The superweapon was assembled at the end of 1941. in the workshops of the Krupp factory.
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.
The total weight is 1448 tons.
Barrel survivability - 300 shots.
Rate of fire - 3 shots per hour
The Dora projectile pierced an armor plate 1 m thick or an 8-meter reinforced concrete ceiling. At first, the supergun was called "Gustav", but the tradition of the company to give its products female names turned out to be stronger, and the invention changed the “sex”.
The super-weapon was transported with the help of several trains (up to 60 locomotives and wagons with a staff of several hundred people in total).
Engineering preparation of the area was carried out by 1.5 thousand workers and a thousand sappers for four weeks. Since the equipment of the Dora was delivered in 106 wagons by five trains, an entire marshalling yard was built at the place where the guns were deployed. For misinformation, trains with Dora equipment were first delivered near Kerch, where they stood until April 25, and after preparing the position, they were secretly transferred to Bakhchisaray. Service personnel, kitchen and disguise equipment arrived in 43 cars of the first train. An assembly crane and auxiliary equipment were brought in 16 cars of the second train. In 17 wagons of the third, parts of the gun itself and the workshop were delivered. The fourth train in 20 wagons 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 prepared for firing by the beginning of June.
The number of service personnel "Dora" 4139 soldiers, officers and civilians. Among other things, the calculation of the gun included a security battalion, a transport battalion, a commandant's office, a field bakery, a camouflage company, a field post office and a marching ... brothel with a staff of 40 "workers".
In the first battle, "Dora" was to enter under the walls of the French fortification "Maginot". However, during the design and manufacture of the cannon, 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 commander was delaying the capture of Sevastopol. Manstein explained the failure of two assaults by the fact 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 weapons of incredible caliber,” he said.
The position for the "Dora" was chosen by General Zuckerort himself, the commander of the formation heavy guns, during an airplane flight around Bakhchisarai. The cannon was supposed to hide 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 firing horizontally, the Dora was mounted on a railway platform, standing on 80 wheels, moving along a steeply curved arc of the railway track with four tracks.
"Dora" was used in the battle against the famous Soviet 30th battery of Captain G. Alexander. A group of Wehrmacht staff officers flew to the Crimea in advance and chose a firing position near the village of Duvankoy. For engineering training, 1,000 sappers and 1,500 workers were forcibly mobilized from among local residents. 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. The German cannon was spotted pretty soon Soviet pilots, which inflicted a serious blow on its position and damaged the power train.
In general, the use of the "Dora" did not give the results that the Wehrmacht command was counting on: only one successful hit was recorded, which caused an explosion of the Soviet ammunition depot, located at a depth of 27 m. In other cases, the cannon projectile, penetrating into the ground, pierced a round barrel with a diameter about 1 meter and a depth of 12 m. As a result of the explosion of a warhead, the soil at its base was compacted, a drop-shaped deep funnel with a diameter of about 3 m was formed. Defensive structures could only be damaged if a direct hit.
On the morning of June 5, 1942, two diesel locomotives with a capacity of 1050 horsepower each rolled this colossus with a total weight of 1350 tons into a crescent-shaped combat position and installed it with an accuracy of a centimeter. The first shot consisted of a projectile weighing 7088 kilograms, two powder charges 465 kilograms each, shells 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 a shelter several hundred meters away. The shot caused the effect of a mini-earthquake. The roar during combustion in 6 milliseconds of more than 900 kilograms of gunpowder and pushing out a 7-ton projectile was simply monstrous - in the car for 3 kilometers, according to contemporaries, eyewitnesses, dishes bounced. The rollback pressed the rail track by 5 centimeters.
Erich von MANSTEIN: "... On June 5, at 5.35, the first concrete-piercing shell in the northern part of Sevastopol was fired by the Dora installation. The next 8 shells flew into the area of \u200b\u200bthe battery No. armored towers was not achieved, the accuracy of the monster gun from a distance of almost 30 km turned out to be, as expected, very small. Another 7 shells "Dora" that day fired at the so-called "Fort Stalin", only one of them hit the target.
