Ghost gun: Soviet intelligence did not fully believe in the existence of this gun. “Dora”: how the largest cannon of the Second World War fired at the cities of the USSR

"Dora" is a beautiful work of art, but useless

Photo: the largest German gun Dora

In 1936, during the Fuhrer’s visit to the Krupp factories, he demanded that the company’s management create artillery system, with which one could crush French forts on the Maginot Line and Belgian fortifications. Krupp experts calculated: in order to break through concrete floors seven meters thick and a steel slab one meter thick, you will need armor-piercing projectile weighing about seven tons, which suggested the caliber of the future artillery system to be at least 800 mm.

“Wife” weighing 400 tons

The Krupp design team, which began developing a new weapon, was headed by Professor Eric Mulle. By his wife's name future gun called "Dora". Calculations showed that in order to fire from a distance of 35-45 km and not fall under the return fire of enemy artillery, the projectile had to have a high initial speed. And for this, the gun must have a long barrel and, according to the calculations of Krupp engineers, weigh at least 400 tons!
Work on the monster weapon began in 1937. But due to the difficulties encountered in creating artillery system, capable of firing the first shot, succeeded only in September 1941. The Maginot Line and the Belgian forts had already been captured by German troops. Nevertheless, work on “Dora” continued. The miracle gun was completely ready for battle in January 1942. Its construction cost the German treasury a monstrous sum - 10 million Reichsmarks.

How was it structured?

Like everyone else like her artillery installations, “Dora” consisted of two parts - the gun itself and the railway transporter. The length of the gun barrel was 32 calibers - 32.48 m, of which the length of its rifled part - 36.2 calibers - 28.9 m. The barrel was locked by a wedge bolt with a hydraulic drive. The Dora was loaded using a separate cartridge case.

The survivability of the barrel was estimated at one hundred shots, however, as practice has shown, after fifteen shots the barrel bore began to wear out. The weight of the gun was 400 tons.

Due to the huge size and mass of the gun, Krupp designers had to design a unique railway transporter that occupied two parallel rail tracks at once. Thus, the result was a giant conveyor with forty axles and eighty wheels, forty wheels per track.

After assembling the conveyor, a lower machine with a cradle and a recoil system was installed on it. Following this, the gun barrel was mounted and the loading platform was assembled. Two lifts with electric drive for supplying shells and charges from the railway track to the platforms. The vertical guidance mechanism used an electro-hydraulic drive and ensured guidance of the gun in the vertical plane in the angle range from 0 to 65 degrees. And horizontal guidance was carried out due to the fact that the railway tracks were made in the form of curves of a certain radius. At the same time, shooting was carried out only strictly parallel to these paths - any deviation threatened to overturn the installation under the influence enormous power rollback In combat position, the length of the installation was 43 m, width 7 m, height 11.6 m.

The time to prepare a gun for firing consisted of the time to equip the firing position (from three to six weeks) and the time to assemble the gun mount (three days). To equip the firing position, an area measuring 4.5x4.5 km and 250 personnel was required. Taking into account the electrical unit, the mass of the Dora artillery mount was 1350 tons.

March to Sevastopol

In February 1942, the Chief of Staff of the Ground Forces, General Halder, ordered the Dora supercannon to be sent under Sevastopol and transfer it to the disposal of the commander of the 11th German army General Manstein. Near Sevastopol, “Dora” was delivered in 106 carriages on five trains. The service personnel were transported in 43 carriages of the first train, and the kitchen and camouflage equipment were also located there. The installation crane and auxiliary equipment were transported in 16 cars of the second train. Parts of the gun itself and the workshop were transported in 17 carriages of the third train. The barrel and loading mechanisms were transported in 20 cars of the fourth train. The last fifth train, consisting of 10 wagons, transported shells and powder charges; an artificial climate was maintained in its wagons with a constant temperature of 15°C.

