What was the largest artillery weapon that made sense in world war II. The Gerlans built some giants (and used a few leftovers from WWI: the Gamma gerat, 420, 380, 305 howitzers from Skoda manufacture, and French railway guns of sizes between 305mm to 400mm and 520mm) but none of these were practical weapons by that time i think. Just the in siege of Sebastopol they might have been useful but were they indispensable for even that special case ? I would say the vanilla 8 inch howitzer. What does the group think ? greetings Aglooka
YouTube - WW2: German Dora gun, the biggest gun ever, firing gustav krupp was the largest armaments manufacturer in germany at that time.....
Yes, but i would call Dora and Gustav the most obvious examples of bad use of resources in superheavy artillery (and the morsers Karl etc...and the 355mm howitzer) Aglooka
The sensible arty would be the 155mm. Anything bigger would be to heavy to shift about in offensive operations. The siege of Sevastopol merited heavier arty, but anywhere else field arty would do just fine.
The K5 280 mm railway guns were pretty effective, much less the "white elephants" that the 80 cm Schwerer Gustav/Dora guns proved themselves to be. At least those two K5s used at Anzio were a bit of a "problem" for the allies for a time. Don't know if those on the French coast were of much use in repelling the allied landings though.
Hello Artillery Fans : I think The Best Artllery Piece Was Installed on SturmTiger!! Its Caliber Was 380mm Mortar Shell!! The Only Games I've Seen This Monster in Were BattleField-1942 Secret Weapons over WW2 Mod+ Men Of War-Commanders Of War Mod!!
A little bit off topic, but nice Wikipedia list of largest guns: List of the largest cannon by caliber - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
do you know anything about the sturmtiger? it is a very fascinating weapon and i would like to learn more about it.
Here is a link to some fascinating "tanks" in a museum in the former Soviet Union; WWII German tanks and carriers The only surviving example (to my knowledge) of a "Maus" is housed there.
The 38 cm gun in the Sturmtiger was in effect not a gun but a rocket launcher. Its not for semantics that state this here , but because that entails that the shells of the ST were much lighter than those of a gun with similar calibre. (ST rocket launcher had a charge of only 125 kg and a total weight of about 350 kg(thats including the rocket) For a regular 38 cm this was about 800 kg for the shell alone. greetings Aglooka
The US 8inch howitzer was mounted in the same carriage. So must have been about the same weight. many greetings Aglooka
I'll try to find out wether these were still manhandable. (i have a book somwhere on US atillery but cannot find it) The 8inch howitzer seemed to have had its role since mechanised versions stayed into service into the 80'ies at least if i remember correctly Aglooka
The US 8" or 203mm projectile weighed approx 91 kilograms. A bit more with the fuze. Those I trained with were often loaded by hand. The projectile lay on a cradle with long handles on each side. Two crewmen could lift the cradle to the breach tho four were better. Once the tip of the cradle was set in the breech opening two crew would ram the projectile in with a ramrod. Next the powder man would set the propellant charge on the cradle & it would be shoved in with the ramrod. Our 1950s technology self propelled howitzers had hydralic lifts & rams, however this was 1983 & they frequently malfunctioned. So, we were quite familar with the manual loading drill. The poor unfortunate Koreans still had some towed 203mm cannon and did all loading manually with those. I place the 203mm as the upper limit for practical field artillery. Aside from weight of the cannon and carriage the rate of fire slows with size of projectile/propellant charge. With the 203mm howitzer we could briefly reach a RoF of two rounds per minute, but for sustained fire it would be less than one per minute. The larger cannon used by the Germans frequently had practical RoF of three to five minutes per round. Accuracy and destructive power does not seem to justify that.
