|
During the Second World War, Fried.Krupp AG, in collaboration with many dozens, if not hundreds, of other German firms manufactured two 800-mm railway artillery mounts, known as Dora and Schwerer Gus-tav 2. They are the largest artillery pieces throughout the history of mankind and is unlikely to ever lose this title.
The creation of these monsters was largely provoked by pre-war French propaganda, which colorfully described the power and impregnability of the defenses of the Maginot line, built on the border between France and Germany. Since German Chancellor A. Hitler planned to cross this border sooner or later, he needed appropriate artillery systems to crush the border fortifications.
In 1936, during one of his visits to Fried.Krupp AG, he asked what should be a weapon capable of destroying the control bunker on the Maginot line, the existence of which he had learned shortly before from reports in the French press.
The calculations presented to him soon showed that in order to break through a seven-meter-thick reinforced concrete ceiling and a meter-long steel slab, an armor-piercing projectile weighing about seven tons was needed, which suggested the presence of a barrel with a caliber of about 800 mm.
Since the shooting had to be carried out from a distance of 35000-45000 m, in order not to fall under the blows of enemy artillery, the projectile had to have a very high initial velocity, which is impossible without a long barrel. A gun with a caliber of 800 mm with a long barrel, according to the calculations of German engineers, could not weigh less than 1000 tons.
Knowing A. Hitler’s craving for gigantic projects, the Fried.Krupp AG firms were not surprised when, “at the urgent request of the Fuhrer,” the Wehrmacht Arms Department asked them to develop and manufacture two guns with the characteristics presented in the calculations, and to ensure the necessary mobility, it was proposed place it on the rail transporter.
 |
||
800 mm gun 80 cm K. (E) on a railway transporter |
Work on the realization of the Fuhrer's wishes was started in 1937 and carried out very intensively. But due to the difficulties that arose when creating, first of all, the gun barrel, the first shots from it were fired at an artillery range only in September 1941, when the German troops dealt with both France and its “impregnable” Maginot line.
Nevertheless, work on the creation of a heavy-duty artillery mount continued, and in November 1941, the gun was no longer fired from a temporary carriage mounted at the training ground, but from a regular railway transporter. In January 1942, the creation of an 800-mm railway artillery mount was completed - it entered service with the specially formed 672nd artillery battalion.
The name Dora was assigned to the gunners of this division. It is believed that it came from an abbreviation of the expression douner und doria - "damn it!", which everyone who saw this monster for the first time involuntarily exclaimed.
Like all railway artillery installations, Dora consisted of the gun itself and the railway transporter. The length of the gun barrel was 40.6 calibers (32.48 m!), The length of the rifled part of the barrel was about 36.2 calibers. The barrel bore was locked by a wedge gate equipped with a hydraulic drive with a crank.
The survivability of the barrel was estimated at 100 shots, but in practice, after the first 15 shots, signs of wear began to be detected. The mass of the gun was 400,000 kg.
In accordance with the purpose of the gun, an armor-piercing projectile weighing 7100 kg was developed.
It contained "only" 250.0 kg of explosives, but the thickness of its walls was 18 cm, and the massive head was hardened.
This projectile was guaranteed to pierce an eight-meter ceiling and a meter-long steel plate, after which the bottom fuse detonated the explosive charge, thus completing the destruction of the enemy bunker.
The initial speed of the projectile was 720 m / s, due to the presence of a ballistic tip made of aluminum alloy on it, the firing range was 38,000 m.
High-explosive shells weighing 4800 kg were also fired to the cannon. Each such projectile contained 700 kg of explosives and was equipped with both a head and a bottom fuse, which made it possible to use it as an armor-piercing high-explosive projectile. When fired with a full charge, the projectile developed an initial velocity of 820 m/s and could hit a target at a distance of 48,000 m.
The propellant charge consisted of a charge in a cartridge case weighing 920 kg and two cartridge charges weighing 465 kg each. The rate of fire of the gun was 3 rounds per hour.
Due to the large size and weight of the gun, the designers had to design a unique railway transporter that occupied two parallel railway tracks at once.
On each track there was one of the parts of the conveyor, which in design resembled the conveyor of a conventional railway artillery installation: a welded box-shaped main beam on two balancers and four five-axle railway carts.
 |
||
Thus, each of these parts of the conveyor could move independently along the railway tracks, and their connection with transverse box beams was carried out only at the firing position.
After assembling the conveyor, which was essentially the lower machine tool, an upper machine was installed on it with a cradle with an anti-recoil system, which included two hydraulic recoil brakes and two knurlers.
Following this, the gun barrel was mounted and the loading platform was assembled. In the tail section of the platform, two electrically driven hoists were installed to supply shells and charges from the railway track to the platform.
The lifting mechanism placed on the machine had an electric drive. It provided guidance of the gun in the vertical plane in the range of angles from 0° to +65°.
There were no mechanisms for horizontal aiming: railway tracks were built in the direction of firing, onto which the entire installation was then rolled. At the same time, shooting could only be carried out strictly parallel to these paths - any deviation threatened to turn the installation over under the influence of a huge recoil force.
Taking into account the unit for generating electricity for all electric drives of the installation, its mass was 135,000 kg.
For the transportation and maintenance of the Dora installation, a set of technical means was developed, which included a power train, a maintenance train, an ammunition train, handling equipment and several technical flights - up to 100 locomotives and wagons with a staff of several hundred people. The total mass of the complex was 4925100 kg.
