Cannon "Dora" - a weapon of the Second World War: description, characteristics. Cannons "Dora" and "Gustav" - giant guns
The Dora and Gustav guns are giant guns.
The Dora super-heavy railway-mounted artillery gun was developed in the late 1930s by the German company Krupp. This weapon was intended to destroy fortifications on the borders of Germany with Belgium and France (Maginot Line). In 1942, "Dora" was used to storm Sevastopol, and in 1944 to suppress the uprising in Warsaw.
The development of German artillery after World War I was limited by the Treaty of Versailles. According to the provisions of this treaty, Germany was prohibited from having any anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns, as well as guns whose caliber exceeded 150 mm. Thus, the creation of large-caliber and powerful artillery was a matter of honor and prestige, the leaders of Nazi Germany believed.
Based on this, in 1936, when Hitler visited one of the Krupp factories, he categorically demanded that the company's management design a super-powerful weapon that would be capable of destroying the French Maginot Line and Belgian border forts, for example, Eben-Emal. According to the requirements of the Wehrmacht, a cannon shell must be capable of penetrating 7 m thick concrete, 1 m thick armor, 30 m hard ground, and the maximum range of the gun should be 25-45 km. and have a vertical guidance angle of +65 degrees.
The group of designers of the Krupp concern, which began creating a new super-powerful gun according to the proposed tactical and technical requirements, was headed by Professor E. Muller, who had extensive experience in this matter. The development of the project was completed in 1937, and in the same year the Krupp concern was given an order for the production of a new 800mm caliber gun. Construction of the first gun was completed in 1941. The gun, in honor of E. Muller’s wife, was given the name “Dora”. The second gun, which was named “Fat Gustav” in honor of the management of the company Gustav von Bohlen and Halbach Krupp, was built in mid-1941. In addition, a third 520 mm caliber gun was designed. and a trunk length of 48 meters. It was called "Long Gustav". But this weapon was not completed.
In 1941, 120 km. west of Berlin, at the Rügenwalde-Hillersleben training ground, guns were tested. Adolf Hitler himself, his comrade-in-arms Albert Speer, as well as other high army officials were present at the tests. Hitler was pleased with the test results.
Although the guns did not have some mechanisms, they met the requirements that were specified in the technical specifications. All tests were completed by the end of the 42nd year. The gun was delivered to the troops. By the same time, the company's factories had produced over 100 800mm caliber shells.
The locking of the barrel bolt, as well as the delivery of projectiles, were carried out by hydraulic mechanisms. The gun was equipped with two lifts: for cartridges and for shells. The first part of the barrel was with a conical thread, the second with a cylindrical thread.
The gun was mounted on a 40-axle conveyor, which was located on a double railway track. The distance between the tracks was 6 meters. In addition, another railway track was laid on the sides of the gun for installation cranes. The total weight of the gun was 1350 tons. To fire, the gun needed an area up to 5 km long. The time spent preparing the gun for firing consisted of choosing a position (could reach 6 weeks) and assembling the gun itself (about 3 days).
Transportation of implements and maintenance personnel.
The gun was transported by rail. Thus, “Dora” was delivered to Sevastopol by 5 trains in 106 cars:
1st train: service (672nd artillery division, about 500 people), 43 cars;
2nd train, auxiliary equipment and erection crane, 16 cars;
3rd train: cannon parts and workshop, 17 cars;
4th train: loading mechanisms and barrel, 20 cars;
5th train: ammunition, 10 cars.
Combat use.
In World War II, Dora took part only twice.
The first time the gun was used was to capture Sevastopol in 1942. During this campaign, only one case was recorded of a successful hit by a Dora shell, which caused an explosion of an ammunition depot located at a depth of 27 meters. The remaining Dora shots penetrated the ground to a depth of 12 meters. After the explosion of the shell, a drop-shaped shape with a diameter of about 3 meters was formed in the ground, which did not cause much harm to the defenders of the city. In Sevastopol, the gun fired 48 shells.
After Sevastopol, "Dora" was sent to Leningrad, and from there to Essen for repairs.
The second time Dora was used was in 1944 to suppress the Warsaw Uprising. In total, the gun fired more than 30 shells into Warsaw.
The end of Dora and Gustav.
On April 22, 1945, the advanced units of the Allied army were 36 km away. from the city of Auerbach (Bavaria) they discovered the remains of the Dora and Gustav guns blown up by the Germans. Subsequently, everything that was left of these giants of the 2nd World War was sent for melting down.
