The Dora Gun

[Lancer]

http://palpatine.chez.tiscali.fr/Page13/page13.htm

There are pics on the site. My question is, how many inches in 700, 800, and 1000mm? I want to know how the gun compares with the 18.1 inch guns of the Musashi and Yamato, the biggest naval guns ever.



The immense weapon you can see have existed. Moreover, there were two of these incredible guns. It has been manufactured by Krupp for the third Reich during WW-2. Hitler wanted "a gun able to pierce a meter of stell, seven meters of concrete, or thirty meters of dense earth". As you can see, it's a railroad gun. But it's so large that two railways are just enough to ensure stability and weight distribution.
Three calibers could have been used: 700, 800 and even 1000 mm ! The Oberkommando Heer conducted the fisrt tests of these enormous guns during 1935, for the growing Reich. You must know that railroad guns where very numorous during WW-2: they represented mobile high-power artillery. Before the Dora, the largest of these were 280 mm units. The design of the gun, which was very demanding, ended in 1937.
Even now, we can hardly imagine how we could manufacture the enormous 290 tonnen barrel, an huge steel pipe, 32 meters long. Monobloc trunion craddles, on which are put the trunion pins of the barrel, are as tall as a 4-floor building : these oversized parts needed long preparation, and initial delivery date during spring 1940 could not be met. The gun was ready in '41, and undergone testing at the Hillersleben training ground. It was ready for action in late 1942.
Unfortunately (for the gun), all its targets where almost down or captured at this time: the Maginot line, Gibraltar...
The only target the Dora crushed was Sevastopol. During five days, the gun shot 48 shells over 7 targets. Its monstruous power put down the forts of the town, delivering never seen damage at each shot. You know the "bang" a rifle does, so try to imagine the sound of apocalypse when a 7 ton shell is fired, using thousands pounds of gun powder, enough to send it dozens of miles away... This is not sci-fi, this was the madness of a tyran, and probably the most outstanding achievement in conventionnal balistics.

[Drogue]

1000mm is a little under 40 inches (about 38-39). 700mm is just over 27. 800mm is just over 31.

[Lancer]

That's incredible. I had no idea that there was a land gun twice the size of the Yamato guns.

Drogue, thanks

[Drogue]

It is pretty impressive. I'm surprised we haven't heard more of those, the kind of power they must pack. The could have put them in Calais and attacked Dover

[Lancer]

French railways might have been different guage, though I don't know, and it might not have mattered.

Also, the link says the gun needs double tracks, how common can that be?

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Drogue
It is pretty impressive. I'm surprised we haven't heard more of those, the kind of power they must pack. The could have put them in Calais and attacked Dover

Obviously it (aside from Sevastopol) never played a major role in the war, although it is impressive what I read about it:

Here is an interesting source about it (but it´s in german)

http://www.waffenhq.de/panzer/dora.htm

This source claims that the Dora in its shelöling of Sevastopol was able to destroy an ammunitions Magazine which was located beneath 30 Meters of massive rock.

[Winston]

Wow. I'm surprised they didn't win if they had howitzers on railroads!

Of course, Hitler was the equivalent of the clueless AI.

[Lancer]

They may have been afraid to lose them, so rarely used them. German naval mentality from WW1, if you don't use it, you won't lose it. Putting them in Callais would expose them to the RAF. Losing such a gum would not only be a loss of a weapons system, but a political loss of face to Hitler among Germans and also bragging rights in the international community.

[Chemical Ollie]

This was on Discovery last night. They actually did fire some rounds across the British channel. One of the guns in Italy was captured undamaged and shipped to US where it still is. An American officer said that these guns helped the allies to win the war, as they took so much manpower and accomplished only small benefits. Each gun needed 500 men just to operate. They were very vulnerable to air attacks and were not fast enough to take part in the blitz.

Anyone remember the late 80's when some customs clerks in Europe, can't remember which country, stopped a shipment of a huge metal cylinder to Iraq's oil industry. It was believed that the hardware was not for the oil industry at all, but a super-gun that could fire all the way to Israel.


1 inch = 25.4 mm

[CerberusIV]

The whole thing was really a bit of a publicity stunt by Krupps playing on Hitler's love of gigantic weapons. They built two guns and started on a third. The destruction of the ammunition dump at Severnaya Bay was the most noteable success. The downside was the resources needed to operate each gun.

The gun detachment and its associated flak batteries, etc. numbered over 1000 men commanded by a major-general. It took ages to set up as they had to build a special double curved track spur for the gun to fire from. The gun barrel came in two parts so they had one part hanging from a crane whilst trying to match it to the breech section - scary.

The gun alone cost as much in cash terms as 28 Tiger tanks that would probably have been more useful. It terms of resources consumed the Germans could have had more effective ordinary weapons - although not as impressive for propaganda.

After the war the US army found parts of the different guns but not enough to build one complete one so it was all scrapped.

[Az]

Effective Range: 40 Km

Makes you laugh thinking how far we came.

http://www.rusarm.ru/products/army/smerch.htm

The rocket used is the 300 mm calibre 9M55K, fitted with a self-contained powered-flight phase control system enhancing fire precision by a factor of two and accuracy by a factor of three as compared to unguided rockets. Minimum range is 20,000 m and maximum range 70,000 m.

[CerberusIV]

The Germans had several interesting rail guns. The 80cm weapons were not AFAIK used across the Channel but various others were.

Most powerful used across the Channel were twin 16 inch guns, still in the naval turrets, intended for the never completed H class battleships.

The 280mm rail guns were widely used, notably against the Anzio beachhead and this is the gun now in the USA.

The Germans also had two experimental 21cm weapons with a range of about 80 miles. This could be extended with rocket assisted shells but with a loss of accuracy. The cost and waste of resources was colossal and it certainly didn't help the German war effort.

They also did a lot of work on rocket and athodyne shells (that carry their own fuel for rocket assistance) but the space and weight of the fuel left very little room for a worthwhile explosive charge. They also tried guns with multiple propellant charges in side chambers but never got these to work satisfactorily.

All very interesting but definitely not practical weapons either in the 1940's or now.

[Az]

"Rail Guns" is a word reserved for a completely different kind of weaponary.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Winston
Wow. I'm surprised they didn't win if they had howitzers on railroads!

Of course, Hitler was the equivalent of the clueless AI.

Actually Railroad Guns were not seldom during the two Worldwars.
They were also used in Worldwar 1, from the Germans (for example "Dicke Berta") and AFAIK as well from the French.

But of course those guns had a much smaller Calibre (just 40 cm compared to the 80-100 cm of Dora).

It is a tribute to Hitlers Gigantomania which let such Guns become reality (there was also planned a V3, a truely giant gun which would have a barrel that was planned to be placerd inside a mountain and which would be able to reach England with it shells. It would have been of little strategic worth, just as Hitlers PzKfw. Maus [a truely giant and well armed and armored tank, but too heavy to move fast even on normal roads ] and it was never completed)

[Traianvs]

Yeah, but that's rockets you know...