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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wolverine GTR" data-source="post: 23930141" data-attributes="member: 158020">ලොව_විශාලතම_තුවක්කුව-Schwerer Gustav: Biggest Gun Ever Used in Combat- Hitler   sure had some grand ideas—from mass murdering Jews and conquering   Europe, to rebuilding Berlin and draining the Mediterranean sea. Even   when generally showing off how great Nazi Germany was, the Führer and   his generals liked to do things in style. They even built what would   have been the world’s biggest hotel, but the project had to be called   off because there were more pressing matters at hand, such as invading   France.     In  the 1930s, France constructed a series of massive fortification   and   obstacles called the Maginot Line to protect the country against     invasion from the east. These fortifications were some of the  strongest    in existence at the time with deep underground bunkers,    state-of-the-art  retractable turrets, infantry shelters, barricades,    artillery and  anti-tank gun emplacements and so on. Nothing the German    Wehrmacht had  in their armory was capable of penetrating this    formidable defense. So  Hitler went to munitions maker Krupp for a    solution.    <img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-RqIZsern5gc/W_LYzMsIiEI/AAAAAAABZ0k/7ytDIZlfZQo1s3S0Rz1eQjaO2zyPyYEmwCHMYCw/schwerer-gustav-149?imgmax=1600" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />   (Adolf Hitler (second from right) and Albert Speer (right) inspecting the 800 mm Gustav railway gun in the year 1943.)      Krupp  engineer Erich Müller calculated that to punch through seven    meters of  reinforced concrete or one full meter of steel armor plate,    they would  require a gun with massive dimensions. The gun should  have   an internal  diameter of more than 80 cm, and length of more than  30   meters if it  were to fire shells weighing 7 tons each from a  distance   of more than 40  kilometers, beyond the range of French  artillery. The   gun itself would  weight over 1,300 tons and would have  to be moved on   sets of railways  tracks. When these figures were  presented to Hitler,   he approved them  and forging of the enormous  weapon began in 1937.     In a little  more than two years, the super gun was ready. Alfried    Krupp personally  took Hitler to the Rügenwalde Proving Ground in early    1941 to watch the  gun’s test firing. Alfried Krupp named the gun    Schwerer Gustav, or  “Heavy Gustav”, after his father Gustav Krupp.     Schwerer Gustav  was an absolute monster of a weapon. Because it was   so  large and heavy  the gun couldn’t be moved as a whole. Instead, the   gun  was broken down  into several pieces and transported in 25  freight  cars  to the place of  deployment, where it was assembled in  place—a  task  that required 250 men  nearly three days to complete. The  laying  of  tracks and digging  embankments itself involved weeks of  work and   required 2,500 to 4,000  men working round the clock to  accomplish.    <img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-L9_5a-4lP74/W_LY0ueUjpI/AAAAAAABZ0o/e1Aw8j2SAWYpckAx2OiEQ8hq75ZDezZuQCHMYCw/schwerer-gustav-49?imgmax=1600" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /> Assembling the gun took a massive effort. Here the barrel is being lowered into the carrier using two gantry cranes.    <img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-gPRqoYxy5-U/W_LY2gM6iLI/AAAAAAABZ0s/h0btU0s0zM4uSeHVQb4HVSMNaCgkquVDgCHMYCw/schwerer-gustav-39?imgmax=1600" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />   (Multiple tracks resembling a station junction had to be laid wherever the gun was deployed)     Schwerer  Gustav moved on a set of parallel tracks which limited its    mobility. In  addition, the gun barrel could only aim vertically.    Horizontal aiming  was locked along the direction of the tracks. This    required the tracks  to be laid in a curve so that whenever the    horizontal aiming needed to  be changed, the entire gun was moved along    the curved tracks. Despite  the tremendous firing power, Schwerer   Gustav  had no means of protecting  itself. This was provided by two   Flak  battalions that guarded the gun  from possible aerial assault.      