Formed for the combat use of the installation, the 672nd artillery battalion of 500 people consisted of several units, the main of which were headquarters and firing batteries. The headquarters battery included computing groups that made all the calculations necessary for aiming at the target, as well as a platoon of artillery observers, in which, in addition to conventional means (theodolites, stereotubes), infrared technology, new for that time, was also used.
In February 1942, the Dora railway artillery was placed at the disposal of the commander of the 11th Army, who was tasked with capturing Sevastopol.
A group of staff officers flew to the Crimea in advance and chose a firing position for a gun in the area of the village of Duvankoy. For the engineering preparation of the position, 1,000 sappers and 1,500 workers were forcibly mobilized from among the local residents.
 |
||
Projectile and charge in the sleeve of the 800-mm gun K. (E) |
The protection of the position was entrusted to a guard company of 300 fighters, as well as a large group of military police and a special team with guard dogs.
In addition, there was a reinforced military chemical unit of 500 people, designed to lay a smoke screen for camouflage from the air, and a reinforced air defense artillery battalion of 400 people. The total number of personnel involved in servicing the installation was more than 4,000 people.
The preparation of the firing position, located at a distance of about 20 km from the defensive structures of Sevastopol, ended in the first half of 1942. At the same time, a special access road 16 km long had to be laid from the main railway line. After the completion of the preparatory work, the main parts of the installation were submitted to the position and its assembly began, which lasted a week. When assembling, two cranes with diesel engines with a capacity of 1000 hp were used.
The combat use of the installation did not give the results that the Wehrmacht command had hoped for: only one successful hit was recorded, which caused an explosion of an ammunition depot located at a depth of 27 m. In other cases, a cannon shell, penetrating into the ground, pierced a round barrel with a diameter of about 1 m up to 12 m deep. At the base of the barrel, as a result of the explosion of a warhead, the soil was compacted and a drop-shaped cavity with a diameter of about 3 m was formed. several guns of smaller caliber.
After the capture of Sevastopol by German troops, the Dora installation was transported near Leningrad to the Taitsy station area. The same type of installation Schwerer Gustav 2 was also delivered here, the production of which was completed in early 1943.
After the beginning of the operation by the Soviet troops to break the blockade of Leningrad, both installations were evacuated to Bavaria, where in April 1945 they were blown up when American troops approached.
Thus ended the most ambitious project in the history of German and world artillery. However, if we consider that only 48 shots were fired at the enemy out of both 800-mm railway artillery mounts, this project can also be considered the most grandiose mistake in planning the development of artillery.
 |
||
It is noteworthy that the Dora and Schwerer Gustav 2 installations are operated by Fried. Krupp AG did not limit itself to creating superguns.
In 1942, her project of the 520-mm Langer Gustav railway artillery mount appeared. The smoothbore gun of this installation had a length of 43 m (according to other sources - 48 m) and was supposed to fire active rockets developed at the Peenemünde research center. Firing range - over 100 km. In 1943, Minister of Armaments A. Speer reported the Langer Gustav project to the Fuhrer and received the go-ahead for its implementation. However, after a detailed analysis, the project was rejected: due to the monstrous weight of the barrel, it was not possible to create a conveyor for it that could also withstand the loads that arise during a shot.
At the end of the war, A. Hitler's headquarters also seriously discussed the project of placing the 800-mm Dora gun on a caterpillar conveyor. It is believed that the Fuhrer himself was the author of the idea of this project.
This monster was supposed to be driven by four diesel engines from submarines, and the calculation and main mechanisms were protected by 250 mm armor.
|
Everyone knows how great is the importance of artillery in modern combat. The guns are capable of hitting the enemy's manpower, tanks and aircraft, and destroying the enemy, located in open space and in shelters.
At the same time, a number of ordinary people mistakenly attribute all these merits to the cannon, having little idea of what a howitzer is and how they differ. What is the difference between a cannon and a howitzer.
A gun- one of the types of artillery guns with a long barrel and a high muzzle velocity, good range.
Howitzer is a type of artillery gun for mounted firing outside the line of sight of the target from covered positions.
Comparison of guns and howitzers
What is the difference between a cannon and a howitzer? The gun has a long barrel and a high initial velocity of the projectile, which makes it convenient to hit moving objects from it. In addition, the gun is the most long-range of all types of guns. The elevation angle of the barrel of the gun is small, and therefore the projectile flies along a flat trajectory. Such features make the gun very effective in direct fire. When firing fragmentation projectiles, the cannon is good for incapacitating enemy manpower (being at an acute angle to the surface, bursting, the projectile covers a large area with fragments).
The howitzer is mainly used for mounted shooting, while the servants often do not see the enemy. The length of the howitzer barrel is less than that of the cannon, as is the charge of gunpowder, as well as the muzzle velocity of the projectile. But the howitzer has a significant angle of elevation of the barrel, thanks to which it is possible to shoot from it at targets located behind shelters. The howitzer is also financially more profitable: the walls of its barrel are thinner, it requires less metal for production and gunpowder for firing than a cannon. The weight of a howitzer is much less than the weight of a cannon with the same caliber.
The gun is more suitable for defensive actions. The howitzer, on the contrary, is for the offensive - it is capable of sowing panic behind enemy lines, disrupting communications and control, and also creating a barrage of fire in front of its own attacking troops.
What is the difference between a cannon and a howitzer
A cannon is an artillery weapon for flat firing with a high muzzle velocity.
Howitzer - a type of gun for mounted shooting from closed positions.