The queen of all Hitler's railway gun mounts. The construction of the huge gun, named “Gustav” at birth, was inspired by Hitler, who once asked what kind of gun was needed to destroy the fortifications of the Maginot Line with his shells.
Engineers from the Krupp concern began this work in 1937, but three years passed until the first barrel was prepared for fire tests, and another two years until the entire installation was assembled. But it was already 1942, the Maginot Line was far behind German lines. But there were other goals: the first was the British fortifications in Gibraltar, but the Spanish dictator Franco refused to join Hitler's operation. Leningrad, which had been under fire since the end of 1941, became the second target.
Sevastopol, the Soviet naval base on the Black Sea, was under siege, so the commander of the German 11th Army, Colonel General von Manstein, was in a hurry. Supported by powerful air raids, Manstein wanted a railway siege train, including a Thor self-propelled howitzer.
25 Gustav platforms were delivered to Manstein by sea to support the siege. The installation of the gun mount was carried out using two 110-ton cranes. Laying the rails and installing the equipment took a total of six weeks. Finally, on June 5, the Gustav fired its first shots. The targets were coastal batteries that defended the Russian fortress. The Fieseler Fi-156 Storch spotter reported the location of the projectile impact.
Eight shots were fired to suppress the fortress. The gun used two types of shells: a 7-ton armor-piercing shell designed to destroy concrete fortifications, and a 5-ton high-explosive shell with high power.
The next day, Gustav's deadly attention focused on Fort Molotov. It took seven shots to destroy the fort. Next came the time to fire at targets of particular complexity: an underground (and underwater) ammunition depot in adits near Sevastopol, overlooking the Sevastopol bays. 9 shells were fired, flying about 25 km through the air before diving under water to a depth of 30 m and piercing the concrete floor, and then exploding inside.
The Gustav continued its bombardment throughout the week as von Manstein's siege weapon, systematically targeting every Russian position. However, the defenders of the fortress had already left and died in battles in the labyrinth of tunnels that connected the forts. One after another they died from the explosions of charges brought in backpacks, or from the fire of flamethrowers. On July 1, the handful of surviving defenders capitulated.
The Gustav was dismantled and returned to Germany. The siege train was supposed to be used in the summer of 1943 to shell Leningrad, and then to support the offensive near Kursk. Soon, Operation Citadel failed, and the Soviet Army went on the offensive. The Gustav never appeared assembled again. A train containing parts of an 800 mm gun was discovered in 1945, but nothing survived except a few shells.
Assembling an 800 mm gun is a difficult task. Firstly, it was necessary to install 1 km. double rail tracks laid in a specially dug trench. Then two massive portal cranes were installed to mount the gun. The full cycle of work took 3-6 weeks.
Technical characteristics of "Gustav" 800 mm guns ("Aiseban")
Caliber: 800 mm.
Length: 42.976 m.
Barrel length: 32.48 m.
Weight: 1350 t.
Maximum barrel elevation angle: 65°
Ammunition: 4800 kg high-explosive or 7100 kg armor-piercing projectile
Initial projectile speed: 820 m/s (high-explosive), 710 m/s (armor-piercing)
Maximum range: 47 km for a 4.8-ton projectile, 38 km for a 7-ton projectile.
Calculation: 1500 people during assembly and 500 people during shooting.
Conveyor
The 800 mm gun was mounted on 4 huge railway platforms, moving in pairs along parallel tracks. Each pair, fastened together, formed a double support.
Design
The gun was assembled on a fairly standard space-truss structure, if you do not take into account its dimensions, which made it impossible to place it on a single rail track. This is the main reason that the gun was designed to be mounted and fired from double rail tracks.
Artillery unit
The gun barrel was mounted on a huge frame suspended between two main transport sections.
Loading the gun
The long working platform extended far back beyond the breech of the gun. Winches at the end of the platform delivered shells and charges to the gun.
Powerful winches were used to service the 800 mm gun, the left one in the photo was used to lift the projectile, and the right one was used to install the charge.
The projectile moved tightly into the barrel. To assemble the cannon, 1,500 people were required, the crew consisted of 500 people.
The largest gun ever built was the Gustav Gun, built in Essen, Germany in 1941 by Friedrich A.G. Krupp. To preserve the tradition of naming heavy guns after family members, the Gustav Gun was named in honor of the ill head of the Krupp family, Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach.