Related: The 890 mm caliber Tsar Canon       For  all the time and money spent on building the gun, it saw  little   action  in the battlefield and absolutely none against the  French for   which it  was originally envisioned. Germany had already  invaded France   in 1940,  before the gun was ready. They did it by  simply going around   the Maginot  Line rendering the complicated set of  defenses useless.     Schwerer  Gustav was instead deployed on the Eastern Front at    Sevastopol in  Russia during its siege in 1942. It took 4,000 men five    weeks to get the  gun ready for firing. In the next four weeks, Gustav    fired 48 rounds  knocking out distant forts and destroying an undersea    ammunition  magazine located 30 meters under the sea with at least 10    meters of  concrete protection. The gun was then moved near Leningrad    but the  attack was cancelled.    <img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-CmSExD84-Jg/W_LY4cig5pI/AAAAAAABZ0w/b9-z5P9colYu5J88NTYSAjupfo2mAwh6gCHMYCw/schwerer-gustav-19?imgmax=1600" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /> <img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-QWHYAsR6q-M/W_LY6UCOEaI/AAAAAAABZ00/5GUX8_M1D4g1dE3AU8CbhbU7Fjx7adakACHMYCw/schwerer-gustav-59?imgmax=1600" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />    (The Gustav being loaded for firing. It took 20 to 45 minutes to reload the gun and prepare it for firing)     Krupp built another gun with the same dimensions. This one was named    Dora, after the company’s chief engineer's wife.Dora  was set up west  of   Stalingrad in mid-August 1942, but hurriedly  withdrawn in  September  to  avoid capture. When the Germans began their  long retreat  back home   they took Dora and Gustav with them. In 1945,  with defeat  imminent,  the  Germans blew up both Dora and Gustav to  prevent the  invading  Allied  forces from capturing them intact, thus  ending the  story of the  great  Nazi superguns.     In terms of  caliber, Gustav and Dora were surpassed by only two  other   guns—the  British Mallet's Mortar (made in 1857) and the  American  Little  David  (made during the Second World War) both of  which are 914  mm. But  only  Gustav saw action in the battlefield. It  remains the  biggest gun  ever  deployed in war—a record that’s likely  to hold for  eternity, as  modern  missiles and precision bombing has  rendered the  need for big  guns such  as Gustav and David useless.    <img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-R0zdoMhes1Q/W_LY8b-jA7I/AAAAAAABZ04/4OyDmplVzdEqBL0mn_SirB83Kqm5SgUXACHMYCw/schwerer-gustav-156?imgmax=1600" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /> <img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-NXCO-Cqqsxs/W_LY9uai6nI/AAAAAAABZ08/rmQJg2s1eecPEesAd0JhXWKjYsJVlE4ggCHMYCw/schwerer-gustav-99?imgmax=1600" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /> <img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-dVWzBSqR5jA/W_LY_Us8Y9I/AAAAAAABZ1A/uHXdKK38gUEXdlvvDWDyXqGUqQTNIswMwCHMYCw/schwerer-gustav-89?imgmax=1600" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />    <img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-JQp1Y6sM_wE/W_LZAz3mOwI/AAAAAAABZ1E/NLM5f-q5sKourAAxZzxF3sdZJMueerFZQCHMYCw/schwerer-gustav-129?imgmax=1600" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /> (Allied soldiers pose in front of a captured projectile used by Gustav.)    <img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-w1U6dWn_Htg/W_LZCRJLDoI/AAAAAAABZ1I/aUAxS96N-KUQPv5fre-lsW-too0s5y3mgCHMYCw/schwerer-gustav-25?imgmax=1600" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /> (A US soldier measuring the barrel of what remains of the Gustav gun after it was blown up by the Germans)    <img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-j80O6NORlfc/W_LZE1nYYYI/AAAAAAABZ1Q/tHS8XikgJgcUwfhZ5r321UNdCkT-lWBcgCHMYCw/schwerer-gustav-65?imgmax=1600" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /> (A shell of the Gustav gun at the United States Army Ordnance Museum.)</blockquote>

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