Direct maintenance of the gun was assigned to the special 672nd artillery battalion"E" numbered about five hundred people under the command of Colonel of Artillery Bova and consisted of several units, including headquarters and fire batteries. The headquarters battery included computer groups that carried out 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, stereo tubes), and infrared technology, new for that time, was used.

The crew of the gun also included a transport battalion, a commandant's office, a camouflage company and a field bakery. In addition, the personnel included a field post office and a marching brothel. Plus, two dozen engineers from the Krupp concern were assigned to the division. For engineering preparation of the position near Sevastopol, a thousand sappers and one and a half thousand local residents were allocated, forcibly mobilized for earthworks. The protection of the Dora position was entrusted to a guard company of three hundred people, as well as a large group of field gendarmes and a special group with guard dogs.

In addition, a reinforced military chemical unit of 500 people was assigned to the Dora support group, designed to set up a smoke screen for camouflage from the air, and a reinforced air defense artillery battalion with 88-mm anti-aircraft guns and a battery of 20-mm anti-aircraft guns. From the air, fighters from the 8th Air Corps of General Wolfram von Richthofen patrolled over the Dora's firing positions.

The total number of personnel involved in servicing the supergun was four thousand people.

A lot of noise - and nothing?

On April 25, 1942, trains with the artillery mount dismantled into pieces arrived in Crimea in compliance with all precautions. The position for "Dora" was chosen 25 kilometers from Sevastopol and two kilometers from the Bakhchisarai railway station. During the preparation of the position for “Dora,” a kilometer-long railway line was laid and “whiskers” were laid, which provided a horizontal firing angle of 45 degrees. Work on the construction of the firing position was carried out over four weeks.

On June 5, 1942, at dawn, the gun was brought to a firing position, and an armor-piercing projectile was lifted from the cellar car onto the loading table, and from it into the breech of the barrel.

At 05:35 in the morning, the first shot of the miracle weapon was fired, from which dishes flew off the shelves in the dining car, located three kilometers from the Dora’s firing position, and in Bakhchisaray, glass flew out in residential buildings. 45 seconds later, German observers on the front line recorded the explosion of a huge shell in the area of ​​the field ammunition depot of the 96th Infantry Division. The subsequent seven Dora shots were fired at the old coastal battery No. 16 south of the village of Lyubimovka. Six more shots that day were fired at an anti-aircraft battery of the Black Sea Fleet in the area of ​​the Mekenzievy Gory station. The last shot of "Dora" that day sounded around eight o'clock in the evening.

On June 6, the supercannon fired sixteen shells, and on June 7, “Dora” fired seven shots at the arsenal adits in Sukharnaya Balka. In total, Dora fired 48 shells near Sevastopol. What is the result of this shooting?
Artillery observers were unable to detect the fall of seven shells. According to some reports, they went overboard and fell into the sea. And only five shells from the giant cannon hit their targets. General Manstein, who eventually took Sevastopol and received the field marshal’s baton for this, wrote in his memoirs: “ It was a miracle of artillery technology. The trunk had a length of about 30 m, and the carriage reached the height of a three-story building. It took about 60 trains to deliver this monster to the firing position along specially laid tracks. Two divisions were constantly on standby to cover him. anti-aircraft artillery. In general, these expenses undoubtedly did not correspond to the achieved effect. The gun, with one shot, destroyed a large ammunition depot on the northern shore of Severnaya Bay, hidden in the rocks at a depth of 30 m.”.

In other cases, Dora shells penetrated the ground to a depth of 12 meters. After the explosion of the shell, a drop-shaped crater with a diameter of about 3 meters was formed in the ground, which did not cause much harm to the city’s defenders.

As a summary, we can cite the words spoken by the Chief of the Wehrmacht General Staff, Colonel General Halder, who, by the way, was himself an artilleryman: “A real work of art, but useless.”

