he enquired into the giant guns' feasibility. No definite commitment was given by Hitler, but design work began on an 80 cm model. The resulting plans were completed in early 1937, and approved. Fabrication of the first gun started in the summer of 1937. However, producing such a large weapon proved difficult and it became apparent that the original completion date of spring 1940 would not be met.

Krupp built a test model in late 1939 and sent it to the Hillersleben firing range for testing. Penetration was tested on this occasion. Firing almost vertically, the gun was able to penetrate the specified 7 meters of concrete and 1 meter of armour plate [1]. After the tests were completed in mid-1940 the gun and carriage were removed and probably scrapped. Alfred Krupp personally hosted Hitler and Albert Speer (Minister of Armaments) at the Rügenwald Proving Ground during the formal acceptance trials of the Gustav Gun in the spring of 1941.

The outcome of the tests resulted in orders for two guns. The first round was test-fired from the commissioned gun barrel on September 10 1941 from a makeshift gun carriage on the Hillersleben firing range. In November 1941 the barrel was taken to Rügenwald where 8 further firing tests took place using the 7,100 kg armor-piercing (AP) shell out to a range of 37,210 meters.

In combat the gun was mounted on a specially designed chassis, supported by two bogies on two parallel sets of railway tracks. Each of the bogies had 20 axles, giving a total of 40 axles (80 wheels). Krupp christened the gun Schwerer Gustav (Heavy Gustav) after the senior director of the firm, Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach.

The ammunition for the gun consisted of a heavy concrete-piercing shell and a lighter high-explosive shell. A super-long-range rocket projectile was also planned with a range of 150 km that would require the barrel being extended to 84 m. This rocket projectile would have enabled the bombardment of England.

In keeping with the tradition of the Krupp company, no charge was made for the first gun. However, they did charge 7 million Reichsmark for the second gun Dora, named after the senior engineer's wife.

History

A shell for the Dora gun, on exhibition in the Polish Army museum in Warsaw

Schwerer Gustav

In February 1942 Heavy Artillery Unit (E) 672 reorganised and went on the march, and Schwerer Gustav began its long ride to the Crimea. The train carrying the gun was 25 cars long, a total length of 1.6 km. The gun reached the Perekop Isthmus in early March 1942, where it was held until early April. A special railway spur was built to the Simferopol-Sevastopol railway 10 miles (16 km) north of the target, at the end of which four semi-circular tracks were built specially for the Gustav. The siege of Sevastopol was to be the gun's first combat test. Positioning of the gun began in early May, and by 5 June the gun was ready to fire. The following targets were engaged:

• 5 June
  • Coastal guns at a range of 25,000 m. Eight shells fired.
  • Fort Stalin. Six shells fired.
• 6 June
  • Fort Molotov. Seven shells fired.
  • The White Cliff: an undersea ammunition magazine in Severnaya Bay. The magazine was sited 30 meters under the sea with at least 10 meters of concrete protection. After nine shells were fired the magazine was ruined and many of the boats in the bay were damaged.
• 7 June
  • Firing in support of an infantry attack on Sudwestspitze, an outlying fortification. Seven shells fired.
• 11 June
  • Fort Siberia. Five shells fired.
• 17 June
  • Fort Maxim Gorki and its Coastal battery. Five shells fired.

By the end of the siege on July 4th the city of Sevastopol lay in ruins, 30,000 tons of artillery ammunition had been fired. Gustav had fired 48 rounds and worn out its original barrel, which had already fired around 250 rounds during testing and development. The gun was fitted with the spare barrel and the original was sent back to Krupp's factory in Essen for relining.

The gun was then dismantled and moved to the northern part of the eastern front, where an attack was planned on Leningrad. The gun was placed some 30 km from the city near the railway station of Taizy. The gun was fully operational when the attack was cancelled. The gun then spent the winter of 1942/43 near Leningrad.

When the German retreat began the gun was moved back to the west where it fired 30 rounds into the city of Warsaw during the 1944 uprising.

The gun then appears to have been destroyed to prevent its capture sometime before April 22, 1945, when its ruins were discovered in a forest 15 km (9 miles) north of Auerbach about 50 km (31 miles) southwest of Chemnitz.