The barrel of a cannon is longer than that of a howitzer.
The muzzle velocity of a cannon is higher than that of a howitzer.
It is most convenient to hit moving and open targets from a cannon.
The howitzer is designed for mounted firing at covered targets.
The cannon is the most long-range weapon type.
A howitzer is lighter than a cannon with the same calibers, and the charge of gunpowder of its shells is less.
The gun is good on the defensive, the howitzer is good on the offensive.
A firearm, as a heat engine, has a higher efficiency than an internal combustion engine, and the resistance to movement experienced by a projectile, on the contrary, is lower than that of a car or aircraft. It turns out that artillery is the most profitable way to transport cargo over long distances. However, what is good in theory is often difficult to implement in practice, and inconvenient in operation. The history of the creation of superguns that send a projectile far beyond the horizon line is a vivid example of how the same task can be solved in different ways.
"Colossal" masters the stratosphere
On the morning of March 23, 1917, Paris came under a sudden artillery attack. The front was far from the city, and no one could expect this. Three German guns installed in the Lana region fired 21 shells that day, 18 of them fell in the French capital. The French soon put one of the guns out of action, the other two continued regular shelling for more than a month. The sensation had its own backstory.
With the outbreak of the First World War, it became obvious that the general staffs, preparing for the coming clashes, neglected many issues of artillery. It was not only the lack of heavy large-caliber guns among the belligerents. Too little attention was paid to the range of the guns. Meanwhile, the course of hostilities made the troops more and more dependent on the nearest and deepest rear - command and control and supply points, communication lines, warehouses, and reserves. To defeat all this, long-range artillery was required. And since the firing range of ground guns did not exceed 16-20 km, naval guns transferred to the land fronts went into action. To sailors, the importance of range was obvious. The existing dreadnoughts and superdreadnoughts carried guns with a caliber of 305-381 mm with a firing range of up to 35 km. New weapons were also developed. There was a temptation to implement an idea that had previously only occurred to enthusiasts - to shoot at a distance of 100 km or more. Its essence was to, by giving the projectile a high initial speed, make it fly most of the way in the stratosphere, where air resistance is much less than at the Earth's surface. F. Rauzenberger took up the development of the gun at the Krupp company.
A composite 21-cm pipe with a threaded channel and a smooth muzzle was mounted in the bored barrel of a 38-cm naval gun (in Germany, then, the calibers were indicated in centimeters). The combination of a barrel of the same caliber with a chamber from a larger caliber made it possible to use a propellant powder charge, which weighed one and a half times more than the projectile itself (196.5 kg of gunpowder per 120 kg of projectile). The guns of those years rarely had a barrel length of more than 40 calibers, but here it reached 150 calibers. True, in order to exclude the curvature of the barrel under the influence of its own weight, it was necessary to hold it with cables, and after the shot, wait two or three minutes until the vibrations stop. The installation was transported by rail, and at the position it was placed on a concrete base with an annular rail that provided horizontal guidance. In order for the projectile to enter the stratosphere at an angle of greatest range - 45 ° and leave the dense layers of the atmosphere faster, the barrel was given an elevation angle of more than 50 °. As a result, the projectile flew about 100 km in the stratosphere, almost reaching its upper limit - 40 km. The flight time for 120 km reached three minutes, and ballistic calculations even had to take into account the rotation of the Earth.
As the barrel pipes "shot" they used shells of a slightly larger diameter. The survivability of the barrel was no more than 50 shots, after which it needed to be changed. The “shot” pipes were drilled to a caliber of 24 cm and put into action again. Such a projectile flew a little less, at a distance of up to 114 km.
The created cannon became known under the name "Colossal" - such a definition was liked to be used in Germany. However, in the literature it was called both “Kaiser Wilhelm’s gun”, and “Paris cannon”, and - erroneously - “Big Bertha” (this nickname was actually worn by a 420-mm mortar). Since only naval guns had experience in servicing long-range guns at that time, the Colossal crew was made up of coastal defense commanders.
For 44 days, the Colossal guns fired 303 shells at Paris, of which 183 fell within the city. 256 people were killed and 620 wounded, several hundred or thousands of Parisians fled the city. The material losses from the shelling in no way corresponded to the costs of its implementation. And the expected psychological effect - up to and including the cessation of hostilities - did not follow. In 1918, the guns were taken to Germany and dismantled.
Fix idea
However, the idea of an ultra-long-range cannon fell into fertile soil. Already in 1918, the French built the so-called "reciprocal gun" of the same caliber - 210 mm with a barrel length of 110 calibers. Her projectile weighing 108 kg at an initial speed of 1,450 m / s was supposed to fly 115 km. The installation was mounted on a 24-axle railway transporter with the ability to fire directly from the track. It was the heyday of railway artillery, the only one capable of quickly maneuvering guns of great and special power (then motor vehicles and the roads on which they moved could not compete closely with railway communication) ... The French, however, did not take into account the fact that the "reciprocal gun" no bridge will survive.
Meanwhile, the Italian firm Ansaldo at the end of 1918 designed a 200-mm cannon with an initial projectile velocity of about 1,500 m / s and a firing range of 140 km. The British, in turn, hoped to hit targets on the continent from their island. To do this, they developed a 203-mm cannon with an initial velocity of a 109-kg projectile of 1,500 m / s and a range of up to 110-120 km, but they did not begin to implement the project.
