Time for some Artillery trivia.....

[1feral1]

Well, back in the War To End All Wars (The Great War or WW1 as it later became known 1914-1919 - yes 1919, as only the armistice was signed on 11 Nov 1918), the Germans shelled Paris from a railgun. A true terror weapon for its day.

So, for teh Gurus of Artillery, here is a few questions for ya's as fol:

1. When, and how many times the gun fired on Paris:

2. Civvy body count - killed:

3. Civvy pers wounded:

4. Calibre of the gun:

5. Range to Paris in km or mi:

6. Time of flight of the projectile (from the muzzle to impact) you'll be suprised who fast this actually was:

7. Height of apex of projectile(in km or mi); and finally

8. Muzzle velocity (either metric or imperial):

I have all the answers here, and some may differ depending on the books on uses as a reference.

It should be noted that this gun was never recovered after the war, and to this day it remains a mystery of its whereabouts.


Good Luck!

Cheers,

Wes

 

[clasper]

http://www.firstworldwar.com/atoz/parisgun.htm

   The Paris Gun - properly called the Kaiser Wilhelm Geschutz - was so-named for its sole purpose of shelling Paris from extreme distances starting from March 1918.   A behemoth, the Paris Gun - regarded by many as the ancestor to the German V3 - was capable of firing shells into the stratosphere from locations as far as 131km from Paris.

Designed and operated by the German Navy and manufactured by the German munitions firm of Krupp, some seven 210mm   guns were made using bored-out 380mm naval guns, each fitted with special 40 metre long inserted barrels.   However with only two railway gun mountings actually available just three of the guns were ever in use at any one time, fired from the Forest of Coucy.

Such was the rapid wear and tear of firing its 120kg shells, each requiring a 180kg powder charge, towards Paris - the aim was often wild - that the gun's lining required reboring after approximately 20 shots.   Indeed, after every firing the succeeding shell needed to be of slightly greater width.

An undoubted sensation when first deployed (at 7.18 on the morning of 21 March 1918) the appearance of heavy shells in Paris caused initial and widespread alarm among its inhabitants which nevertheless quickly subsided.   Once fired a shell took 170 seconds to reach Paris, rising as high as 40 km above the earth.

For all its power the gun had little actual effect on the course of the war, with just 367 shells fired between March and August - a figure disputed by the French who cited 320, of which 183 landed within the city's boundaries.

Casualties of the gun's use ran to 256 deaths and 620 wounded, with 88 killed and 68 wounded on Good Friday 1918 alone when a shell landed on the church of St. Sepulchre, causing its collapse while a service was in progress.

The Paris Gun was nevertheless a notable propaganda success at home in Germany.   The Allies searched in vain for the guns during the German retreat of August 1918 onwards and after the armistice, but in vain.   No example of the Paris Gun has been located then or since although U.S. forces located one of the gun's spare mountings.

Additionally, for the physics geeks in the forum, the Paris Gun also introduced the concept of Coriolis forces to artillery.   Coriolis was a French physicist in the 19th (?) century who did some work on the physics of rotating bodies.   No one bothered to apply it to objects on the earth until Foucault came up with his pendulum, and no one else came up with a reasonable application for the physics until the Paris Gun was wildly off the mark.

 

[Spr.Earl]

Bigger yet was the Gustav Gun built in 41.
The Gustav Gun was a logistical nightmare. For starters, it required a 500-man crew.

World's Largest Gun
The largest gun ever built was the "Gustav Gun" built in Essen, Germany in 1941 by the firm of Friedrich Krupp A.G. Upholding a tradition of naming heavy cannon after family members, the Gustav Gun was named after the invalid head of the Krupp family - Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach. The strategic weapon of its day, the Gustav Gun was built at the direct order of Adolf Hitler for the express purpose of crushing Maginot Line forts protecting the French frontier. To accomplish this, Krupp designed a giant railway gun weighing 1344 tons with a bore diameter of 800 mm (31.5") and served by a 500 man crew commanded by a major-general.