An inglorious end

After the “tour” near Sevastopol, “Dora” was sent to Leningrad. True, she arrived there without her most important part - without the trunk. Due to its complete wear and tear, it was sent for repairs to Essen, but in the meantime the carriage and all other equipment of the gun mount remained at the Taytsy station. They were also going to bring there the second supercannon, built at the factories of the Krupp concern and given the name “Fat Gustav” in honor of the head of the concern Gustav von Bohlen and Halbach Krupp. But soon the advance of the Red Army breaking the blockade forced the Germans to remove their superguns from the frontline zone.

Once again "Dora" took part in hostilities in September-October 1944. Then the artillery mount was brought to Warsaw, where it fired about thirty of its shells at the rebellious capital of Poland. These superguns were never fired anywhere else. True, in 1944, Hitler ordered the use of the Dora to shell the British Isles from French territory. For this purpose, special three-stage rockets were developed. But by that time, the Allied troops had advanced far into France, and the idea of ​​firing a supercannon at London became irrelevant...
In the spring of 1945, during the offensive of the Anglo-American allies, forward patrols discovered in the forest near the Bavarian city of Auerbach, at a dead end on the railway tracks, platforms loaded with some kind of metal structures, and pieces of metal twisted by explosions lying nearby. These were the remains of Hitler's two superguns. After studying and carefully photographing, the remains of “Dora” and “Gustav” were sent to scrap metal.

If we consider that 78 shells were fired at the enemy from the monster Dora cannon, and the Gustav did not participate in hostilities at all, then the Dora project can be considered the most costly mistake in artillery development planning.

Gun "Dora"

Weight in combat position: 1350 tons.

Weight in stowed position: 317 tons.

Conveyor length: 41,300 mm.

Caliber: 807 mm.

Barrel length: 40 calibers.

Initial projectile speed: 1500 m/sec.

Elevation angle: up to 65°.

Rate of fire: 1 shot/20 min.

Firing range: high-explosive projectile - up to 47 km, armor-piercing projectile - 38 km.

Dora gun characteristics and device

Dora gun characteristics and device

1. Barrel
2. Carriage
3. Rail transport
4. Guards for personnel
5. Recoil system
6. Breech with wedge breech
7. Electric motor of the vertical guidance mechanism
8. Projectile rammer
9. Charging platform
10. Electric projectile lift

Super shells for the super gun

"Dora" fired 7-ton concrete-piercing and 4.8-ton high-explosive shells, containing 250 kg, respectively. and 700 kg. explosives. Concrete-piercing projectile pierced the armor thickness up to 1 meter, concrete - up to 8 meters, hard soil - up to 32 meters.

The supergun was assembled at the end of 1941. in the workshops of the Krupp plant.
Caliber - 813 mm.
Barrel length - 32 m.
Projectile weight - 7100 kg.
The minimum firing range is 25 km, the maximum is 40.
The total length of the gun is 50 m.
Total weight - 1448 tons.
Barrel survivability - 300 shots.
Rate of fire - 3 shots per hour

The Dora shell pierced an armor plate 1 m thick or an 8-meter reinforced concrete floor. At first the supergun was called “Gustav”, but the company’s tradition is to give its products female names turned out to be stronger, and the invention changed its “gender”.

The super-weapon was transported using several trains (up to 60 locomotives and wagons with a staff of several hundred people).

Engineering preparation of the area was carried out by 1.5 thousand workers and a thousand sappers for four weeks. Since the Dora equipment was delivered in 106 cars on five trains, an entire marshalling yard was built at the site where the gun was deployed. For disinformation, trains with Dora equipment were first delivered to Kerch, where they remained until April 25, and after preparation, the positions were secretly transferred to Bakhchisarai. In 43 cars of the first train, service personnel, kitchen and camouflage equipment arrived. An assembly crane and auxiliary equipment were brought in 16 cars of the second train. In 17 carriages of the third, parts of the gun itself and the workshop were delivered. The fourth train of 20 cars transported a 400-ton, 32-meter barrel and loading mechanisms. In 10 cars of the fifth train, in which an artificial climate was maintained (constantly 15 degrees Celsius), shells and powder charges were placed. The gun was assembled in 54 hours and was ready for firing by the beginning of June.
The number of Dora service personnel is 4139 soldiers, officers and civilians. Among other things, the crew of the gun included a guard battalion, a transport battalion, a commandant’s office, a field bakery, a camouflage company, a field post office and a camp... brothel with a staff of 40 “workers”.

