Naturally a canon is always a canon, but Hitler loved gigantic weapons like these railway guns. The Germans wasted a lot of material etc. for these kind of canons - it would probably much better to use 50 normal sized canons or tanks than such a monster-canon.
After the superb pictures Gebirgsjaeger posted, I figured I'd poke through a couple of my books. Also saw the quoted info from Brndirt. I've got The Arms of Krupp, but haven't yet read it. I did find some bits in German Artillery of World War 2 by Ian Hogg. And this is odd indeed. According to Hogg- there were two complete guns, with parts for a third! p. 138: Speaking about the action the gun saw at Sevastopol: Hmm... gun was there, but no record of any activity? One would think said activity would be recorded. Maybe the gun, if it existed, was scheduled to be sent ot Stalingrad but never made the trip? Hmm... as far as I know, Hogg is looked upon as pretty credible, no? And this title has a copyright of 1975. Hence, one would think that Hogg had access to not only Manchester's book, but possibly even some of the primary sources Manchester used? Has Hogg since been thoroughly disproved on this one?
Hello, i added the copy of the original action report and the report of the 48 rounds fired at Sewastopol with the Dora. Excuses for posting them in German, but had not the time to translate it, sorry! Regards Ulrich
Nordwind- I was referring to the later posts in that thread that had some Gustav/Dora photos in them. Though interesting enough- that linked thread seems to have two possible IDs for the other railway gun- 24cm Bruno K or 28cm Neue Bruno. Out of curiousity, I'll check the Hogg book I noted, see if that has any good photos. Or maybe a third possible ID. Or course, at this point, between the two threads on German Railway artillery, we're probably going to confuse ourselves going from thread to thread!
Good stuff...I have always thought that each name would identify each whole, individual artillery piece. Have large cannon barrels traditionally been individually named?
Not always. But, many larger and unique pieces of artillery throughout the ages have either been or aquired unique names. A few other uniquely named pieces: Die Groß Bertha: The Big Bertha. The 42cm howitzer of WW 1 Schlanke Emma: The Austrian equivalent of Big Bertha a 30.5 cm howitzer. Little David: A US 36" mortar Atomic Annie: The US 240mm Atomic cannon.
Large cannons have been named for centuries. They were national treasures and works of art in many cases and people spoke of them like war heroes.