Already in the early 1920s, French and German experts justified the need to have a gun of about 200 mm caliber with a firing range of up to 200 km. Such a gun was supposed to shoot at strategically important and desirable (due to the dispersion of hits) area targets. These could be enemy concentration areas, administrative and industrial centers, ports, railway junctions. Opponents of superguns reasonably noted that bomber aircraft could well solve the same tasks. To which supporters of ultra-long-range artillery replied that guns, unlike aviation, can hit targets around the clock and in any weather. In addition, with the advent of military aviation, air defense systems were also born, and neither fighters nor anti-aircraft guns could interfere with the ultra-long-range gun. The appearance of long-range high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft and the development of ballistic calculation methods gave hope for an increase in the accuracy of ultra-long-range shooting, due to more accurate information about the target's coordinates and the possibility of adjusting the shooting. Since the number and rate of fire of such guns were small, there was no talk of "massive" shelling. The most important in this case was considered the psychological factor, the ability to keep the enemy on their toes with the threat of sudden shelling.
Methods for increasing the firing range are well known - increasing the initial velocity of the projectile, selecting the elevation angle, improving the aerodynamic shape of the projectile. To increase the speed, the propellant powder charge is increased: with ultra-long firing, it should have been 1.5-2 times the mass of the projectile. In order for the powder gases to be able to do more work, the barrel is lengthened. And to increase the average pressure in the bore, which determines the speed of the projectile, progressively burning gunpowder was used (in them, as the grain burns out, the surface covered by the flame increases, which increases the rate of formation of powder gases). Changing the shape of the projectile - lengthening the head, narrowing the tail - was intended to improve its streamlining by air flow. But at the same time, the useful volume and power of the projectile decreased. In addition, the loss of speed due to air resistance can be reduced by increasing the lateral load, that is, the ratio of the mass of the projectile to its largest cross-sectional area. In other words, the projectile in this case must be lengthened. At the same time, it was necessary to guarantee its stability in flight, providing a high rotation speed. There were other specific problems as well. In particular, in long-range guns, conventional copper projectile guide belts often could not withstand very high pressure and could not correctly "lead" the projectile along the rifling of the barrel. They remembered the polygonal (in the form of an oblong prism twisted by a screw) shells that Whitworth experimented with in the 1860s. After the First World War, the prominent French artilleryman Charbonnier transformed this idea into projectiles with ready-made projections (“rifled”), the shape of which repeated the rifling of the bore. Experiments with polygonal and "rifled" shells began in a number of countries. It was possible to lengthen the projectile up to 6-10 calibers, and since the energy costs for forcing and friction were less than with the leading belts, it was possible to obtain long ranges even with heavier projectiles. In the second half of the 1930s, it was considered quite probable "that in the near future there will be guns with a caliber of 500-600 mm, firing at a distance of 120-150 km." At the same time, towed guns with a firing range of up to 30 km and railway guns with a range of up to 60 km were simply considered “long-range”.
The development of issues of ultra-long-range firing was one of the main tasks of the Commission for Special Artillery Experiments, created in 1918 in the RSFSR. Chairman of the Commission, the famous artilleryman V.M. Trofimov proposed a project for an ultra-long-range gun back in 1911. Now he had the theoretical foundations of firing at ranges up to 140 km ready.
It was expensive to create giant guns of Soviet Russia, and not really necessary. More interesting seemed "ultra-long" shells for existing naval guns, which could be placed on both stationary and railway installations. Moreover, for battleships and coastal batteries, the ability to fire at targets from 100 km would also be useful. For a long time they experimented with sub-caliber shells. A long-range sub-caliber projectile was offered back in 1917 by another prominent Russian artilleryman E.A. Berkalov. The caliber of the "active" projectile was smaller than the caliber of the barrel, so the gain in speed was accompanied by a loss in "power". In 1930, a projectile of the Berkalov system “flew” 90 km to the naval gun. In 1937, due to the combination of a barrel drilled to 368 mm, a 220 mm projectile weighing 140 kg, a "belt" pallet and a powder charge of 223 kg, it was possible to obtain an initial velocity of 1,390 m/s, which ensured a range of 120 km. That is, the same range as that of the German "Colossal" was achieved with a heavier projectile, and most importantly - on the basis of a gun with a barrel length of only 52 calibers. It remained to solve a number of problems with the accuracy of shooting. Work was also underway on "star" pallets with prefabricated ledges - the combination of the ideas of prefabricated ledges and a detachable pallet seemed promising. But all work was interrupted by the Great Patriotic War - the designers faced more pressing tasks.
Research and development work on shells, charges, barrels for ultra-long-range artillery contributed to success in other industries. For example, methods of increasing the initial velocity of the projectile came in handy in anti-tank artillery. Work on ultra-long-range firing accelerated the development of topographic and meteorological artillery services, stimulated work on astronomical determination of coordinates, aerology, new methods for calculating the initial data for firing, and mechanical counting devices.
Ultra-range or super-altitude?
Already in the mid-1930s, ultra-long-range guns had a serious competitor in the form of missiles. A number of experts admitted that talk of missiles being developed to carry mail or interplanetary messages was in fact just a cover for military work, the results of which could "radically change the methods of warfare." The French engineer L. Damblian, for example, proposed a project for a ballistic missile with an inclined launch from an artillery gun and a flight range of up to 140 km. In Germany, since 1936, work has already been carried out on a ballistic missile with a range of up to 275 km. Since 1937, the A4 rocket, which became better known to the world under the name V-2, was brought to mind at the Peenemünde test center.
