Ghost gun: Soviet intelligence did not fully believe in the existence of this gun. "Gustav" and "Dora": Colossal superguns that could lead the Third Reich to victory

The supergun was assembled at the end of 1941. in the workshops of the Krupp plant.
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.
Total weight - 1448 tons.
Barrel survivability - 300 shots.
Rate of fire - 3 shots per hour

The Dora shell pierced an armor plate 1 m thick or an 8-meter reinforced concrete floor. At first the supergun was called “Gustav”, but the company’s tradition is to give its products female names turned out to be stronger, and the invention changed its “gender”.

The super-weapon was transported using several trains (up to 60 locomotives and wagons with a staff of several hundred people).

Engineering preparation of the area was carried out by 1.5 thousand workers and a thousand sappers for four weeks. Since the Dora equipment was delivered in 106 cars on five trains, an entire marshalling yard was built at the site where the gun was deployed. For disinformation, trains with Dora equipment were first delivered to Kerch, where they remained until April 25, and after preparation, the positions were secretly transferred to Bakhchisarai. In 43 cars of the first train, service personnel, kitchen and camouflage equipment arrived. An assembly crane and auxiliary equipment were brought in 16 cars of the second train. In 17 carriages of the third, parts of the gun itself and the workshop were delivered. The fourth train of 20 cars 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 was ready for firing by the beginning of June.
The number of Dora service personnel is 4139 soldiers, officers and civilians. Among other things, the crew of the gun included a guard battalion, a transport battalion, a commandant’s office, a field bakery, a camouflage company, a field post office and a camp... brothel with a staff of 40 “workers”.

The Dora was to enter its first battle under the walls of the French Maginot fortification. However, during the design and manufacture of the gun, 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 military leader was delaying the capture of Sevastopol. Manstein explained the failure of the two assaults by saying 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 guns of incredible caliber,” he said.

The position for “Dora” was chosen by General Zukerort himself, the commander of a formation of heavy guns, while flying an airplane over the outskirts of Bakhchisarai. The cannon was supposed 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 fire horizontally, the Dora was mounted on a railway platform standing on 80 wheels, moving along a sharply curved arc of the railway track with four tracks.

"Dora" was used in battle against the famous Soviet 30th battery of Captain G. Alexander. A group of Wehrmacht staff officers flew to Crimea in advance and selected firing position near the village of Duvankoy. For engineering training, 1,000 sappers and 1,500 workers, forcibly mobilized from among local residents, were allocated. 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 soon spotted by Soviet pilots who attacked its position. serious blow and damaged the energy train.

In general, the use of "Dora" did not give the results that the Wehrmacht command had hoped for: only one successful hit was recorded, which caused the explosion of a Soviet ammunition depot located at a depth of 27 m. In other cases, the cannon shell, penetrating 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 the warhead, the soil at its base was compacted, forming a drop-shaped deep funnel with a diameter of about 3 m. Defensive structures could only be damaged if there was a direct hit.

On the morning of June 5, 1942, two diesel locomotives with a power of 1050 horsepower each rolled out this colossus with a total weight of 1350 tons into a combat crescent position and installed it with centimeter precision. The first shot consisted of a projectile weighing 7088 kilograms, two powder charges 465 kilograms each, cartridges 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 cover several hundred meters away. The shot caused a mini-earthquake effect. The roar when over 900 kilograms of gunpowder burned in 6 milliseconds and pushed out a 7-ton projectile was simply monstrous - in the carriage 3 kilometers away, according to contemporary eyewitnesses, dishes were bouncing. The rollback pressed the rail track by 5 centimeters.

Erich von MANSTEIN: "...On June 5 at 5.35 the first concrete-piercing shell was fired at the northern part of Sevastopol by the Dora installation. The next 8 shells flew into the area of ​​battery No. 30. Columns of smoke from the explosions rose to a height of 160 m, but not a single hit armored towers was not achieved, the shooting accuracy of the monster gun from a distance of almost 30 km turned out to be, as one would expect, very low. On this day, Dora fired 7 more shells at the so-called “Fort Stalin”, only one of them hit the target.

