What "Heavy Artillery" really means

Please Bow before the real "Tsar Putshka"
Drums roll

The DORA!


With a obliterating Caliber of...
800mm!!!!!!


In 1937 Hitler wanted a huge cannon that could destroy enemy targets such as fortresses at long range. The criteria that was required was that the shell had to penetrate 7 meters of steel reinforced concrete or at least 1 meter of hardened armour plate. The range required was to be over 25 miles.

The Maginot line was also considered to be a worthy target.

Hitler initially ordered three such guns to be built.

Krupp steel industries was given the job of creating these huge guns and Professor Erich Muller worked out the mathematics of producing them. He arrived at a calibre of 80cm with a shell of 7 tons and a barrel length of over 30 meters.

They would have to be on a railway carriage split into to separate parallel tracks to disperse the weight estimated at over 1000 tons.

The barrel would only be able to have vertical movement so the tracks had to be curved for the carriage to move on for sideways elevation.

Specifications Of Dora And Gustav.

Range 51,000 yards ( 29 miles ) crew 250 for firing, 2000 for full operation including train drivers, assembly workers, canteen workers, armed guards, mechanics, electricians, track maintenance the list is endless.

7 to 8 ton shell

Rate of fire, 2 rounds per hour

Calibre 80cm ( 800 mm or 2ft 8in approx )

The shells for Dora and Gustav, including the 1 ton charge was 17 feet long. It needed a ton of charge to send the 7 ton shell over 25 miles from the 100 foot long barrel. The shell on test firing proved to be able to penetrate 30 feet deep into earth making a crater over 90 feet feet across.

The velocity of the shell was 2,700 feet per second, the barrel had a life of about 150 rounds.

The barrel weighed 400 tons and the breach block where the shell was inserted weighed over 100 tons Dora stood 4 stories high, over 20 feet wide 141 feet long and weighed 1323 tons.

At the beginning of January 1942 the gun was ready. Two railway engines were attached to the front of the gun carriage one on either side to slowly pull the carriage forwards on its curved track. This movement gave the gun the side elevation. The engines had a special low gear to be able to move the carriage an inch forward at a time.



Dora was loaded slowly with huge winches and electrically powered rams by a crew of 250.

The initial target was for Dora was Sevastopol on the Eastern front and in June 1942 the big gun opened fire. The gun was only fired over a five day period.

A small spotter plane like a Storsch was used to fly over the target area and report back with information on where the shells were landing.

The trajectory with the relevant distance, gun elevation with projectile weight, velocity and other ballistics properties were mathematically and geographically worked out with slide rules, pencil and paper to accurately hit the target. The only calculators they used was the old grey matter !

Gustav attacked coastal gun batteries at a range of sixteen miles. It took eight shots to completely destroy these targets. Fort Stalin was destroyed later that day with six shots.

Fort Molotov was destroyed with seven shots on June 6th 1944.

Nine rounds were fired at The White Cliff Of Severnaya Bay and a lucky shot hit an underground ammunition store and the whole fort was destroyed. One of the shots missed the target and sunk a ship in the harbour.

Seven shots were fired the next day in the same vicinity at nothing in particular !

The gun was again used to more worth some days later when Fort Siberia was hit with five shots and destroyed as was Fort Maxim Gorki.

The barrel of the gun was worn out and Gustav had to be dis-mantled and shipped back to Germany to be re-fitted with a new barrel, this took weeks and weeks to do costing effort time and money and Germanys resources at this time was extremely pushed as it was.





Dora was only fired several times more and had to be taken apart, transported and re-assembled for every new target in different parts of enemy territory and the railway tracks had to be made for it each time.

What a waste of time, money, manpower and over all resources just for a few shots at the enemy.

The total accomplishment of these guns was in respect quite small.

taken from www.vlewis.net...

but whatever what they say!
I WANT ONE!

[edit on 1-8-2004 by John bull 1]

that is one FAT cannon....


big waste, Im surprised.

shoulda just made 1000s of normal artillery gunz instead of wasting all that crap on one big one.

Hitler loved big guns.Of all Hitlers V weapons the V3 is the least documented. This is mainly due to the fact that it was never used.The V3 was basically a super gun . There would have been 25 of them and they would,together have been able to fire 10 Rocket assisted shells a minute at London.
Had this weapon been used London would probably have had to be totally evacuated. Fortunately the allies bombed the V3 site at Mimoyeques in Northern France,knowing that it was some type of V weapon installation. 617 Squadron, The Dam busters, used Tallboy bombs to peirce the concrete dome that covered the tunnels and rended it useless


The V-3 was a super gun that was going to shoot across the english channel and hit london. It was built into the side of a mountian.

As for being bombed out, the v-3 was also impractical. It was essentially a huge barrel that had three others protruding from each side at a 45 degree angle from the main barrel. Basically the shell would be fired by an initial charge, as the shell headed down the barrel the three other barrels would fire a charge further increasing its speed and ultimately its range. What the germans didnt know at the time was some sort of pressure that built up from the succeeding charges. The pressure was great enough to blow the whole apparatus sky high. Though i think i might be talking about something different, feel free to correct me

And also important to point out, saddam hussein was trying to build an even bigger one. One with enough power and size to hit the us from the iraqi desert! Luckily it was so big and obvious a few airstrikes kept it from being completely built.peace

I actually think the concept would work. The germans were pretty far along when bomb strikes brought the project to a halt. But who knows.

www.astronautix.com...