The next day, the gun fired 7 times at Fort Molotov, 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, caused discontent of the Fuhrer, who believed that Dora should be used exclusively against heavily fortified fortifications. Within three days, the 672nd division used up 38 shells, 10 remained. Already during the assault, 5 of them were fired at Fort Siberia on June 11 - 3 hit the target, the rest fired on June 17. Only on the 25th, new ammunition was delivered to the position - 5 high-explosive shells. Four were used for trial shooting and only one was released towards the city .... "
Researchers pass over in silence the question of how exactly "Dora" was taken out of the 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, "Dora" was sent near Leningrad, to the area of the Taitsy station. 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 given by the Chief of the General Staff ground forces Nazi Germany Colonel General Franz Halder: "A real work of art, but useless"
Hitler and the Generals examining fat Gustav in 1941.
In 1936, Adolf Hitler was faced with the problem of overcoming the French Maginot Defense Line, a 400-kilometer defensive line consisting of fortified bunkers, defensive structures, machine-gun nests and artillery emplacements.
Thanks to this, the Maginot defense line, in addition to its considerable length, provided a defense depth of 100 kilometers. Visiting the Friedrich Krupp A.G. engineering plant in 1936, Hitler ordered the development of a weapon capable of destroying long-term fortifications, which was supposed to help overcome the Maginot Line. In 1937, Krupp engineers completed the development of this weapon, and in 1941 two copies of the weapon were created, the 800-mm guns "Dora" and "Fat Gustav".
The "Fat Gustav" gun weighed 1344 tons and some parts had to be dismantled to move it along the railway tracks. The gun was as high as a four-story house, had a width of 6 meters and a length of 42 meters. Maintenance of the "Fat Gustav" gun was carried out by a team of 500 people under the command of a high-ranking army rank. The team needed almost three days of time to prepare the gun for firing.
The diameter of the projectile gun "Fat Gustav" was 800 mm. To push the projectile out of the barrel, a charge of smokeless powder weighing 1360 kilograms was used. Ammunition for the cannon was of two types:
high-explosive projectile weighing 4800 kilograms, stuffed with a powerful explosive, and an all-metal projectile weighing 7500 kilograms for the destruction of concrete.
The speed of the projectiles fired from the barrel of the "Fat Gustav" gun was 800 meters per second.
The angle of elevation of the Tolsty Gustav cannon barrel is 48 degrees, thanks to which it can hit a target with a high-explosive projectile at a distance of 45 kilometers. A projectile designed to destroy concrete could hit a target at a distance of 37 kilometers. Having exploded, the high-explosive projectile of the Tolsty Gustav cannon left a crater 10 meters deep, and a concrete-piercing projectile could penetrate 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 came to visit, Reich Minister of Armaments and Ammunition.
Interesting Facts:
- In German, the gun was called Schwerer Gustav.
- The construction of "Tolstoy 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 the Maginot line could not be bypassed and it would have been possible to shoot at Gibraltar, then the gun could have played important role in the war. But there are too many "woulds".
- During the siege of Sevastopol, cannon shots were directed by data from a reconnaissance aircraft. The first cannon hit was a group of coastal guns, destroyed by a total of 8 volleys. 6 volleys were fired at Fort Stalin with the same effect. 7 shots were fired at Fort "Molotov" and 9 - at the North Bay, where a successful hit heavy projectile pierced the fort in depth, to the ammunition depots, which destroyed it entirely.
Dora was developed in the late 1930s at the Krupp plant in Essen. The main task of the super-powerful gun is the destruction of the forts of the French Maginot Line during the siege. At that time, these were the strongest fortifications that existed in the world.
"Dora" could fire shells weighing 7 tons at a distance of up to 47 kilometers. The fully assembled "Dora" weighed about 1350 tons. The Germans developed it powerful weapon when preparing for the battle for France. But when the fighting began in 1940, the most big gun World War II was not yet ready. In any case, the Blitzkrieg tactics allowed the Germans to capture Belgium and France in just 40 days, bypassing the Maginot defensive line. This forced the French to surrender with minimal resistance and the fortifications did not have to be stormed.