The Dora was to enter its first battle under the walls of the French Maginot fortification. However, during the design and manufacture of the gun, the Germans bypassed the Maginot from the rear and forced Paris to capitulate.

In the spring of 1942, Hitler summoned the commander of the 11th Army, General Erich Fritz von Manstein, to Berlin. The Fuhrer was interested in why the military leader was delaying the capture of Sevastopol. Manstein explained the failure of the two assaults by saying that the approaches to the city were well fortified, and the garrison was fighting with incredible fanaticism. “The Russians have a lot of heavy naval artillery, including an invulnerable fort with guns of incredible caliber,” he said.

The position for “Dora” was chosen by General Zukerort himself, the commander of a formation of heavy guns, while flying an airplane over the outskirts of Bakhchisarai. The cannon was supposed to be hidden in the mountain, for which a special cut was made in it. Since the position of the gun barrel changed only vertically, to change the direction of fire horizontally, the Dora was mounted on a railway platform standing on 80 wheels, moving along a sharply curved arc of the railway track with four tracks.

"Dora" was used in battle against the famous Soviet 30th battery of Captain G. Alexander. A group of Wehrmacht staff officers flew to Crimea in advance and chose a firing position in the area of ​​​​the village of Duvankoy. For engineering training, 1,000 sappers and 1,500 workers, forcibly mobilized from among local residents, were allocated. A special railway line was equipped at the Dzhankoy station, where the tracks were four-rail.

Data on the use of a supergun near Sevastopol are contradictory. In his memoirs, Manstein claimed that Dora fired 80 shells at the Soviet fortress. German cannon spotted pretty soon Soviet pilots, which dealt a serious blow to her position and damaged the energy train.

In general, the use of "Dora" did not give the results that the Wehrmacht command had hoped for: only one successful hit was recorded, which caused the explosion of a Soviet ammunition depot located at a depth of 27 m. In other cases, the cannon shell, penetrating the ground, pierced a round barrel with a diameter of about 1 meter and a depth of 12 m. As a result of the explosion of the warhead, the soil at its base was compacted, forming a drop-shaped deep funnel with a diameter of about 3 m. Defensive structures could only be damaged if there was a direct hit.

On the morning of June 5, 1942, two diesel locomotives with a capacity of 1050 Horse power each rolled this colossus with a total weight of 1350 tons into a crescent-shaped combat position and installed it with centimeter precision. The first shot consisted of a projectile weighing 7088 kilograms, two powder charges of 465 kilograms each, and a cartridge case weighing 920 kilograms. The barrel lift gave it an elevation of 53 degrees. Especially to correct the shooting, a balloon was raised into the air a little further from the Dora. When fired, the maintenance team hid in cover several hundred meters away. The shot caused a mini-earthquake effect. The roar when over 900 kilograms of gunpowder burned in 6 milliseconds and pushed out a 7-ton projectile was simply monstrous - in the carriage 3 kilometers away, according to contemporary eyewitnesses, dishes were bouncing. The rollback pressed the rail track by 5 centimeters.

Erich von MANSTEIN: "...On June 5 at 5.35 the first concrete-piercing shell was fired at the northern part of Sevastopol by the Dora installation. The next 8 shells flew into the area of ​​battery No. 30. Columns of smoke from the explosions rose to a height of 160 m, but not a single hit the armored turrets were not reached, the shooting accuracy of the monster gun from a distance of almost 30 km turned out to be, as one would expect, very low. On that day, Dora fired 7 more shells at the so-called “Fort Stalin”, only one of them hit the target them.