On the other hand, the enthusiasts of interplanetary communications did not leave the "artillery" ideas of Jules Verne. In the 1920s, the German scientists M. Valle and G. Oberth proposed to shoot a projectile towards the Moon, having built a giant cannon with a barrel length of 900 m on the top of a mountain near the equator. Another pioneer of astronautics proposed his own version of the “space gun” in 1928 G. von Pirke. In both cases, of course, things did not go beyond sketches and calculations.
There was another tempting direction to achieve super-ranges and super-heights - the replacement of the energy of powder gases with electromagnetic energy. But the complexity of implementation turned out to be much greater than the expected benefits. The “magnet-fugal” gun of the Russian engineers Podolsky and Yampolsky with a theoretical flight range of up to 300 km (proposed as early as 1915), the solenoid guns of the French Fachon and Villone, and the “electric guns” of Maleval did not go beyond the drawings. The idea of electromagnetic guns is still alive today, but even the most promising railgun schemes are still only experimental laboratory facilities. The fate of research instruments turned out to be destined for "super-speed" light-gas guns (their initial projectile speed reaches 5 km / s instead of the usual 1.5 for "powder guns").
Across the English Channel
It is known that after the failure of the air attack on England, the shelling of London and other British cities from the territory of occupied France became an obsession of the German leadership. While the guided "weapon of retaliation" in the form of projectiles and ballistic missiles was being prepared, long-range artillery was working on British territory.
The Germans, who once hit Paris with the Colossal cannon, in 1937-1940 created two 21-cm K12 (E) railway artillery installations. Built by Krupp, the installation rested on two platforms and was raised on jacks for firing. For horizontal aiming, a curved railway line was built - this technique was widely used in railway artillery of large and special power. The barrel was kept from deflection by frames and cables. A fragmentation projectile with ready-made protrusions with a charge of 250 kg flew up to 115 km. The survivability of the barrel was already 90 shots. In 1940, installations as part of the 701st railway battery were pulled up to the coast of the Pas de Calais, in November one of them was already shelling the areas of Dover, Folkestone and Hastings. For this installation, a 310-mm smooth barrel and a feathered projectile were also developed. It was expected that this combination would provide a range of 250 km, but the project did not leave the experimental stage. One 21 cm K12(E) mount was captured in 1945 by the British in Holland.
The British, in turn, had been shelling the occupied French territory since August 1940 from fixed coastal installations in St. Margaret Bay, Kent. Two 356-mm naval guns, nicknamed "Winnie" and "Pooh", worked here. Both could throw shells weighing 721 kg at a distance of 43.2 km, that is, they were long-range. To fire on German positions near Calais, the British pulled up three 343-mm railway installations to Dover with a firing range of up to 36.6 km. It is said that an experienced 203 mm cannon was also used, nicknamed "Bruce". Indeed, at the beginning of 1943, one of the two experimental 203-mm "high-speed" Vickers-Armstrong guns with a barrel length of 90 calibers was mounted in St. Margaret. Its fragmentation projectile weighing 116.3 kg with ready-made protrusions at an initial speed of 1,400 m / s flew at a distance of up to 100.5 km in experimental firing (with a design range of 111 km). However, there is no evidence that the cannon fired at German positions across the English Channel.
As early as 1878, the French engineer Perrault proposed a "theoretical cannon" scheme in which several powder charges were placed in separate chambers along the barrel and ignited as the projectile passed. Having achieved the exact ignition time of the charges, it would be possible to significantly increase the initial velocity of the projectile without raising the maximum pressure much. In 1879, the Americans Lyman and Haskel tested the idea, but with the advent of smokeless powders, such complex schemes were sent to the archives. The multi-chamber gun was remembered in connection with super-heights and super-ranges. This scheme was intended to be used in the "space gun" by G. von Pirke. And the chief engineer of the German company Rechling, W. Kenders, proposed to the Ministry of Armaments a weapon in the form of a long smooth pipe with additional charging chambers located along the barrel in a herringbone pattern. A feathered projectile of high elongation was supposed to fly at a distance of 165-170 km. Tests of the gun, encrypted as a "high pressure pump", were carried out in the Baltic near Mizdrow. And in September 1943, for firing at London in the Calais region, they began to build two stationary batteries of 25 guns, but only managed to assemble one. The protracted "finishing" of the gun and projectile, as well as British air raids, forced the work to stop in July 1944. It was reported that the Germans also planned to bombard Antwerp and Luxembourg with guns of this type.
Gun plus rocket
Even during the First World War, it was proposed to supply the projectile with a small jet engine that works during the flight. Over time, this idea was embodied in "active-rocket projectiles."
So, during the Second World War, due to the active-rocket projectile with a detachable pallet, the Germans decided to give ultra-long range to their very successful 28-cm K5 (E) railway installation, which had a standard firing range of up to 62.2 km. The new projectile of 245 kg, of course, carried less explosives than the regular one of 255 kg, but the firing range of 87 km made it possible to shell cities on the south coast of England from Calais or Boulogne. On the K5 (E) installations, it was also planned to put a smooth 31-cm barrel under the 12-caliber feathered projectile developed by the Peenemünde research center with a detachable pallet washer. With an initial speed of 1,420 m/s, such a projectile weighing 136 kg was supposed to have a flight range of 160 km. Two experimental 38-cm installations were captured by the Americans in 1945.