The next day, the gun fired at Fort Molotov 7 times, 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, displeased the Fuhrer, who believed that Dora should be used exclusively against heavily fortified fortifications. Over the course of three days, the 672nd Division spent 38 shells, leaving 10. Already during the assault, 5 of them were fired at Fort Siberia on June 11 - 3 hit the target, the rest were fired on June 17. Only on the 25th was new ammunition delivered to the position - 5 high-explosive shells. Four were used for test firing and only one was fired towards the city...."

Researchers remain silent about the question of how exactly “Dora” was taken out of 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, the Dora was sent near Leningrad, to the Taitsy station area. 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 the boss gave General Staff ground forces fascist Germany Colonel General Franz Halder: “A real work of art, but useless”

The largest gun ever built was the Gustav Gun, built in Essen, Germany in 1941 by Friedrich A.G. Krupp. To preserve the tradition of naming heavy guns after family members, the Gustav Gun was named in honor of the ill head of the Krupp family, Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach.

A strategic weapon of its time, the Gustav Gun was built on the direct orders of Hitler specifically to destroy the defensive forts of the Maginot Line on the French border. Carrying out the order, Krupp developed giant guns rail-mounted, weighing 1,344 tons and caliber 800 mm (31.5"), which were served by a crew of 500 people under the command of a major general.

Two types of projectiles were produced for the cannon, using 3,000 pounds of smokeless powder to ignite: conventional artillery shell, filled with 10,584 pounds of high explosive (HE) and a concrete-piercing projectile containing 16,540 pounds, respectively. The Gustav Gun shell craters measured 30 m wide and 30 m deep, and the concrete-piercing shells were capable of breaking through (before exploding) reinforced concrete walls 264 feet (79.2 m) thick! The maximum flight range of high explosive shells was 23 miles, and of concrete-piercing shells - 29 miles. starting speed the projectile was approximately 2700 ft/sec. (or 810 m/sec).

Three guns were ordered in 1939. Alfred Krupp personally received Hitler and Albert Speer (Minister of Armaments) at the Hugenwald test site during the official acceptance tests of the Gustav Gun in the spring of 1941.

In keeping with company tradition, Krupp refrained from charging for the first gun, and 7 million German marks were paid for the second gun - Dora (named after Dora, the wife of the chief engineer).

France capitulated in 1940 without the help of the super-gun, so new targets had to be found for the Gustav. Plans to use the Gustav Gun against the British fortress of Gibraltar were scrapped after General Franco opposed the decision to fire from Spanish territory. Therefore, in April 1942, the Gustav Gun was installed opposite the heavily fortified port city of Sevastopol in the Soviet Union. Having come under fire from Gustav and other heavy artillery, the “forts” named after. Stalin, Lenin and Maxim Gorky were allegedly destroyed and destroyed (there is a different opinion on this matter). One of Gustav's shots destroyed an entire ammunition depot, 100 feet (30 m) below North Bay; another capsized a large ship in port, exploding next to it. During the siege, 300 shells were fired from the Gustav, as a result of which the first original barrel was worn out. The Dora gun was installed west of Stalingrad in mid-August, but quickly removed in September to avoid its capture. The Gustav then appeared near Warsaw in Poland, where it fired 30 shells into the Warsaw Ghetto during the 1944 uprising (see Supplement).

The Dora was blown up by German engineers in April 1945 near Oberlichtnau in Germany to avoid the gun being captured by the Russian army. The partially assembled third gun was scrapped directly from the factory by the British Army when it occupied Essen. An intact Gustav was captured by the US Army near Metzendorf, Germany in June 1945. Soon after, it was cut up for scrap. Thus, the history of the Gustav Gun type was put to an end.

Addition: In fact, the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943 occurred a year before Warsaw Uprising 1944. In neither the first nor the second case, the Gustav Gun was used. To bomb the city, the Nazis then used Thor, a 2-ton mortar of the Mörser Karl Gerät 040 type with a caliber of 60 cm.