The next day, the gun fired at Fort Molotov 7 times, and then destroyed a large ammunition depot on the northern shore of Severnaya Bay, hidden in an adit at a depth of 27 m. This, by the way, displeased the Fuhrer, who believed that Dora should be used exclusively against heavily fortified fortifications. Over the course of three days, the 672nd Division spent 38 shells, leaving 10. Already during the assault, 5 of them were fired at Fort Siberia on June 11 - 3 hit the target, the rest were fired on June 17. Only on the 25th was new ammunition delivered to the position - 5 high-explosive shells. Four were used for test firing and only one was fired towards the city...."

Researchers remain silent about the question of how exactly “Dora” was taken out of Crimea. In any case, it is clear that the Germans dismantled all the equipment, which was of course secret, and carefully removed all traces.

After the capture of Sevastopol, the Dora was sent near Leningrad, to the Taitsy station area. When the operation to break the blockade of the city began, the Germans hastily evacuated the supergun to Bavaria. In April 1945, as the Americans approached, the gun was blown up.

The most accurate assessment of this miracle military equipment the boss gave General Staff ground forces fascist Germany Colonel General Franz Halder: “A real work of art, but useless”

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 the order, Krupp developed giant guns rail-mounted, weighing 1,344 tons and caliber 800 mm (31.5"), which were served by a crew of 500 people under the command of a major general.

Two types of shells were produced for the cannon, using 3000 pounds for ignition smokeless powder: ordinary artillery shell, filled with 10,584 pounds of high explosive (HE) and a concrete-piercing projectile 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.

In 1936, Adolf Hitler was faced with the problem of breaking the French Maginot Line, a 400-kilometer defensive line consisting of fortified bunkers, defensive structures, machine gun nests and artillery emplacements. It was decided to build a weapon of such power that it would be able to destroy the long-term fortifications of the line. The factories of Friedrich Krupp A.G produced two monstrous guns: the Big Dora and the Tolstoy Gustav. "Gustav" (Schwerer Gustav) weighed as much as 1344 tons and could only move by rail, and it took three whole days to prepare for firing. This thing took part in hostilities only once and was captured by the Allies near Sevastopol.

The Fat Gustav gun weighed 1,344 tons and some parts had to be dismantled to move it along the railroad tracks. The gun was the height of a four-story building, had a width of 6 meters and a length of 42 meters. The maintenance of the Fat Gustav gun was carried out by a team of 500 people under the command of a high-ranking army official. The team needed almost three days to prepare the gun for firing.

The diameter of the Fat Gustav cannon projectile was 800 mm. To push the projectile out of the barrel, a charge of smokeless powder weighing 1360 kilograms was used. There were two types of ammunition for the gun:
high explosive shell weighing 4800 kilograms, filled with a powerful explosive, and an all-metal projectile weighing 7500 kilograms for destroying concrete.

The speed of the projectiles fired from the barrel of the Fat Gustav cannon was 800 meters per second.

The elevation angle of the Fat Gustav gun barrel is 48 degrees, thanks to which it can hit a target with a high-explosive projectile at a distance of 45 kilometers. The projectile, designed to destroy concrete, could hit a target at a distance of 37 kilometers. Having exploded, the high-explosive shell of the Fat Gustav cannon left a crater 10 meters deep, and a concrete-piercing shell could pierce about 80 meters of reinforced concrete structures.

They finished building it by the end of 1940 and the first test shots were fired at the beginning of 1941 at the Rugenwalde training ground. On this occasion, Hitler and Albert Speer, Reich Minister of Arms and Munitions, arrived on a visit.

The installation of the gun began in early May and by June 5 the gun was ready to fire. It fired 300 shells into Sevastopol (at a rate of about 14 per day) and fired another 30 times during the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, after which the gun fell into the hands of the Allies, who sold it for scrap.