A strategic weapon of its time, the Gustav Gun was built on the direct orders of Hitler specifically to destroy the defensive forts of the Maginot Line on the French border. Carrying out orders, Krupp developed giant rail-mounted cannons weighing 1,344 tons and 800 mm (31.5") caliber, which were operated by a crew of 500 men under the command of a major general.
Two types of shells were produced for the cannon, using 3,000 pounds of smokeless powder to ignite: a conventional artillery shell filled with 10,584 pounds of high explosive (HE) and a concrete-piercing shell containing 16,540 pounds, respectively. The Gustav Gun shell craters measured 30 m wide and 30 m deep, and the concrete-piercing shells were capable of breaking through (before exploding) reinforced concrete walls 264 feet (79.2 m) thick! The maximum flight range of high explosive shells was 23 miles, and of concrete-piercing shells - 29 miles. The muzzle velocity of the projectile was approximately 2700 ft/sec. (or 810 m/sec).
Three guns were ordered in 1939. Alfred Krupp personally received Hitler and Albert Speer (Minister of Armaments) at the Hugenwald test site during the official acceptance tests of the Gustav Gun in the spring of 1941.
In keeping with company tradition, Krupp refrained from charging for the first gun, and DM 7 million was paid for the second gun, the Dora (named after Dora, the wife of the chief engineer).
France capitulated in 1940 without the help of a super-gun, so new targets had to be found for the Gustav. Plans to use the Gustav Gun against the British fortress of Gibraltar were scrapped after General Franco opposed the decision to fire from Spanish territory. Therefore, in April 1942, the Gustav Gun was installed opposite the heavily fortified port city of Sevastopol in the Soviet Union. Having come under fire from Gustav and other heavy artillery, the “forts” named after. Stalin, Lenin and Maxim Gorky were allegedly destroyed and destroyed (there is a different opinion on this matter). One of Gustav's shots destroyed an entire ammunition dump, 100 feet (30 m) below North Bay; another capsized a large ship in port, exploding next to it. During the siege, 300 shells were fired from the Gustav, as a result of which the first original barrel was worn out. The Dora gun was installed west of Stalingrad in mid-August, but quickly removed in September to avoid its capture. The Gustav then appeared near Warsaw in Poland, where it fired 30 shells into the Warsaw Ghetto during the 1944 uprising (see Supplement).
The Dora was blown up by German engineers in April 1945 near Oberlichtnau in Germany to avoid the gun being captured by the Russian army. The partially assembled third gun was scrapped directly from the factory by the British Army when it occupied Essen. An intact Gustav was captured by the US Army near Metzendorf, Germany in June 1945. Soon after, it was cut up for scrap. Thus, the history of the Gustav Gun type was put to an end.
Addition: In fact, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 occurred a year before the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. In neither the first nor the second case, the Gustav Gun was used. To bomb the city, the Nazis then used Thor, a 2-ton mortar of the Mörser Karl Gerät 040 type with a caliber of 60 cm.
Hitler instructed the management of the Krupp concern to develop a heavy-duty long-range weapon capable of penetrating concrete fortifications up to seven meters thick and one meter of armor. The implementation of this project was the super-powerful Dora cannon, named after the wife of its chief designer, Erich Muller.
The first samples of super-heavy guns
By the time the Fuhrer came up with such an ambitious idea, German industry already had experience in producing artillery monsters. At the end of the First World War, Paris was bombarded by a battery consisting of three super-heavy guns of the Colossal system. The barrels of these monsters had a caliber of two hundred and seven millimeters and sent their projectiles over a distance of over one hundred kilometers, which was considered a record at that time.
However, calculating the damage caused to the French capital by this battery showed that its real effectiveness was insignificant. With an exceptional range, the accuracy of the guns was extremely low, and they could not fire at specific objects, but only at huge areas.
Only a small part of the shells hit residential buildings or other structures. The guns were mounted on railway platforms and required at least eighty men to operate each one. Taking into account, moreover, their high cost, it turned out that the costs of them largely exceeded the damage that they were capable of inflicting on the enemy.
The shame of the Treaty of Versailles
At the end of the war, the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, among other restrictions, prohibited Germany from producing guns whose caliber exceeded one hundred and fifty millimeters. It is for this reason that for the leadership of the Third Reich it was a matter of prestige, trampling on the articles of a treaty that was humiliating for them, to create a cannon capable of surprising the world. As a result, “Dora” appeared - an instrument of retribution for injured national pride.