Hitler and the Generals examine fat Gustav in 1941.

In 1936, Adolf Hitler was faced with the problem of breaking the French Maginot Line, a 400-kilometer defensive line consisting of fortified bunkers, defensive structures, machine gun nests and artillery emplacements.

Thanks to this, the Maginot line of defense, in addition to its considerable length, provided a defense depth of 100 kilometers. Having visited 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 Dora and Fat Gustav guns.

The "Fat Gustav" gun weighed 1344 tons and to move it around railway tracks some parts needed to be dismantled. The gun was the height of a four-story building, had a width of 6 meters and a length of 42 meters. The maintenance of the Fat Gustav gun was carried out by a team of 500 people under the command of a high-ranking army official. The team needed almost three days to prepare the gun for firing.

The diameter of the Fat Gustav cannon projectile was 800 mm. To push the projectile out of the barrel, a charge of smokeless powder weighing 1360 kilograms was used. There were two types of ammunition for the gun:
high explosive shell weighing 4800 kilograms, filled with a powerful explosive, and an all-metal projectile weighing 7500 kilograms for destroying concrete.

The speed of the projectiles fired from the barrel of the Fat Gustav cannon was 800 meters per second.

The elevation angle of the Fat Gustav gun barrel is 48 degrees, thanks to which it can hit a target with a high-explosive projectile at a distance of 45 kilometers. The projectile, designed to destroy concrete, could hit a target at a distance of 37 kilometers. Having exploded, the high-explosive shell of the Fat Gustav cannon left a crater 10 meters deep, and a concrete-piercing shell could pierce 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 arrived on a visit, Reich Minister for Armaments and Munitions.

Interesting Facts:

• In German the gun was called Schwerer Gustav.

• The construction of "Fat 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 it had not been possible to bypass the Maginot Line and it had been possible to shoot at Gibraltar, then the gun could have played an important role in the war. But there are too many "woulds" here.

• During the siege of Sevastopol, cannon shots were guided by data from a reconnaissance aircraft. The first defeat from a cannon was a group coastal guns, destroyed by a total of 8 salvos. 6 salvos were fired at Fort Stalin with the same effect. 7 shots were fired at the Molotov fort and 9 at the Northern Bay, where a successful hit from a heavy shell penetrated the fort deep into the ammunition depots, which destroyed it entirely.

In 1936, Adolf Hitler was faced with the problem of breaking the French Maginot Line, a 400-kilometer defensive line consisting of fortified bunkers, defensive structures, machine gun nests and artillery emplacements. It was decided to build a weapon of such power that it would be able to destroy the long-term fortifications of the line. The factories of Friedrich Krupp A.G produced two monstrous guns: the Big Dora and the Tolstoy Gustav. "Gustav" (Schwerer Gustav) weighed as much as 1344 tons and could only move on railway, and it took three whole days to prepare for shooting. This thing took part in hostilities only once and was captured by the Allies near Sevastopol.

The Fat Gustav gun weighed 1,344 tons and some parts had to be dismantled to move it along the railroad tracks. The gun was the height of a four-story building, had a width of 6 meters and a length of 42 meters. The maintenance of the Fat Gustav gun was carried out by a team of 500 people under the command of a high-ranking army official. The team needed almost three days to prepare the gun for firing.

The diameter of the Fat Gustav cannon projectile was 800 mm. To push the projectile out of the barrel, a charge of smokeless powder weighing 1360 kilograms was used. There were two types of ammunition for the gun:
a high-explosive projectile weighing 4800 kilograms, filled with a powerful explosive, and an all-metal projectile weighing 7500 kilograms for destroying concrete.

The speed of the projectiles fired from the barrel of the Fat Gustav cannon was 800 meters per second.

The elevation angle of the Fat Gustav gun barrel is 48 degrees, thanks to which it can hit a target with a high-explosive projectile at a distance of 45 kilometers. The projectile, designed to destroy concrete, could hit a target at a distance of 37 kilometers. Having exploded, the high-explosive shell of the Fat Gustav cannon left a crater 10 meters deep, and a concrete-piercing shell could pierce 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, Reich Minister of Arms and Munitions, arrived on a visit.