Projectiles were also offered, receiving the main part of the impulse from a jet engine. In 1944, Krupp developed the Rwa100 rocket and artillery system with an estimated firing range of 140 km. The rocket projectile used a relatively small expelling charge and a thin-walled barrel. The charge was supposed to tell a 54-cm projectile weighing 1 ton an initial speed of 250-280 m / s, and in flight it was planned to increase it due to jet thrust to 1,300 m / s. The matter did not go beyond the layout. Projects were also developed for a 56-cm RAG installation with a barrel length of only 12 calibers, from which a rocket projectile was launched at a distance - in different versions - up to 60 or up to 94 km. True, the scheme did not promise good accuracy, since the shortcomings of uncontrolled jet propulsion inevitably manifested themselves.
The most powerful
Let's digress from the "ultra-long-range" and take a look at the "heavy duty" guns. Moreover, the development of heavy artillery since the beginning of the First World War also assumed an increase in the destructive effect of the projectile.
In 1936, Krupp began developing a heavy-duty cannon to combat the fortifications of the French Maginot Line. Accordingly, the projectile had to penetrate armor up to 1 m thick and concrete up to 7 m and explode in their thickness. The development was led by E. Muller (who had the nickname Muller-gun). The first gun was named "Dora", supposedly in honor of the wife of the chief designer. The work dragged on for 5 years, and by the time the first 80 cm gun was assembled in 1941, the Maginot Line, like the fortifications of Belgium and Czechoslovakia, had long been in German hands. They wanted to use the gun against the British fortifications of Gibraltar, but it was necessary to smuggle the installation through Spain. And this did not meet either the carrying capacity of the Spanish bridges or the intentions of the Spanish dictator Franco.
As a result, in February 1942, the Dora was sent to the Crimea at the disposal of the 11th Army, where its main task was to shell the famous Soviet 305-mm coastal batteries No. 30 and No. 35 and the fortifications of the besieged Sevastopol, which by that time had already repelled two assaults.
The Dora high-explosive shell weighing 4.8 tons carried 700 kg of explosives, the concrete-piercing shell weighing 7.1 tons - 250 kg, large charges for them weighed 2 and 1.85 tons, respectively. The cradle under the barrel was mounted between two supports, each of which occupied one railway track and rested on four five-axle platforms. Two hoists served to supply shells and charges. The gun was transported, of course, disassembled. To install it, the railway track was branched, laying four curved - for horizontal guidance - parallel branches. The gun supports were driven onto two internal branches. Two 110-ton overhead cranes needed to assemble the gun moved along the outer tracks. The position occupied a section with a length of 4,120-4,370 m. The preparation of the position and the assembly of the gun lasted from one and a half to six and a half weeks.
The actual calculation of the gun was about 500 people, but with a security battalion, a transport battalion, two ammunition trains, an energy train, a field bakery and a commandant's office, the number of personnel per installation increased to 1,420 people. The colonel commanded the calculation of such a weapon. In Crimea, "Dora" was also given a military police group, a chemical unit for setting up smoke screens and a reinforced anti-aircraft division - vulnerability from aviation was one of the main problems of railway artillery. A group of engineers was sent from Krupp with the installation. The position was equipped by June 1942, 20 km from Sevastopol. The assembled Dora was moved by two diesel locomotives with a capacity of 1,050 hp. With. each. By the way, the Germans also used two 60-cm self-propelled mortars of the Karl type against the fortifications of Sevastopol.
From 5 to 17 June "Dora" fired 48 shots. Together with field tests, this exhausted the resource of the barrel, and the gun was taken away. Historians still argue about the effectiveness of shooting, but they agree that it did not correspond to the colossal size and cost of the installation. Although it must be admitted that from a purely technical point of view, the 80-cm railway installation was a good design work and a convincing demonstration of industrial power. Actually, such monsters were created as a visible embodiment of power. Suffice it to recall that the main success of the heroes of the Soviet comedy "Heavenly slug" was the destruction of a certain German supergun (albeit a stationary one).
The Germans wanted to transfer the Dora to Leningrad, but did not have time. They tried to make the Dora also ultra-long-range - for use already in the West. To this end, they resorted to a scheme similar to Damblyan's project - they intended to launch a three-stage rocket projectile from the gun barrel. But things did not go beyond the project. As well as the combination of a 52-cm smooth barrel for the same installation and an active-rocket projectile with a flight range of 100 km.
The second built 80-cm installation is known under the name "Heavy Gustav" - in honor of Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach. General Guderian recalled how, at a demonstration of the gun to Hitler on March 19, 1943, Dr. Müller said that it "can also be fired at tanks." Hitler hurried to convey these words to Guderian, but he retorted: “Shoot - yes, but don’t hit!” Krupp was able to make components for the third installation, but did not have time to assemble it. Parts of the 80-cm gun captured by the Soviet troops were sent for study to the Union and around the year in 1960 they were scrapped. In those years, at the initiative of Khrushchev, many rarities of not only captured, but also domestic equipment disappeared in open-hearth furnaces.