"Dora" was deployed later, during the war in the East, in the Soviet Union. It was used during the siege of Sevastopol to shell the coastal batteries that heroically defended the city. The preparation of the gun from the traveling position for firing took a week and a half. In addition to the direct calculation of 500 people, a security battalion, a transport battalion, two trains for the transport of ammunition were involved, anti-aircraft division, as well as its own military police and a field bakery.
A German gun as high as a four-story house and 42 meters long fired concrete-piercing and high-explosive shells up to 14 times a day. To push out the largest projectile in the world, a charge of 2 tons of explosives was needed.
It is believed that in June 1942, "Dora" fired 48 shots at Sevastopol. But due to the long distance to the target, only a few hits were obtained. In addition, heavy blanks, if they did not hit the concrete armor, went into the ground for 20-30 meters, where their explosion did not cause much damage. The supergun did not show the results that the Germans had hoped for, having “swollen” a lot of money into this ambitious miracle weapon.
When the resource of the barrel came out, the gun was taken to the rear. It was planned to use it under besieged Leningrad after repairs, but this was prevented by the deblockade of the city by our troops. Then the supergun was taken through Poland to Bavaria, where in April 1945 it was blown up so that it would not become a trophy for the Americans.
In the XIX-XX centuries. there were only two weapons, with large caliber(90 cm for both): British mortar Mallet and American Little David. But "Dora" and the same type "Gustav" (who did not take part in the hostilities) were artillery largest caliber who took part in the battles. It is also the largest self-propelled units ever built. Nevertheless, these 800 mm guns went down in history as "a completely useless work of art."
The queen of all Hitler's railway gun mounts. The construction of the huge gun, named at birth "Gustav", was inspired by Hitler, who once asked what kind of gun was needed to destroy the fortifications of the Maginot Line with his shells.
The Krupp engineers began this work in 1937, but it took three years for the first barrel to be prepared for firing tests, and another two years for the entire installation to be assembled. But it was already 1942, the Maginot Line was far behind German lines. But there were other goals: the first - British attacks in Gibraltar, but the Spanish dictator Franco refused to join Hitler's operation. Leningrad, shelled since the end of 1941, became the second target.
Sevastopol, the Soviet naval base on the Black Sea, was under siege, so the commander of the 11th by the German army Colonel General von Manstein was in a hurry. Supported by powerful air raids, Manstein wanted to have a railway siege train, including self-propelled howitzer"Thor" (Thor).
By sea, 25 Gustav platforms were delivered to Manstein to support the siege. The installation of the gun mount was carried out using two 110-ton cranes. The laying of the rails and installation of the equipment took a total of six weeks. Finally, on June 5, Gustav fired his first shots. The targets were coastal batteries that also protected the Russian fortress. The Fieseler Fi-156 Storch spotter reported on the place where the projectile fell.
Eight shots were fired to suppress the fortress. The gun used two types of shells: 7-ton armor-piercing projectile, designed to destroy concrete fortifications, and a 5-ton high-explosive projectile of high power.
The next day, Gustav's deadly attention was focused on Fort Molotov. It took seven shots to destroy the fort. Then the time came for the shelling of targets of particular complexity: an underground (and underwater) ammunition depot in adits near Sevastopol, overlooking the Sevastopol bays. 9 projectiles were fired, flying about 25 km through the air before diving under water to a depth of 30 m and breaking through the concrete floor, to then explode inside.
"Gustav" continued its shelling all week as siege weapon von Manstein, systematically processing each Russian position. However, the defenders of the fortress had already left and died fighting in the labyrinths of tunnels that connected the forts. One by one, they died from the explosions of the charges brought in their backpacks, or from the fire of flamethrowers. On July 1, the handful of surviving defenders capitulated.