Creating an Artillery Monster
The work on creating the project and producing this monster took five years. The super-heavy railway gun "Dora" with its technical parameters surpassed imagination and common sense. Despite the fact that a projectile fired from it with a caliber of eight hundred and thirteen millimeters flew only fifty kilometers, it was capable of penetrating seven meters of reinforced concrete, a meter of armor and thirty-meter thick earthen fortifications.
Problems associated with using the implement
However, these undoubtedly high figures lost their meaning if we take into account that the gun, with its extremely low fire accuracy, required truly large-scale maintenance and operating costs. It is known, for example, that the position occupied by the Dora railway gun was at least four and a half kilometers. The entire installation was delivered disassembled, and its installation took up to one and a half months, which required two 110-ton cranes.
Such a gun consisted of five hundred people, but, in addition, a guard battalion and a transport battalion were assigned to them. Two trains and another energy train were used to transport ammunition. In general, the personnel required to service one such gun was one and a half thousand people. To feed such a number of people, they even had their own field bakery. From all this it is clear that “Dora” is a weapon that requires incredible costs for its operation.
First attempt to use the weapon
For the first time, the Germans tried to use their new creation against the British to destroy what they had built in Gibraltar. But immediately a problem arose with transportation across Spain. In a country that had not yet recovered from the civil war, there were no lifting bridges and roads necessary to transport such a monster. In addition, dictator Franco did his best to prevent this, not wanting to drag the country into a military clash with the Western allies at that moment.
Transfer of guns to the eastern front
In view of these circumstances, the Dora super-heavy gun was sent to the eastern front. In February 1942, it arrived in Crimea, where it was placed at the disposal of the army, which unsuccessfully tried to storm Sevastopol. Here the 813mm Dora siege gun was used to suppress Soviet coastal batteries equipped with 305mm guns.
The disproportionately large staff servicing the installation here on the eastern front needed to be augmented with additional security forces, since from the first days of its arrival on the peninsula the gun and its crew were attacked by partisans. As is known, railway artillery is very vulnerable to air strikes, so to cover the guns from air raids it was necessary to additionally use an anti-aircraft division. It was also joined by a chemical unit whose task was to create smoke screens.
Preparing a combat position to begin shelling
The location for installing the gun was chosen with special care. It was identified during an air overflight of the territory by the commander of the heavy gun formation, General Zuckerort. He chose one of the mountains, in which a wide cut was made to equip a combat position. In order to ensure technical control, the Krupp company sent its specialists to the combat area to develop and manufacture the gun.
The design features of the gun made it possible to move the barrel only in a vertical position, so to change the direction of fire (horizontally), the Dora gun was placed on a special platform, which moved along the arc of steeply curved railway tracks. To move it, two powerful diesel locomotives were used.
Work on installing the artillery mount and preparing it for firing was completed by the beginning of June 1942. To intensify the fire attack on the fortifications of Sevastopol, the Germans used, in addition to the Dora, two more Karl self-propelled guns. The caliber of their barrels was 60 cm. They were also powerful and destructive weapons.
Memories of event participants
There are eyewitness accounts of the memorable day of June 5, 1942. They talk about how two powerful locomotives rolled this monster weighing 1,350 tons along a rail arc. It had to be installed to the nearest centimeter, which was done by a team of machinists. For the first shot, a projectile weighing 7 tons was placed in the charging part of the gun.
A balloon rose into the air, the crew’s task was to adjust the fire. When the preparations were completed, the entire crew of the gun was taken to shelters located at a distance of several hundred meters. From the same eyewitnesses it is known that the recoil from the shot was so strong that the rails on which the platform stood went five centimeters into the ground.
A useless piece of military art
Military historians disagree on the number of shots fired by the German Dora gun at Sevastopol. Based on the data of the Soviet command, there were forty-eight of them. This corresponds to the technical resource of the barrel, which cannot withstand more of them (then it needs to be replaced). German sources claim that the cannon fired at least eighty shots, after which, during the next raid by Soviet bombers, the power train was disabled.
In general, the Wehrmacht command was forced to admit that Hitler’s vaunted Dora gun did not live up to the hopes placed on it. Despite all the costs incurred, the effectiveness of the fire was minimal. Only one successful hit was recorded at an ammunition depot, located at a distance of twenty-seven kilometers. The remaining multi-ton shells fell without any benefit, leaving behind deep craters in the ground.