Mentioning Leningrad, one cannot but say that during the blockade there was a fierce confrontation between artillery, including railway, coastal and stationary installations. In particular, the most powerful of the Soviet guns, the 406-mm B-37 naval gun, worked here. It was developed by the design bureaus of the Barrikady and Bolshevik factories together with the NII-13 and the Leningrad Mechanical Plant for the never-built battleship Sovetsky Soyuz. Well-known designers M.Ya. took part in the development. Krupchatnikov, E.G. Rudnyak, D.E. Bril. On the eve of the war, the 406-mm cannon was mounted on the MP-10 test site at the Scientific and Testing Naval Artillery Range (Rzhevka). The stationary installation, which threw a projectile weighing 1.1 tons at a distance of about 45 km, provided considerable assistance to the Soviet troops in the Nevsky, Kolpinsky, Uritsko-Pushkinsky, Krasnoselsky and Karelian directions. In total, from August 29, 1941 to June 10, 1944, 81 shots were fired from the cannon. For example, during the breakthrough of the blockade in January 1944, its shell destroyed the concrete structure of the 8th state district power station, which was used by the Nazis as a fortification. Cannon shots also had a strong psychological effect on the enemy.
The appearance of nuclear charges in the post-war period made it necessary to reconsider the attitude towards "heavy duty" artillery. When the nuclear charge was able to be “packed” quite compactly, artillery of conventional calibers became super-powerful.
Building "Babylon"
Projects for ultra-long-range guns continued to appear after the Second World War. In 1946, a project of a 562-mm gun on a self-propelled and railway installation was discussed in the USSR. An active-rocket projectile weighing 1,158 kg was fired from a relatively short barrel with a flight range of up to 94 km. A direct connection with the German developments at the end of the war is obvious - the project was presented by a group of captured German designers. The idea of ultra-long-range shells for naval guns was still alive. A projectile weighing 203.5 kg, developed in 1954 for the 305 mm SM-33 cannon, would reach a range of 127.3 km at an initial velocity of 1,300 m/s. However, Khrushchev decided to stop work on naval and land heavy artillery. The rapid development of missiles, as it seemed then, put an end to ultra-long-range guns. But decades later, the idea, having adapted to new conditions and technologies, began to make its way again.
On March 22, 1990, Professor J. W. Bull, a prominent specialist in rocket and artillery technology, was killed in Brussels. His name became widely known in connection with the American-Canadian project HARP ("High Altitude Exploration Program"), which used the ideas of Vern, Oberth and von Pirke. In 1961, in the era of general "rocket mania", in different parts of America and the Caribbean, guns converted from naval guns were installed - for experimental firing at high altitudes. In 1966, with the help of a converted 406-mm cannon installed on the island of Barbados, it was possible to throw a sub-caliber projectile - a satellite prototype - to an altitude of 180 km. The experimenters were also convinced of the ability to shoot at a distance of 400 km. But in 1967, HARP was covered - low-earth orbits were already successfully mastered with the help of rockets.
Bull took up more "mundane" projects. In particular, his small firm Space Research Corporation worked to improve the ballistic performance of field artillery guns in NATO countries. Bull worked for South Africa, and for Israel, and for China. Perhaps the "diversity" of the customers ruined the scientist. Both the Mossad and the Iraqi special services are accused of his murder. But in any case, he is associated with work on a project known as "Big Babylon". The story of Professor Bull and "Big Babylon" even became the basis of the feature film "The Doomsday Cannon".
It is believed that Saddam Hussein ordered Bulle to develop the Iraqi ultra-long-range cannon shortly before the end of the Iran-Iraq war to fight Iran, bearing in mind the possibility of shelling Israel. However, officially the cannon was "served" as part of the space theme - as a cheap means for launching satellites into orbit.
The caliber of the supergun was to reach 1,000 mm, length - 160 m, firing range - up to 1,000 km with a conventional projectile and up to 2,000 km with an active-reactive one. Among the various versions of the Big Babylon device, there were also a multi-chamber cannon, and a two- or three-stage rocket projectile fired from the cannon barrel. Gun parts were ordered under the guise of equipment for oil pipelines. The proof of concept was allegedly carried out on a 350 mm caliber, 45 m long prototype "Little Babylon" built in Jabal Hanrayam (145 km from Baghdad). Shortly after Bulle's assassination, British Customs seized a shipment of precision-made tubes - they were considered parts for the construction of a gun.
After the 1991 Gulf War, the Iraqis showed UN inspectors the remains of what is believed to be the "Little Babylon", then destroyed it. Actually, this is where the story ends. Except perhaps in 2002, when the aggression against Iraq was being prepared, the press resumed talking about "Saddam's supergun" capable of firing projectiles with "chemical, bacteriological and even nuclear" fillings. But during the occupation of Iraq, traces of "Babylon", apparently, were not found, as well as weapons of mass destruction. Meanwhile, the effective and cheap "ultra-long-range artillery" of the "third world" turned out to be not superguns, but crowds of emigrants, among whom one can easily recruit perpetrators of terrorist attacks or participants in pogroms.
In 1995, the Chinese press already published a photograph of a 21 m long gun with an estimated firing range of 320 km. The 85 mm caliber indicated that this was most likely a model of the future gun. The purpose of the Chinese cannon is predictable - to keep Taiwan or South Korea under the threat of shelling.
ABM systems and a number of treaties that limit the use of missile weapons do not apply to artillery. The corrected projectile of an ultra-long-range gun, compared to a missile warhead, is both a cheaper product and a hard-to-hit target. So in the history of superguns, it may be too early to put an end to it.
Semyon Fedoseev | Illustrations by Yuri Yurov
In the second half of the century before last, attempts by artillery gunsmiths to increase the range of guns ran into a limitation created by the fast-burning black powders used at that moment. A powerful propellant charge created a gigantic pressure during detonation, but as the projectile moved along the bore, the pressure of the powder gases quickly dropped.