Not easy to charge

Projectile and charge in a case of an 800 mm cannon

The construction of "Fat Gustav" was often described as a waste of time and money, which was partly true, although the defenders of Sevastopol may have had a different opinion. On the other hand, if it had not been possible to bypass the Maginot Line and it had been possible to shoot at Gibraltar, then the gun could have played important role in war. But there are too many "woulds" here.

During the siege of Sevastopol, cannon shots were guided by data from a reconnaissance aircraft. The first defeat from the cannon was a group of coastal guns, destroyed by a total of 8 salvos. 6 salvos were fired at Fort Stalin with the same effect. 7 shots were fired at the Molotov fort and 9 at the Northern Bay, where a successful hit from a heavy shell penetrated the fort deep into the ammunition depots, which destroyed it entirely.

Neither helped the Nazis nor powerful weapon, nor a well-trained army. History has put everything in its place.

"Hitler's secret weapon. 1933-1945" - a book that describes the main aspects of development secret weapon Germany in 1933-1945. This manual fully explores the German weapons program: from super heavy tank P1000 "Ratte" to the highly efficient miniature submarine "Seehund". The book is filled with various information and secret data on German weapons during the Second World War. Tells how fighters with jet engine, describes combat power air-launched anti-ship missile Hs 293.

In addition, the benefit includes a large number of illustrative illustrations, summary tables, maps of military operations.

Sections of this page:

In 1935, the Heereswaffenamt (HWA) turned to Krupp for an expert assessment of the possibilities of creating artillery piece, capable of destroying the largest fortifications of the Maginot Line. Krupna's designers carried out design calculations and compiled a report with ballistic data on three guns of 70.80 and 100 centimeters calibers suitable for these purposes.

The report was taken into account, but no further actions was not attempted until Hitler asked the same question to Krupp during a tour of his plant in March 1936. Having received a copy of the year-old report, Hitler inquired whether the project of constructing such huge guns was practically feasible, and received assurances that although the task would be difficult, it was by no means impossible. Sensing Hitler's weakness for amazing weapons, Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, head of the Krupp consortium, ordered the execution detailed calculations for an 80 cm gun.

As he expected, the order for the manufacture of such a gun was received in 1937, and work on its implementation began under the leadership of Doctor of Technical Sciences Erich Müller. The entire program was carried out in the strictest secrecy, thanks to which Allied intelligence was not even aware of the work on the creation of a new German superweapon.

Despite the utmost efforts of the most qualified specialists, the implementation of the project progressed slowly. And this was not surprising, considering that specifications the guns had to match to the highest requirements- its concrete-piercing projectile had to penetrate a meter layer of armor, seven meters of reinforced concrete and thirty meters of compacted earth. Such indicators could only be demonstrated by a truly massive weapon, and its very size caused endless problems - it was clear that it could only move by rail, and it would have to be disassembled in order to be placed on a platform moving along a standard-width track. The barrel and breech assembly had to be designed in such a way that it could be disassembled into four independent components for transportation. The task of creating such a unit capable of withstanding the monstrous pressure generated by each shot was far from easy, so the barrel was ready for test firing from an improvised platform only at the beginning of 1941.

The ammunition was no less impressive a sight than the gun itself - one high-explosive fragmentation projectile weighing 4800 kg, containing 400 kg of explosive, created a crater, the average diameter and depth of which was 12 meters. The concrete-piercing projectile weighing 7100 kg contained an explosive charge weighing 200 kg. The accelerating charges were also impressive - the total weight of the charge used to fire each concrete-piercing projectile was 2100 kg, while the charge for each high-explosive fragmentation projectile weighed 2240 kg.