No damage was caused to the defensive structures, since they could only be destroyed as a result of direct hits. There is a statement about this cannon from the chief of staff of the Wehrmacht ground forces, Colonel General. He said that the largest Dora cannon is just a useless work of art. It is difficult to add anything to the judgment of this military specialist.
The Fuhrer's anger and new plans
Such disappointing results shown by the Dora gun during combat operations aroused the Fuhrer’s anger. He had high hopes for this project. According to his calculations, the weapon, despite the prohibitive costs associated with its production, was supposed to go into mass production and, thus, make a significant change in the balance of forces on the fronts. In addition, the serial production of a gun of this scale was supposed to indicate the industrial potential of Germany.
After the failure in Crimea, Krupp designers tried to improve their creation. It was supposed to be a completely different Dora heavy artillery mount. The gun was supposed to be made ultra-long-range, and it was supposed to be used on the Western Front. It was planned to make fundamental changes to its design, allowing, according to the authors’ plans, to fire three-stage rockets. But such plans, fortunately, were not destined to come true.
During the war, in addition to the Dora cannon, the Germans produced another super-heavy weapon with a caliber of eighty centimeters. It was named after the head of the Krupp company, Gustav Krupp von Bollen - “Fat Gustav”. This gun, which cost Germany ten million marks, turned out to be as unusable as the Dora. The weapon had almost the same numerous disadvantages and very limited advantages. At the end of the war, both installations were blown up by the Germans.
Hitler had certain ideas - from the mass murder of Jews to the conquest of Europe. And he tried in every possible way to show his greatness. The Nazis even built what would have been the world's largest hotel, but the project had to be canceled because there were more pressing issues, such as the invasion of France.
In the 1930s, France built a series of massive fortifications and obstacles called the Maginot Line to protect the country from invasion from the east. These fortifications were among the strongest at the time, with deep underground bunkers, modern retractable turrets, infantry shelters, barricades, artillery and anti-tank guns, etc. The Wehrmacht was unable to penetrate these formidable defenses. So Hitler went to the ammunition manufacturer Krupp to solve the problem.
11 PHOTOS
1. Krupp engineer Erich Müller calculated that to penetrate seven meters of reinforced concrete or one full meter of steel armored plate they would need artillery with massive dimensions. 
2. The gun must have an internal diameter of more than 80 cm and a length of more than 30 meters if it were to fire projectiles weighing 7 tons each from a distance of more than 40 kilometers. 
3. The cannon itself will weigh 1,300 tons and will have to be moved by rail. When these figures were presented to Hitler, he approved them, and the creation of the huge weapon began in 1937. 
4. Two years later the super gun was ready. Alfred Krupp personally invited Hitler to the Rügenwald test site in early 1941 to evaluate the weapon's power. Alfried Krupp named the gun Schwerer Gustav, or "Fat Gustav", in honor of his father Gustav Krupp. 
5. Schwerer Gustav was an absolute monster. Because he was so big and heavy, he could not move on his own. Instead, the cannon was broken into several pieces and transported on 25 freight cars to the deployment site, where it was assembled on site—a task that required 250 men to labor for nearly three days. 
6. Laying paths and digging embankments took weeks of work and required 2,500 to 4,000 people working around the clock. 
7. Schwerer Gustav moved along many parallel rails, which limited his mobility. Despite his enormous firepower, Schwerer Gustav had no means of defending himself. This was decided by two Flack battalions, which guarded the weapons from possible air attack. 
8. For all the time and money spent on building the gun, it did little on the battlefield and did absolutely nothing against the French for whom it was originally intended. 
9. Germany had already invaded France in 1940 before the gun was ready. They did this by simply bypassing the Maginot Line. 
10. Schwerer Gustav was instead deployed to the Eastern Front at Sevastopol in Russia during its siege in 1942. It took 4,000 men and five weeks to get the gun ready to fire. 
11. Over the next four weeks, Gustav fired 48 shells, smashing distant forts and destroying an underwater ammunition depot located 30 meters under the sea, protected by at least 10 meters of concrete protection. The gun was then moved to Leningrad, but the attack was cancelled. Krupp built another weapon with the same dimensions. It was named Dora after the wife of the company's chief engineer. Dora was deployed west of Stalingrad in mid-August 1942, but was hastily withdrawn in September to avoid capture. When the Germans began their long retreat home, they took Dora and Gustav with them. In 1945, the Germans blew up Dora and Gustav.