Originally posted by jrod8900
And also important to point out, saddam hussein was trying to build an even bigger one. One with enough power and size to hit the us from the iraqi desert! Luckily it was so big and obvious a few airstrikes kept it from being completely built.peace

No it was not design to hit the US, but to possibly hit Israel

FAS Website Project Babylon Supergun

Under Project Babylon, Bull extended his HARP gun design to build the barrel in segments, with a total length of 512 feet. The gun would be able to fire 600 kg projectile to a range of 1,000 kilometers, or a 2,000 kg rocket-assisted projectile into orbit.

As a component of Project Babylon, Bull built a smaller gun, nick-named Baby Babylon, as a prototype for the larger gun. This 40 meter long gun was first constructed for horizontal testing in the summer of 1989, and installed at Jabal Hamrayn, ninety miles north of Baghdad, in central Iraq [Jabal Hamrin MTS 34�30'N 44�30'E]. The gun was positioned along a mountainside at an agle of about 45 degrees.

In documents filed with the UN Special Commission 18 July 1991, Iraq admitted possessing a gun with a barrel 350 millimeters wide and 45 meters long and that it was building a second one. The commission noted that the gun would have been inaccurate for conventional armaments, and that it was trying to determine if the weapon was intended for chemical, biological, or nuclear use. The superguns were potentially capable of firing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons to a range of up to 1,000 km.
The high-ranking Iraqi defector Gen. Hussein Kamel al-Majeed said Iraq was working on a space weapon launched from the supergun.

"It was meant for long-range attack and also to blind spy satellites. Our scientists were seriously working on that. It was designed to explode a shell in space that would have sprayed a sticky material on the satellite and blinded it."

He also said the supergun could have delivered a nuclear device.

Following the Gulf War UN teams destroyed one 350 mm. supergun, components of a 1000 mm. supergun, and supergun propellant.
Iraq used the petrochemical complex two (PC-2) project as a front to purchase components for Gerald Bull's super gun.

Considering that the US is the other side of the world and would require a sub-orbital ballistic trajectory Saddam would have had to use a an ICBM class missile to hit the US.

[edit on 2-8-2004 by Popeye]

Thanx popeye for the correction... i thought hitting the us with a cannon from iraq sounded silly, isreal would probably have been a more practical and easier target for the regime at the time.

[edit on 2-8-2004 by jrod8900]

I was about to say what he said (minus the quotes) The gun was ment for isreal. I dissagree with the using 1000s of other artilery opposed to the Gustave and Dora. A new bomber class, simaler to the B-29, which was a super bomber at the time, would have done better. Or maybe a new type of bomb, or even more of the old kinds would have worked

The Gerard Bull supergun was designed to have a 1000 mile range. Initially the Iraqis contracted Bull ubder the guise that he would be building a cheap alternative to launch LEO satellites instead of using rockets. This was a subject he was well familiar with as he had been doing research for the US military. He actually fired a projectile about 60 miles up, using 2 16 inch naval cannons joined together.

As far as design, there were many attempts and many failures and many who just never made the news. What we used to cal Field Artillery is now mobile rocket munitions. Even the lowly mortar is now assisted with propellant.

Perhaps the most interesting venture was the 26 mile magnetic slingshot that was to be built in Texas. Now that, my friend, is a big gun! But it died on the Whitehouse lawn as so many great ideas do.

A magenetic slingshot? Now that would be a site to see. That is if you weren't the one being shot. I also agree that everything is becoming smaller and more mobile. That is a good thing, but the weapon need to be used properly and safely. Weapons like missles and grenades are dangerous not only bacause they horificly kill the opposition, but they harm civilians and destroy civilian property. We need accurate weapons that can deliver a powerful force to a small target.

I'm new here so be patient with me. I've been following these boards for quite some time though since they represent a fast and valuable informations source.

I think the main motivation behind building such extremely big guns is to scare people. Not military or governments but civilians. Wouldn't you be scared living in London or Isreal, knowing that one really fscking big gun could hit your city every minute? That would scare me.

Yeah, they're more psychological weapons than real weapons, like those Hitler's cannon which were very unpractical and hard to use.

Wasnt the Canadian scientist that was helping Saddam's super gun assisanated under mysterious circumstances. Who does everyone think assisanated this guy? Perhaps the Israelie MOSSAD or CIA?

Heavy Artillery Shotgun,

Go down to Shotgun (part 1) and (part 2), it's in WMV only but it's a laugh
watching guys thinking, "yeah i can fire this after all it's only a shotgun"

These short wmv are held in a firing range *no gore*
www.10-7.com...

Sanc'.

Most sources will tell you it was the Mossad that killed the engineer. Sadly, though, the engineers former goal was to build a cannon, large enough to launch a sattellite. Can't recall his name though.

Dr. Gerald Bull was like a figure in a spy novel, designing arms for some of the world's harshest regimes. With no shortage of possible enemies, he died at the hands of an unknown assassin. But the Canadian-born artillery expert was also a brilliant scientist with a dream: to launch a satellite with a giant gun.

archives.cbc.ca...

Sanc'.