Paris Gun attacks, the original.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The German built a gun they used to shell Paris during WWI. The gun is represented below and a map of hits (in red) is compared to bomb damage (in black) from. Source.

 

[Craig B]

The German built a gun they used to shell Paris during WWI. The gun is represented below and a map of hits (in red) is compared to bomb damage (in black) from. Source.

Fascinating stuff. I thought you'd get round to that sooner or later.

Do you have any opinions on the Giant Gun mental syndrome that seizes military leaders from time to time? Like the one in the Kremlin. And I think Emperor Theodore of Ethiopia had one in the 1860s. Hitler, of course, was a devotee of this sort of contraption; and Saddam Hussein was constructing such a device when his career came to an end.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Fascinating stuff. I thought you'd get round to that sooner or later.

Do you have any opinions on the Giant Gun mental syndrome that seizes military leaders from time to time? Like the one in the Kremlin. And I think Emperor
Theodore of Ethiopia had one in the 1860s. Hitler, of course, was a devotee of this sort of contraption; and Saddam Hussein was constructing such a device when his career came to an end.

I think they've all been a solution looking for a problem.

 

[Craig B]

I think they've all been a solution looking for a problem.

They're "part of the problem; not part of the solution."

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

They're "part of the problem; not part of the solution."

The dearth of appropriate targets is the problem. The Turks used that big mother on Constantinople in 1453, and ever since some people have been certain that size matters.

Great Turkish Bombard.

 

[Craig B]

The dearth of appropriate targets is the problem. The Turks used that big mother on Constantinople in 1453, and ever since some people have been certain that size matters.

Great Turkish Bombard.

Sebastopol was I suppose an appropriate target for such large guns. But I think more effective use could have been made of the vast resources in material and personnel embodied in the weapon shown here.
ETA As for less appropriate targets, I didn't know this till now. Dear God, against a handful of people with Molotov cocktails!

Gustav next appeared outside Warsaw, Poland, where it fired 30 rounds into Warsaw Ghetto during the 1944 uprising.

But do they really mean the ghetto revolt, or in fact the Home Army rising the next year?

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Sebastopol was I suppose an appropriate target for such large guns. But I think more effective use could have been made of the vast resources in material and personnel embodied in the weapon shown here.

Trains, crews, defense forces, that would add up.

ETA As for less appropriate targets, I didn't know this till now. Dear God, against a handful of people with Molotov cocktails! But do they really mean the ghetto revolt, or in fact the Home Army rising the next year?

I do believe they meant the Ghetto uprising.

 

[Craig B]

Trains, crews, defense forces, that would add up.
I do believe they meant the Ghetto uprising.

Well, OK. But there are some infelicities in the document I linked.

The largest gun ever built was the "Gustav Gun" built in Essen, Germany in 1941 by the firm of Friedrich Krupp A.G. ... 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

In 1941!

Krupp refrained from charging for the first gun - 7 million Deutsch Marks were charged for the second.

That should be "Deutsche Mark". But that currency was introduced only in 1948. In 1941 the money in circulation was in Reichmark or Rentenmark denominations.

Dora was blown up by German engineers in April 1945 near Oberlichtnau, Germany, to avoid capture by the Russian Army.

Surely "Red Army" or "Soviet Army" is called for here.

However, this is material "Printed in the American Rifleman, February 1998." It is with trepidation that I challenge the accuracy of such a source.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Did you notice the author?

 

[Craig B]

Did you notice the author?

Not the person, only the publication. Where is the name? I can't see it, if it's there.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Not the person, only the publication. Where is the name? I can't see it, if it's there.

It was Ian Hogg. If that's the same one I remember then he's a bit loose with his writing.

 

[abaddon]

Fascinating stuff. I thought you'd get round to that sooner or later.

Do you have any opinions on the Giant Gun mental syndrome that seizes military leaders from time to time? Like the one in the Kremlin. And I think Emperor Theodore of Ethiopia had one in the 1860s. Hitler, of course, was a devotee of this sort of contraption; and Saddam Hussein was constructing such a device when his career came to an end.

Interesting question. I was aware such large calibre weapons existed, heavy gustave being an example. I was unaware, until this thread prompted me to search, that such weapons have a much longer history than I supposed.

My impression is that it is pure ego-tripping on the part of whoever develops such things. The tactical advantage of such a weapon is far outweighed by the fact it cannot easily move about, and hence can be easily destroyed by far more modest assets.

I lay no claim to expertise but that is my out of the box interpretation.

 

[smartcooky]

Like any engineering project, giant guns present the same problems in scaling up. Its called the "square cube law"

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law

When a physical object maintains the same density and is scaled up, its mass is increased by the cube of the multiplier while its surface area only increases by the square of the multiplier. Doubling the size requires four times the surface area but eight times the mass.

I would imagine one of the biggest engineering challenges with giant guns is keeping the barrel straight.

 

[Craig B]

The tactical advantage of such a weapon is far outweighed by the fact it cannot easily move about, and hence can be easily destroyed by far more modest assets.

It required 54 hours to set Gustav up for firing during the siege of Sebastopol. These things were abjectly vulnerable to attack from the air. Total air supremacy was required before they could be deployed, but if you had that, you didn't need the gun. You could bomb the targets at much less cost.

The other smaller, but still huge, guns used elsewhere (eg at Anzio) by the Germans, were usually sited in firing positions near railway tunnels, into which they would withdraw if attacked by Allied aircraft.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Anzio Annie is still at Aberdeen, I believe.

 

[catsmate]

Oddly this was my first reaction to those threads too.

It was Ian Hogg. If that's the same one I remember then he's a bit loose with his writing.

Pretty much all the early research on the Paris Gun was done by Bull.

 

[ddt]

Trains, crews, defense forces, that would add up.
I do believe they meant the Ghetto uprising.

That link also says 1944, which would mean the Home Army uprising, not the Ghetto uprising (which was in 1943).

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

That link also says 1944, which would mean the Home Army uprising, not the Ghetto uprising (which was in 1943).

Thanks, brain leak on my part there.

 

[Craig B]

To illustrate the limited efficacy of super heavy guns, we may look at the initial German bombardment of Sevastopol in 1942, as reported by wiki.

The railway guns also fired a few rounds at the main fortifications and rail lines, but most missed by some distance. The closest shell landed 80 meters away from its target. Soviet ammunition dumps were also targeted by these weapons, with no effect. The main fortifications, forts Stalin, Molotov, and Maxim Gorky (which lay in the path of LIV Corps) remained active. It was not until the afternoon of 6 June when one shell from 'Thor' knocked out Maxim Gorky's second turret, damaging the weapon. This was the only success of the German super-heavy guns, which did not have an impact commensurate with their expense. The Luftwaffe had a greater impact, using its Ju 87s to knock out the communications systems of the fort.

The effect of air power was much more significant.

 

[jimbob]

To illustrate the limited efficacy of super heavy guns, we may look at the initial German bombardment of Sevastopol in 1942, as reported by wiki. The effect of air power was much more significant.

Indeed. If you are talking about super heavy guns, one shouldn't really compare them to normal airpower, but the Tallboy and Grand slam raids.