Dora

Dora was the second gun to be produced. It was deployed briefly against Stalingrad, where the gun arrived at its emplacement 15 km (9 miles) to the west of the city sometime in mid-August 1942. It was ready to fire on September 13th. However, it was quickly withdrawn when Soviet encirclement threatened; when the Germans began their long retreat they took Dora with them. Dora was broken up before the end of the war, being discovered in the west by American troops some time after the discovery of Schwerer Gustav.

Langer Gustav

The Langer Gustav was a long cannon with 52 cm caliber and a 43 m barrel. It was intended to fire super-long-range rocket projectiles weighing 680 kg to a range of 190 km. This gave it the range to hit London. It was never completed after being damaged during construction by one of the many RAF bombing raids on Essen.

General characteristics (Schwerer Gustav)

• Weight of gun and mounting: 1,350 t
• Length of gun: 47.3 m
• Height of gun: 11.6 m
• Width of gun: 7.1 m
• Barrel diameter: 0.8 m
• Barrel length: 32.48 m (L/40.6)
• Propulsion 2 x Oil Electric D311 691 kW locomotives (DRG class V188)
• Maximum elevation: 48° (or 65°; sources differ, may refer to different mountings)
• Weight of propellant charge: 2,500 lb (1134 kg) in 3 increments
• Rate of fire: 1 round every 30 to 45 minutes or typically 14 rounds a day
• Accuracy: 20% (10 out of 48) of shells fell within 60 m of target point. Worst error was 1 shell landing 740 m from the target point. Assuming normal distribution, this gives a CEP of 190 m.
• Crew: 250 to assemble the gun in 3 days (54 hours), 2,500 to lay track and dig embankments, which would take 3 - 6 weeks depending on the geography of the land. 2 Flak battalions to protect the gun from air attack.

Ammunition

High Explosive

• Weight of projectile: 4.8 t (4,800 kg)
• Muzzle velocity: 820 m/s
• Maximum range: 48 km
• Explosive mass: 700 kg
• Crater size: 30 ft (10 m) wide 30 ft (10 m) deep.

AP Shell

The main body was made of chrome-nickel steel, fitted with an aluminium alloy ballistic nose cone.

• Length of shell: 3.6 m
• Weight of projectile: 7.1 t (7,100 kg)
• Muzzle velocity: 720 m/s
• Maximum range: 38 km
• Explosive mass: 250 kg
• Penetration: 264 ft (80 m) of reinforced concrete was claimed, but this seems extremely unlikely. In testing it was demonstrated to penetrate 7 metres of concrete at maximum elevation (beyond that available during combat) with a special charge [2].

Models

• 80 cm "Schwerer Gustav" (Heavy Gustav) - Deployed in March 1942 against Sevastopol.
• 80 cm "Dora" - Deployed against Stalingrad in September 1942. Possibly never fired.
• 52 cm "Langer Gustav" (Long Gustav) - Started but not completed.

Trivia

• Dora is featured in Harry Turtledove's Worldwar alternate-history series, in which aliens invade Earth in the midst of World War II. It scores two key hits on landed spaceships, destroying most of the invading force's nuclear arsenal before being taken out by an air strike. The description of the operation of Dora is technically accurate.
• In the cyberpunk manga Battle Angel Alita by Yukito Kishiro, a working replica of the Schwerer Gustav made from ancient technical data is used - to no avail - by 26th-century resistance forces against the technologically-superior orbitally-suspended city of Tiphares.
• The video game Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory featured a map with the Schwerer Gustav named Railgun (http://games.activision.com/games/wolfenstein)

References

• Schwerer Gustav details — A page with very extensive info on the Schwerer Gustav
• Self-Propelled Dora — An article on the self-propelled version of the Dora.
• http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/1167/edora.html
• http://www.hpwt.de/2Weltkrieg/Dorae.htm
• http://html2.free.fr/canons/dora.htm
• German Artillery of World War Two, Ian V. Hogg. ISBN 1-85367-480-X

External links

• Internet archive copy of panzerlexikon.de video of Dora loading and firing
• Internet archive copy of panzerlexikon.de video of Dora
• Website with additional information on Dora.

See also

• Sturmtiger
• Mörser Karl
• Leopold railway gun