As soon as the test firing was completed, work began on manufacturing the platform, and the assembled gun was delivered to the artillery range near Rugenwalde, where it was demonstrated to Hitler at the beginning of 1942. This happened almost two years later than planned, and Hitler became increasingly impatient and irritated by the seemingly endless delays, but was deeply impressed by both the stunning spectacle of the firing gun and the results of test firing at “hard” targets, which fully corresponded to those stated in the document. specifications characteristics. Without doubting the prospects of receiving lucrative contracts in the future, Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach officially announced to Hitler that his company was donating this weapon, now named “Gustav Herat” in his honor, as a gift to the Reich. There is some disagreement as to exactly how many of these guns were actually produced - according to many sources, a second similar gun, called the "Dora", was also created. However, it seems more likely that the German gunsmiths called “Gustav” among themselves “Dora,” thereby creating the impression that there were two such guns.

The search for suitable targets for this weapon also presented some difficulties - at various points it was supposed to be used both on the Maginot Line and against the fortifications of Gibraltar, but these plans were not destined to come true due to the unexpected fiasco in France and General Franco’s refusal to violate the neutrality of Spain. This automatically solved the problem, since the only possible targets remained in the territory Soviet Union, and Sevastopol was chosen first among them, since it became clear that only with the help of the most severe artillery shelling could the city’s defensive fortifications be overcome without colossal losses in manpower.

“Gustav” was hastily disassembled and sent on a long journey to Crimea in a train of 28 special cars, which, in addition to the gun itself, contained an assembly crane and two diesel locomotives for maneuvering at the location. At the beginning of March 1942, the train reached the Perekop isthmus, where the gun remained until the beginning of April. From railway, connecting Simferopol and Sevastopol, a special branch was laid to Bakhchisarai, located 16 km north of the target, at the end of which four semicircular railway tracks were equipped for horizontal guidance of the Gustav. External tracks were also laid for the 112-ton gantry crane, with which the Gustav was to be assembled, and, in addition, a small marshalling station was built for storing auxiliary equipment. In order to protect the weapon from attacks Soviet aviation and return artillery fire, a ditch was dug 8 meters deep, and at a distance of several kilometers a fictitious firing position with a mock-up gun was equipped. Finally, two light anti-aircraft batteries were brought up to provide close range air defense the entire complex.

Despite all of Krupp's technical genius in the design of the gun's components, assembling it was far from an easy task, especially the stage when the second half of the 102-ton gun barrel, swinging under the boom of a gantry crane, had to be combined with the first half and attached to it . The entire assembly process took three weeks and required the combined efforts of 1,720 men working under the direction of a major general, but on August 5 the Gustav was ready to open fire. Its maximum rate of fire was approximately four rounds per hour, since due to the size and weight of the ammunition, the gun could not be loaded faster even with the use of technology. In addition, each salvo required a wide variety of information to execute, such as starting speed projectile, its flight time, mass and temperature of gunpowder, pressure in the powder chamber, firing range, atmospheric conditions, wear of the powder chamber and barrel rifling.

Battery 701……21 CMK12V - 1 - 1 in 1941, 2 in 1943-1944. Artillery Regiment 655, August 1944

Battery 688……28 cm K5 - 2

Battery 689……28 cm Schwere Bruno L-42 - 2

Battery 711……37 cm MIS - 2 - Captured gun (not a unit since 1941)

Battery 697……28 cm K5 - 2 - Speed ​​measurement unit

Battery 713……28 cm K5 - 2

Batteries 765 and 617……28 cm K5 - 2 - Velocity Measurement Unit

Calculation 100……28 cm K5 - 2 - Division of study and replenishment

Battery 694……28 cm Kurze Bruno - 2 - 1941, was not a connection in 1943-1944.

Battery 695……28 cm Kurze Bruno - 2 - 1 in 1941 +32 cm in 1943-1944. Artillery Regiment 679, August 1944

Battery 721……28 cm Kurze Bruno - 2 - 1 in 1940, 2 in 1943-1944. Artillery Regiment 780, merged with Regiment 640 in August 1944.

Battery 692 ...... 27.4 cm 592 - 3 - Artillery Regiment 640, merged with Regiment 780 in August 1944.