"Gustav" was dismantled and returned to Germany. The siege train was supposed to be used in the summer of 1943 to shell Leningrad, and then to support the offensive near Kursk. Operation Citadel soon failed, and Soviet army went on the offensive. "Gustav" never appeared assembled again. The composition with parts of the 800-mm gun was discovered in 1945, but nothing survived, except for a few shells.
Assembly of 800 mm guns - difficult task. First, it was necessary to mount 1 km. double rail tracks laid in a specially dug trench. Then two massive gantry cranes were mounted to mount the gun. Full cycle The job took 3-6 weeks.
Specifications "Gustav" 800 mm guns ("Aiseban")
Caliber: 800 mm.
Length: 42.976 m.
Barrel length: 32.48 m.
Weight: 1350 tons
Maximum shaft elevation: 65°
Ammunition: 4800 kg high-explosive or 7100 kg armor-piercing projectile
Muzzle velocity: 820 m/s (high-explosive), 710 m/s (armor-piercing)
Maximum range: 47 km for a 4.8-ton projectile, 38 km for a 7-ton projectile.
Calculation: 1500 people when assembling and 500 people when firing.
Conveyor
The 800-mm gun was mounted on 4 huge railway platforms, moving along parallel tracks in pairs. Each pair, fastened together, formed a double support.
Design
The gun was assembled on a fairly standard space-farm structure, apart from its size, which made it impossible to place it on a single rail track. This is the main reason that the gun was designed to be mounted and fired from double rail tracks.
Artillery unit
The barrel of the gun was mounted on a huge frame suspended between the two main transport sections.
Loading the gun
A long working platform extended far back beyond the breech of the gun. Winches at the end of the platform delivered shells and charges to the gun.
Powerful winches were used to service the 800 mm cannon, the left one in the photo was for lifting the projectile, and the right one was for setting the charge.
The projectile moved tightly into the barrel. To assemble the gun, 1,500 people were required, the calculation consisted of 500 people.
Not finding a use for their superweapon in the west, the Germans transferred the Dora to their eastern front. As a result, in February 1942, the Dora was sent to the Crimea at the disposal of the 11th Army, where its main task was to shell the famous Soviet 305-mm coastal batteries No. 30 and No. 35 and the fortifications of the besieged Sevastopol, which by that time had already repelled two assaults.
The preparation and maintenance of this artillery monster was truly large-scale. It is known that only the Dora high-explosive shell weighing 4.8 tons carried 700 kg of explosives, the concrete-piercing shell weighing 7.1 tons - 250 kg, large charges for them weighed 2 and 1.85 tons, respectively.
The cradle for the trunk was mounted between two supports, each of which occupied one railway track and rested on four five-axle platforms. Two hoists served to supply shells and charges. The gun was transported, of course, disassembled. To install it railway track branched, laying four curved - for horizontal aiming - parallel branches. The gun supports were driven onto two internal branches. Two 110-ton overhead cranes needed to assemble the gun moved along the outer tracks.
The position of the gun itself occupied a section with a length of 4,120-4,370 m. In general, the preparation of the position and the assembly of the gun lasted from one and a half to six and a half weeks.
The actual calculation of the gun itself was about 500 people, in addition to the gun, a whole guard battalion, a transport battalion, two trains for the transport of ammunition, a separate power train were always attached to the gun, and for feeding all this troops there was a field bakery and even a commandant's office with its field gendarmes.
Thus, the number of personnel for only one installation increased to 1,420 people. A whole colonel commanded the calculation of such a weapon. In Crimea, the number of Dora's crew has grown to over 1,500 people, since the artillery monster was additionally given a group military police to protect it from attacks by sabotage groups and partisans, a chemical unit for setting up smoke screens and a reinforced anti-aircraft division, since vulnerability from aviation was one of the main problems of railway artillery. As a result, the Dora's lair was reliably covered both on the ground and from the air.
A group of engineers was sent from Krupp with the installation. The position for the "Dora" during an overflight of the surrounding area from the air was personally chosen by General Zuckerort, the commander of the heavy guns.