Two types of projectiles were fired using a 3000lb. charge of smokeless powder: a 10,584 lb. high explosive (HE) shell and a 16,540 lb. concrete-piercing projectile. Craters from the HE shells measured 30-ft. wide and 30-ft. deep while the concrete piercing projectile proved capable of penetrating 264-ft. of reinforced concrete before exploding! Maximum range was 23 miles with HE shells and 29 miles with concrete piercing projectiles. Muzzle velocity was approximately 2700 f.p.s.

Three guns were ordered in 1939. Alfried Krupp personally hosted Hitler and Albert Speer (Minister of Armaments) at the Hugenwald Proving Ground during formal acceptance trials of the Gustav Gun in the spring of 1941. In keeping with company tradition, Krupp refrained from charging for the first gun - 7 million Deutsch Marks were charged for the second (named Dora after the chief engineer's wife).

France fell in 1940 without the assistance of the Gustav Gun, so new targets were sought. Plans to use Gustav against the British fortress of Gibraltar were scrapped after General Franco refused permission to fire the gun from Spanish soil. Thus, April 1942 found the Gustav Gun emplaced outside the heavily fortified port city of Sebastopol in the Soviet Union. Under fire from Gustav and other heavy artillery, Forts Stalin, Lenin and Maxim Gorki crumbled and fell. One round from Gustav destroyed a Russion ammunition dump 100 feet below Severnaya Bay; a near miss capsized a large ship in the harbor. Gustav fired 300 rounds during the siege wearing out the original barrel in the process. Dora was set up west of Stalingrad in mid-August but hurriedly withdrawn in September to avoid capture. Gustav next appeared outside Warsaw, Poland, where it fired 30 rounds into Warsaw Ghetto during the 1944 uprising.

Dora was blown up by German engineers in April 1945 near Oberlichtnau, Germany, to avoid capture by the Russian Army. The incomplete third gun was scrapped at the factory by the British Army when they captured Essen. Gustav was captured intact by the U.S. Army near Metzendorf, Germany, in June 1945. Shortly after, it was cut up for scrap thus ending the story of the Gustav Gun.

Credits: Printed in the American Rifleman, February 1998. Page 26.

I've uploaded a photo of one of the shell's with a Brit inspecting a casing,also one of the Gun it's self in the WWII thread.

 

[1feral1]

Bloody good research Nick! Can anyone else find the muzzle velocity? It took a lot longer for the Lds on www.ausmil.com to find out the answers.

Cheers,

Wes

 

[Spr.Earl]

Bloody good research Nick! Can anyone else find the muzzle velocity? It took a lot longer for the Lds on www.ausmil.com to find out the answers.

Cheers,

Wes

Muzzle velocity was approximately 2700 f.p.s.

 

[Spr.Earl]

Wes a thought just crossed my mined.
Who got to pull the string? ;D

 

[Spr.Earl]

I have also uploaded a photo of the Paris Gun in the WWII photo thread.

 

[1feral1]

I dont know but imagine the concusion from that! When we fire the Abbot ammo (electrically fired) out of the L118 ordnance, on the Hamel at 'charge super', only about 10rds in a 24hr period can be fired as the body can suffer from the overpressures.

BTW thats only peace time. With the L119 ordnance on the Hamel using the 105mm M1 ammo we can fire to our hearts content

On 'charge super', the trails on the Hamel kiss the ground! its impressive and a 105mm Abbot projectile gets punched out to +17 km in range.

Hey still wanna meet on the 1st in Van?  Flt supposed to arr NLT 1000 from Hawaii, but give us til midday to get our shyte together. Than we can have afew Cdn beers in one of teh pub like places in the arpt.

Keep in touch.

Cheers,

Wes

 

[Spr.Earl]

I've P.M.'d you.