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Railway gun

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For weapons that propel projectiles using an electromagnetic field, see Railgun.
French 320 mm railway gun
File:K5rail.jpg
Krupp K5 railway gun

A railway gun, also called railroad gun is a large artillery piece, designed to be placed on rail tracks. Many countries have built railway guns, but the best known are the large Krupp-built pieces used by Germany in World War I and World War II. Some of these were so large that they required two parallel sets of tracks to support the gun.

Railway guns (like their seagoing analogues, battleships) have been rendered obsolete by advances in technology. Their large size and limited mobility make them vulnerable to attack, and similar payloads can be delivered by aircraft, rocket, or missile.

History

19th Century

A railway gun used in the Siege of Petersburg during the American Civil War
Rail-mounted mortar director, Petersburg (Mathew Brady)

The idea of railway guns appears to have been first suggested in the 1860s by a Mr Anderson, who published a pamphlet in the United Kingdom titled National Defence in which he proposed a plan of ironclad railway carriages. A Russian, Lebedew, claimed to have first invented the idea in 1860 when he is reported to have mounted a mortar on a railway car. The first railway guns used in combat were constructed and used during the American Civil War, when guns and mortars were mounted on flatcars and during the Siege of Petersburg. France also used improvised railways guns during the Siege of Paris in 1870 and the United Kingdom mounted a few six inch guns on railway cars during the First Boer War intending to bombard forts around Pretoria, but Pretoria was captured before they could be deployed.

In France, Lt. Col Peigné is often credited with designing the first railway gun in 1883. Commandant Mougin is credited with putting guns on railcars in 1870.

The French arms maker, Schneider offered a number of models in the late 1880s and produced a 120 mm gun intended for coastal defense, selling some to the Danish government in the 1890s. They also sold a 20 cm model to Peru in 1910.

World War I

The outbreak of the First World War caught the French with a shortage of heavy field artillery. In compensation, large numbers of large static coastal defense guns and naval guns were moved to the front, but these were typically unsuitable for field use and required some kind of mounting. The railway gun provided the obvious solution. By 1916, both sides were deploying railway guns. The most famous railway gun of the war is probably the Paris Gun.

Baldwin Locomotive Works delivered five trains for the United States Navy during April and May of 1918. Each train was intended to transport and support a 356mm naval rifle mounted on a rail carriage with four 6-wheel bogies. These guns were essentially identical to those carried by contemporary battleships USS New York (BB-34), USS Texas (BB-35), USS Nevada (BB-36), USS Oklahoma (BB-37), USS Pennsylvania (BB-38) and USS Arizona (BB-39).[1][2] The locomotive, ammunition cars, supporting equipment cars, and accommodation cars for the crew were under the command of a United States Navy lieutenant, and under overall command of Rear Admiral Charles Peshall Plunkett. After delivery by ship, these trains were assembled in St. Nazaire in August[3] and fired a total of 782 shells during 25 days on the western front at ranges between 27 and 36 kilometers. The railway carriages could elevate the guns to 43 degrees, but elevations over 15 degrees required excavation of a pit with room for the gun to recoil and structural steel shoring foundations to prevent caving of the pit sides from recoil forces absorbed by the surrounding soil. The train included cars to transport recoil pit foundations constructed by Baldwin.[4] One of these guns is on display outside the museum at the Washington Navy Yard.

Baldwin constructed six similar gun carriages and two of an improved type designed to permit firing the gun at all elevation angles without transferring weight to a separate foundation. These eight guns were completed too late to see combat, although some were stationed through World War II in special coast defense installations at San Pedro, California (near Los Angeles) and at the Panama Canal Zone where they could be shifted from one ocean to the other in less than a day. Improved carriages were designed to allow transport to several fixed firing emplacements including concrete foundations where the railway trucks were withdrawn so the gun could be rapidly traversed (swiveled horizontally) to engage moving ship targets.[5]

The United States constructed approximately fifty smaller depressed center railway carriages on two 6-wheel bogies for 203mm naval rifles made surplus by the Washington Naval Treaty.[6] Approximately a dozen of these were used for the defense of Oahu. Others were stationed through World War II for coast defense of Manila, Bermuda, Newfoundland, Puget Sound, the Columbia River, Chesapeake Bay, Delaware Bay, and Fort Hancock, New Jersey (near New York City). [7]

World War II

The Second World War saw the final use of the railway gun, with the massive Schwerer Gustav 800 mm gun, the largest artillery gun to be fired in anger, deployed by Germany. The rise of the aeroplane effectively ended the usefulness of the railway gun. Similar to stationary battleships, they were massive, expensive, and, in the correct conditions, easily destroyed from the air.

Both Germany and Great Britain employed railway-mounted guns that were capable of firing across the English Channel between the areas around Dover and Calais.[8] Germany employed a number of 40 cm guns; and Britain had two 12 inch (30 cm) railway mounted guns.[8]

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Category:Railway guns.

In fiction

  • In the alternate history novel Worldwar: In the Balance, a lucky hit by a railway gun (implied to be the Dora Krupp gun) destroys a crucial alien ship containing most of the invader's nuclear warheads from sixty kilometers. This event shows the extreme vulnerablity of a railway gun to modern weapons. The aliens (whose technology is about that of the late 1990s (except for their space technology)) only allow the shots to get off because they do not understand the weapon involved. They attempt to intercept the shells with countermissles, which fails. On realising that they are facing a huge gun and not rockets they destroy the gun in seconds with fighter-bombers.
  • Medal of Honor features a mission where the player has to destroy a railway gun named Greta.
  • In the game rails of war the player uses various railway guns to get past the level
  • In Warship Gunner 2 a large railroad gun is a boss, it can be disabled temporarily by destroying the locomotives that move it.
  • In the Xbox 360 game Chromehounds, the unidentified weapon of Morskoj is a giant railway gun.
  • In an episode of GaoGaiGar, a Zondar fuses with a railway gun, and wipes out several famous Japanese universities.

References

  1. ^ Breyer (1973) p.205,210&214
  2. ^ Campbell (1985) p.121
  3. ^ Many, April 1965, p.53
  4. ^ Westing (1966) pp.79-80
  5. ^ Lewis (1979) p.103&106
  6. ^ Campbell 1985 p.127
  7. ^ Lewis (1979) p.103-104&140-141
  8. ^ a b Arnold (1982), Pp. 100, 108, 147.

Sources

  • Arnold, Colonel B. E. (1982). Conflict across the Strait: A Battery Commander's Story of the Kent's Defences 1939-45. Dover: Crabwell Publications / Buckland Publications. ISBN 0-906124-06-9.
  • Breyer, Siegfried (1973). Battleships and Battle Cruisers 1905-1970. Garden City, New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0385-0-7247-0-3.
  • Campbell, John (1985). Naval Weapons of World War Two. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 0-87021-459-4.
  • Engelmann, Joachim (1976). Armor in Action - German Railroad Guns. Squadron/Signal Publications. ISBN 0-89747-048-6.
  • Hogg, Ian V. (2005). Allied Artillery of World War One. Crowood Press. ISBN 1-86126-712-6.
  • Jäger, Herbert (2001). German Artillery of World War One. Crowood Press. ISBN 1-86126-403-8.
  • Lewis, Emanuel Raymond (1979). Seacoast Fortifications of the United States. Annapolis, Maryland: Leeward Publications. ISBN 0-915268-28-2.
  • Many, Seymour B. (April 1965). "He Made No Complaint". United States Naval Institute Proceedings. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  • Westing, Fred (1966). The Locomotives that Baldwin Built. Bonanza Books.
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