The fate of the Allies rests in the hands of eccentric British Navy Captain George Hardy. Regarded as a madman by some, and viewed as a genius in naval warfare by those who serve with him, Hardy leads his ragtag fleet of warships into a deadly match of wits and wills against the determined Kern and his untested U-boats. Under cover of the ocean, the deadliest of enemies are about to engage their final battle…. Welcome to HuntersAndTheHunted.Com, the Cyberspace Home of author: Steven Wilson.

The Great Guns
by Steven Wilson, 2007

ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED AT MILITARY.COM, January 8, 2007

Once, many years ago, giants roamed the earth. The ground trembled as they passed and when they spoke the trees bowed in subservience. Their terrible voice felled buildings in fortress cities miles away and so great and powerful were they that they were attended by thousands of men who catered to their every need. Such is a novelist’s view of the great railroad cannons of World War II. I can be forgiven the rhetoric; these were machines that will never exist again.

The idea of mounting huge guns aboard railway cars was not new. The Union army transported and fired huge siege mortars from the backs of flatcars during the Civil War while Germany dropped occasional calling cards on Paris in World War I from a railroad cannon nicknamed “Big Bertha.” Nearly every industrialized country at the beginning of the First World War had railroad guns, with some nations (the United States and Germany for example) depending on sailors to service these behemoths. It made sense; these 14-inch cannons were virtually the same guns used on battleships and the U.S. Army would not have a weapon approaching that size (excluding some coastal defense mortars) until the celebrated Atomic Cannon of the 1950s.

The advantage of railroad guns was two-fold. First, they were mobile—anywhere there were tracks or tracks could be laid (for the largest guns, double tracks), the guns could go. Second, they offered range and power. One of the largest, Gustav, fired a seven ton shell over 27,000 yards. The shell, seven times heavier than that fired by the U.S.S. Missouri, was an enormous 12-feet, 4-inches tall. The IJN Yamato, the most formidable warship ever constructed, carried 18-inch guns. Gustav was an 80-cm gun; 31.5-inch. The disadvantage with these huge guns, Gustav in particular, was the very thing that made them potent—their size. Gustav required nearly 2,000 men to install her into position and almost 500 men to go through the complicated ritual of firing her. One round every fifteen minutes was a respectable rate when you consider that so many variables had to be taken into consideration. The air temperature and velocity not only at the site of the firing but the altitude that the shell passed through, had to be calculated, and even the temperature of the charge.. Lest the gun itself become a target, she was supported by a detachment of infantry and two anti-aircraft batteries.

Gustav was conceived in 1935 when the German army, eyeing the Maginot Line, decided that it need something powerful enough to reduce the French forts to powder. What resulted was a 1,300-ton monster that could fire both High Explosive and concrete-piercing rounds. After watching tests at Krupp’s Rugenwald Proving Ground, the Fuehrer announced himself highly pleased with the great gun’s performance. He should have been. The gun’s range with high explosive rounds was 29 miles, and with the heavier concrete-piercing shells, 23 miles.

The war by-passed Gustav’s opportunities much the same way that the German army by-passed the Maginot Line. In fact, that was the problem; if you have a remarkably powerful, but incredibly complex weapon designed for a limited role, where do you use it? Hitler, coincidently, offered a solution.

To the east was Mother Russia and in the Crimea was the port of Sevastopol which deemed itself ready for a siege by the German army. Gustav now had a target worthy of her ability and she was sent to Russia. Logistically, the trip was more than a challenge for her crew. The mighty gun’s caravan included 25 trainloads of equipment and the entire train in movement stretched out over three quarters of a mile. Gustav rode on eighty wheels distributed over forty axles. She could not be moved in one piece but had to be re-assembled with the help of two, 10-ton cranes that moved on tracks on either side of her. Preparing the site that would accommodate her, and putting her together took about six weeks. It was safe to say that Gustav could not be rushed into battle. Her record in combat against the reluctant city is remarkable. Not for the number of shells fired—48 in less than two weeks, but for the destruction that she caused.

She spoke first on June 5, 1942, targeting coastal batteries that had, up until that time, survived the rain of over half-a-million artillery projectiles fired at the city. After eight rounds the coastal fortifications were demolished. Gustav then turned her attention to Fort Stalin, that target was destroyed in six rounds. The next day’s encounter was the most spectacular and clearly demonstrated the gun’s tremendous power. The day’s first target was Fort Molotov, which succumbed to the gun’s shells after seven rounds. An area known as the White Cliff on Severnaya Bay was next. The Soviets had carefully and skillfully placed an ammunition depot deep in the earth and (what is even more impressive) angled the galleries so that they ran out under the bay. The ammunition would have been safe from any conventional weapon in the enemy’s arsenal, except Gustav. She fired nine shells at the target, with tiny Storch observation planes circling overhead, radioing back the results. The shells passed through 100 feet of seawater, tunneled through the seabed, and exploded in the ammunition depot. By the 17th of June, Gustav had exhausted all of her target opportunities around Sevastopol and she was dismantled and returned to Germany. There was simply nothing left for her to do.

Later on she was moved to Leningrad in hopes of supporting German attacks against that city but by that time it became apparent that Hitler’s desire to conquer the Soviets was never to be realized. Once more Gustav was returned to Germany, and except for a brief foray to assist in quelling the uprising in Warsaw, she never saw combat again. It had been considered by the German high command that she could have been encased in a specially constructed tunnel on the English Channel, and her seven-ton shells used against England. It was not practical, first because the range was too great, and second, because the only way to train the big gun horizontally was to aim the entire gun carriage. This could be done only with tracks built toward a variety of targets, something not practical in a tunnel. This was one of the gun’s great defects; she could aim vertically, the height of the muzzle and strength of the charge determining the distance, but she was unable to move horizontally unless tracks were especially constructed to move her in the desired direction.

Smaller guns such as “Anzio Annie” could be traversed on turntables. That 360 degree capability greatly increased the guns ability to hit multiple targets. This 280mm monster had a range of about sixteen miles and was served by a crew of less than 30 men. Compared to the 500 men serving Gustav, it seems almost ridiculously to be too few men to serve a railroad gun. The Americans trapped on Anzio Beach probably didn’t think so.

Like many weapons developed for warfare, the railroad guns were really products of the last war and anachronisms of the next. Although they could be used successfully against fixed fortifications, especially those that survived attack from the air, they were too cumbersome and far too costly. They were a luxury embraced by generals whose technological short-sightedness prohibited them from seeing the truth; like Hannibal’s elephants they could strike fear into the hearts of one’s enemies. But, like those magnificent beasts, their day had passed.

Steven Wilson / HuntersAndTheHunted.Com E-Mail: readermail@HuntersAndTheHunted.Com