Battery 722……24 cm T. Bruno - 4 - Coastal artillery

Battery 674……24 cm T. Bruno - 2 - Artillery Regiment 780, merged with Regiment 640 in August 1944

Battery 664……24 cm Kurze T. Bruno - 2 - Artillery Regiment 780, merged with Regiment 640 in August 1944

Battery 749……28 cm K5 - 2 - Artillery Regiment 640, merged with Regiment 780 in August 1944.

Battery 725……28 cm K5 + 28 cm N. Bruno - 2 + 2 - Artillery Regiment 646, N. Bruno withdrew in August 1944.

Battery 698 ...... 38 cm Siegfried - 2 - 1 in 1944, when 1 Siegfried transferred to the 679 regiment; Artillery Regiment 640, merged with Regiment 780 in August 1944.

During the siege, the Gustav fired 48 shots at various targets, in particular:

June 5: Coastal defense batteries were fired at from a distance of 25 km by fire, which was corrected by the Gustav's own gunner. The targets were destroyed with eight shots. Then Fort Stalin came under fire and was destroyed by six concrete-piercing shells.

June 6: The first target of the day was Fort Molotov, which was destroyed by seven shells. After this, “Gustav” began to fire at an object that was, perhaps, the most fortified military structure in Sevastopol, White Rock. It was a warehouse artillery ammunition, located 30 meters below Severnaya Bay and protected by at least a 10-meter layer of reinforced concrete. Nine shells were fired at the target, and the last of them provoked an impressively powerful explosion of ammunition, as a result of which the object was completely destroyed.

June 17: Gustav fired its last five shells of the siege at Fort Maxim Gorky I, a well-defended firing position equipped with two twin 305mm guns.

After the capitulation of Sevastopol on July 4, the Gustav was sent to Germany to have its worn barrel restored. In the future, the gun was supposed to be used in the battles for Stalingrad and Leningrad, but it is likely that the Gustav no longer participated in hostilities, although, according to unconfirmed information, it fired several shots in 1944 during the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising.

Krupp proposed some modifications to the basic design, including the construction of a 52 cm gun on the standard Gustav platform. Such a gun would be capable of firing 1,420-kilogram shells at a distance of up to 110 km. As alternative ammunition, 52/38 cm container projectiles with a maximum firing range of 150 km or 52/38 cm rocket-accelerated projectiles capable of covering a distance of 190 km were offered. However, it was clear that the implementation of any of these projects would require several years of hard work, so it was decided to limit ourselves to half measures and equip the standard 80-centimeter barrel with a smooth internal nozzle and thereby increase the firing range when using Peenemünde swept-fin missiles. For this purpose, two types of projectiles were proposed: 80/35 cm with a maximum flight range of 140 km and 80/30.5 cm, capable of covering 160 km. However, all these proposals remained on paper, although work began on a prototype of the 52-centimeter gun, which was never completed due to serious damage caused by bomb attacks British aviation according to Essen.

Specifications

Length: 47.3 m

Barrel length: 32.48 m (L/40.6)

Caliber: 800 mm

Elevation angle: 65 degrees

Horizontal aiming angle: none

Projectile weight: 4.8 t (high-explosive fragmentation) and 7.1 t (armor-piercing)

Firing range: 47 km (high-explosive fragmentation) and 38 km (armor-piercing)

There are several conflicting versions regarding the fate of the Gustav, but the most likely one is that it was dismantled towards the end of 1944. The Gustav was never a practical weapon, as it was incredibly expensive - the cost of its production, including additional equipment, was about seven million Reichsmarks. With this money it was possible to build at least 21 Tiger IIs, costing 321,500 Reichsmarks each!

In addition, this weapon also absorbed enormous amounts of human resources - many of the 1,720 people involved in its maintenance were highly qualified specialists, especially the 20 scientists and engineers who calculated the required data to fire each shot.