According to the plan of the Germans, the cannon was 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 firing horizontally, the Dora was mounted on a railway platform, standing on 80 wheels, moving along a steeply curved arc of the railway track with four tracks. http://www.webpark.ru/comment/35512 The position was finally equipped by June 1942, 20 km from Sevastopol. The assembled Dora was moved by two diesel locomotives with a capacity of 1,050 hp. With. each. Additionally, against the fortifications of Sevastopol, the Germans also used two 60-cm self-propelled mortars of the "Karl" type.
From the history of the defense of Sevastopol, it is known that from June 5 to June 17, "Dora" fired 48 shots in total. Together with field tests this exhausted the resource of the barrel, and the gun was taken to the rear. However, in his memoirs, Manstein claimed that the Dora fired much more at the Soviet fortress, almost 80 shells. The German hulk was soon spotted by Soviet pilots, who launched a bomb attack on its position, as a result of which the power train was damaged.
In general, the use of the "Dora" did not give the results that the Wehrmacht command was counting on, so only one successful hit was recorded, which caused an explosion of the Soviet ammunition depot, located at a depth of 27 m. In other cases, the cannon projectile, penetrating into 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 a warhead, the soil at its base was compacted, a drop-shaped deep funnel with a diameter of about 3 m was formed. Defensive structures could only be damaged if a direct hit.
About the effectiveness of the shooting itself, combat use"Dora" historians are still arguing, but almost everyone agrees that, as in the case of the "Paris cannon", "Dora" in no way corresponded to its colossal size and cost of installation. Their opinion is confirmed by the words of the one whose troops directly used this weapon during the assault on Sevastopol:
“Erich von MANSTEIN: ... June 5 at 5.35 the first concrete-piercing projectile in the northern part of Sevastopol was fired by the Dora installation. The next 8 shells flew into the area of \u200b\u200bbattery No. 30. Columns of smoke from the explosions rose to a height of 160 m, but not a single hit on the armored towers was achieved, the accuracy of the monster gun from a distance of almost 30 km turned out to be, as expected, very small . Another 7 shells "Dora" that day fired at the so-called "Fort Stalin", only one of them hit the target.
The next day, the gun fired 7 times at Fort Molotov, 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, caused discontent of the Fuhrer, who believed that Dora should be used exclusively against heavily fortified fortifications. Within three days, the 672nd division used up 38 shells, 10 remained. Already during the assault, 5 of them were fired at Fort Siberia on June 11 - 3 hit the target, the rest fired on June 17. Only on the 25th, new ammunition was delivered to the position - 5 high-explosive shells. Four were used for trial shooting and only one was released towards the city .... "
In the future, that after the capture of Sevastopol, "Dora" was sent near Leningrad, to the area of \u200b\u200bthe Taytsy station. And when the operation to break the blockade of the city began, the Germans hastily evacuated their supergun to Bavaria. In April 1945, as the Americans approached, the gun was blown up. The most accurate assessment of this miracle of military equipment was given by the Chief of the General Staff of the Ground Forces of Nazi Germany, Colonel-General Franz Halder: "A real work of art, however, is useless."
In the future, it is known that the German designers tried to modernize and make the Dora ultra-long-range, for use now on the western front. To this end, they resorted to a scheme similar to the so-called Damblyan project, this is when they intended to launch a three-stage rocket projectile from the cannon barrel. But things did not go beyond the project. As well as the combination of a 52-cm smooth barrel for the same installation and an active-rocket projectile with a flight range of 100 km.
During the Second World War, the Germans also made a second 80-cm installation, known as the "Heavy Gustav" - in honor of Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach. By the end of the war, Krupp was able to produce components for the third installation, but the Germans did not have time to assemble it. Separate parts of the 80 cm gun were captured Soviet troops who picked up all this stuff and sent it to the USSR for study.
Probably all these "Dora" and "Gustavs" completed their combat path somewhere, in the Soviet open-hearth furnaces, when the victors forged all these weapons of war and intimidation into ordinary ploughshares. And yet, it must be admitted that, in a purely technical sense, the 80-cm railway artillery installation was a good design work and a convincing demonstration of German industrial power.
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