This factor influenced the design of the guns of that time: the breech parts of the guns had to be made with very thick walls that could withstand enormous pressure, while the barrel length remained relatively small, since there was no practical value in increasing the barrel length. The record holder guns of that time had an initial projectile speed of 500 meters per second, and ordinary specimens were even less.
The first attempts to increase the range of the gun due to multi-chamber
In 1878, the French engineer Louis-Guillaume Perreaux proposed the idea of using several additional explosive charges located in separate chambers located outside the breech of the gun. According to his idea, the explosion of gunpowder in additional chambers should have occurred as the projectile moved along the bore, thereby ensuring a constant pressure created by powder gases.
In theory gun with additional chambers it was supposed to surpass the classic artillery guns of that time both literally and figuratively, but this is only in theory. In 1879, (according to other sources in 1883), a year after the innovation proposed by Perrault, two American engineers James Richard Haskell and Azel S. Lyman embody Perrault's multi-chamber gun in metal.
The brainchild of the Americans, in addition to the main chamber, in which 60 kilograms of explosives were laid, had 4 additional ones with a load of 12.7 kilograms each. Haskell and Lyman counted on the fact that the explosion of gunpowder in additional chambers would occur from the flame of the main charge as the projectile moved along the barrel and opened fire access to them.
However, in practice, everything turned out differently than on paper: the detonation of charges in additional chambers occurred prematurely, contrary to the expectations of the designers, and in fact the projectile was not accelerated by the energy of additional charges, as expected, but was slowed down.
A projectile fired from a five-chamber cannon of the Americans showed a modest 335 meters per second, which meant a complete failure of the project. The failure in the field of using multi-chamber to increase the range of artillery guns made weapons engineers forget about the idea of additional charges before the Second World War.
Multi-chamber artillery pieces of World War II
During World War II, the idea of using multi-chamber artillery guns to increase the firing range actively developed by Nazi Germany. Under the command of engineer August Könders, in 1944, the Germans begin to implement the V-3 project, code-named (HDP) "High Pressure Pump".
Monstrous in its scope, a gun 124 meters long, 150 mm in caliber and weighing 76 tons was supposed to participate in the shelling of London. The estimated range of its arrow-shaped projectile was more than 150 kilometers; the projectile itself, 3250 mm long and weighing 140 kilograms, carried 25 kg of explosive. The barrel of the HDP gun consisted of 32 sections 4.48 meters long, each section (except for the breech from where the projectile was loaded) had two additional charging chambers located at an angle to the bore.
The weapon was nicknamed "Centipede" due to the fact that additional charging chambers gave the weapon a resemblance to an insect. In addition to range, the Nazis relied on rate of fire, since the estimated reload time of the Centipede was only a minute: it’s scary to imagine what would have been left of London if Hitler’s plans had come true.
Due to the fact that the implementation of the V-3 project involved the implementation of a huge amount of construction work and the involvement of a large number of workers, the Allied forces learned about the active preparation of positions for the placement of five HDP-type guns and on July 6, 1944, the forces of the British Air Force bomber squadron bombed the building under construction in stone galleries long-range battery.
After the fiasco with the V-3 project, the Nazis developed a simplified version of the gun under the code designation LRK 15F58, which, by the way, managed to take part in the shelling of Luxembourg by the Germans from a distance of 42.5 kilometers. The LRK 15F58 gun was also 150 mm caliber and had 24 additional charging chambers with a barrel length of 50 meters. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, one of the surviving guns was taken to the United States for study.
Ideas for using multi-chamber guns to launch satellites
Perhaps inspired by the successes of Nazi Germany and having a working sample in hand, the United States, together with Canada, began work on the High Altitude Research Project HARP in 1961, the purpose of which was to study the ballistic properties of objects launched into the upper atmosphere. A little later, the military became interested in the project, who hoped with the help multi-chamber light gas guns and probes.
In just six years of the project's existence, more than a dozen guns of various calibers were built and tested. The largest of them is a gun located in Barbados, which had a caliber of 406 mm with a barrel length of 40 meters. The gun fired 180-kilogram shells to a height of about 180 kilometers, while the initial velocity of the projectile reached 3600 meters per second.
But even such an impressive speed, of course, was not enough to put the projectile into orbit. The project manager, Canadian engineer Gerald Vincent Bull, developed the Marlet rocket projectile to achieve the desired results, but he was not destined to fly and the HARP project ceased to exist in 1967.
The closure of the HARP project was certainly a blow to the ambitious Canadian designer Gerald Bull, because he may have been a few steps away from success. For several years, Bull unsuccessfully searched for a sponsor for a grandiose project. In the end, Saddam Hussein became interested in the talent of an artillery engineer. He offers Bull financial patronage in exchange for the post of project manager for the creation of a super weapon in the framework of the Babylon project.
From the scarce data available in the public domain, four different guns are known, of which at least one used a slightly modified multi-chamber principle. To achieve a constant gas pressure in the barrel, in addition to the main charge, there was an additional one fixed directly on the projectile and moving along with it.
Based on the results of testing a 350 mm caliber gun, it was assumed that a two-ton projectile fired from a similar 1000 mm caliber gun could launch small (up to 200 kilograms) satellites into orbit, while the launch cost was estimated at about $ 600 per kilogram, which is an order of magnitude cheaper than a launch vehicle.
As you can see, someone did not like such close cooperation between the ruler of Iraq and a talented engineer, and as a result, Bull was killed in 1990 in Brussels after working on the super-weapon project for only two years.