Schwerer Gustav - 80 cm Railway Guns

Schwerer Gustav and Dora were the names of the German 80 cm K (E) railway guns. They were developed in the 1930s by Krupp in order to destroy heavily fortified positions. They weighed nearly 1,350 tonnes, and could fire shells weighing seven tonnes to a range of 37 kilometers (23 miles). Designed in preparation for WW II, and intended for use against the deep forts of the Maginot Line, they were not ready for action when the Wehrmacht outflanked the line during the Battle of France. Gustav was used in the Soviet Union at the siege of Sevastopol during Operation Barbarossa. They were moved to Leningrad, and may have been intended for Warsaw. Gustav was captured by US troops and cut up, whilst Dora was destroyed near the end of the war to avoid capture by the Red Army.
In 1934 the German High Command commissioned Krupp to design a gun to destroy the forts of the Maginot Line, which were then nearing completion. The gun's shells had to punch through seven meters of reinforce concrete or armour plate steel, one metre thick, from beyond the range of French artillery. Krupp engineer Dr. Erich Müller calculated that the task would require a weapon with a calibre of around 80 cm, firing a projectile weighing 7 tonnes from a barrel 30 meters long. As such, the weapon would have a weight of over 1000 tonnes. The size and weight meant that to be at all movable it would need to be supported on twin sets of railway tracks. In common with smaller railway guns, the only barrel movement on the mount would be elevation, traverse being managed by moving the weapon along a curved section of railway line. Krupp prepared plans for calibres of 70 cm, 80 cm, 85 cm, and 1 m.
In combat, the gun was mounted on a specially designed chassis, supported by four bogies on parallel sets of railway tracks. Each of the bogies had 20 axles, giving a total of 80 axles (160 wheels). Krupp. In keeping with the tradition of the Krupp Company, no charge was made for the first gun. However, they did charge seven million Reichsmark for the second gun Dora, named after the senior engineer's wife.
In February 1942 Heavy Artillery Unit (E) 672 reorganized and went on the march, and Schwerer Gustav began its long ride to the Crimea. The train carrying the gun was of 25 cars, a total length of 1.5 kilometers. A special railway spur line was built to the Simferopol-Sevastopol railway 16 kilometers north of the target, at the end of which four semi-circular tracks were built specially for the Gustav to traverse. Outer tracks were required for the cranes which would have assembled Gustav.
The siege of Sevastopol was to be the gun's first combat test. Installation began in early May, and by June 5 the gun was ready to fire. By the end of the siege on July 4, the city of Sevastopol lay in ruins, and 30,000 tons of artillery ammunition had been fired. Gustav had fired 48 rounds and worn out its original barrel, which had already fired around 250 rounds during testing and development. The gun was fitted with the spare barrel and the original was sent back to Krupp's factory in Essen for relining.
The gun was then dismantled and moved to the northern part of the eastern front, where an attack was planned on Leningrad. The gun was placed some 30 km from the city near the railway station of Taizy. The gun was fully operational when the attack was cancelled. The gun then spent the winter of 1942/43 near Leningrad. It was then moved back to Germany for refurbishment. The gun then appears to have been destroyed to prevent its capture sometime before April 22, 1945, when its ruins were discovered in a forest 15 kilometers north of Auerbach by the Soviets.
Dora was the second gun to be produced. It was deployed briefly against Stalingrad, where the gun arrived at its emplacement 15 kilometers to the west of the city sometime in mid-August 1942. It was ready to fire on September 13. It was quickly withdrawn, however, when Soviet encirclement threatened. When the Germans began their long retreat they took Dora with them. Dora was broken up before the end of the war, being discovered in the west by American troops some time after the discovery of Schwerer