The installation of the gun began in early May and by June 5 the gun was ready to fire. It fired 300 shells into Sevastopol (at a rate of about 14 per day) and fired another 30 times during the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, after which the gun fell into the hands of the Allies, who sold it for scrap.

Not easy to charge

Projectile and charge in a case of an 800 mm cannon

The construction of "Fat 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 it had not been possible to bypass the Maginot Line and it had been possible to shoot at Gibraltar, then the gun could have played an important role in the war. But there are too many "woulds" here.

During the siege of Sevastopol, cannon shots were guided by data from a reconnaissance aircraft. The first defeat from the cannon was a group of coastal guns, destroyed by a total of 8 salvos. 6 salvos were fired at Fort Stalin with the same effect. 7 shots were fired at the Molotov fort and 9 at the Northern Bay, where a successful hit from a heavy shell penetrated the fort deep into the ammunition depots, which destroyed it entirely.

Neither helped the Nazis nor powerful weapon, nor a well-trained army. History has put everything in its place.

The Dora super-heavy railway-mounted artillery gun was developed in the late 1930s by the German company Krupp. This weapon was intended to destroy fortifications on the borders of Germany with Belgium and France (Maginot Line). In 1942, "Dora" was used to storm Sevastopol, and in 1944 to suppress the uprising in Warsaw.

The development of German artillery after World War I was limited by the Treaty of Versailles. According to the provisions of this treaty, Germany was prohibited from having any anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns, as well as guns whose caliber exceeded 150 mm. Thus, the creation of large-caliber and powerful artillery was a matter of honor and prestige, the leaders of Nazi Germany believed.

Based on this, in 1936, when Hitler visited one of the Krupp factories, he categorically demanded that the company's management design a super-powerful weapon that would be capable of destroying the French Maginot Line and Belgian border forts, for example, Eben-Emal. According to the requirements of the Wehrmacht, a cannon shell must be capable of penetrating 7 m thick concrete, 1 m thick armor, 30 meters hard ground, and the maximum range of the gun should be 25-45 km. and have a vertical guidance angle of +65 degrees.

The group of designers of the Krupp concern, which began creating a new super-powerful gun according to the proposed tactical and technical requirements, was headed by Professor E. Muller, who had extensive experience in this issue. The development of the project was completed in 1937, and in the same year the Krupp concern was given an order for the production of a new 800mm caliber gun. Construction of the first gun was completed in 1941. The gun, in honor of E. Muller’s wife, was given the name “Dora”. The second gun, which was named “Fat Gustav” in honor of the management of the company Gustav von Bohlen and Halbach Krupp, was built in mid-1941. In addition, a third 520 mm caliber gun was designed. and a trunk length of 48 meters. It was called "Long Gustav". But this weapon was not completed.

In 1941, 120 km. west of Berlin, at the Rügenwalde-Hillersleben training ground, guns were tested. The tests were attended by Adolf Hitler himself, his comrade-in-arms Albert Speer, as well as other high army ranks. Hitler was pleased with the test results.

Although the guns did not have some mechanisms, they met the requirements that were specified in the technical specifications. All tests were completed by the end of the 42nd year. The gun was delivered to the troops. By this time, the company's factories had produced over 100 800 mm caliber shells.

Some design features of the gun.

The locking of the barrel bolt, as well as the delivery of projectiles, were carried out by hydraulic mechanisms. The gun was equipped with two lifts: for cartridges and for shells. The first part of the barrel was with a conical thread, the second with a cylindrical thread.
The gun was mounted on a 40-axle conveyor, which was located on a double railway track. The distance between the tracks was 6 meters. In addition, another railway track was laid on the sides of the gun for installation cranes. The total weight of the gun was 1350 tons. To fire, the gun needed an area up to 5 km long. The time spent preparing the gun for firing consisted of choosing a position (could reach 6 weeks) and assembling the gun itself (about 3 days).

Transportation of implements and maintenance personnel.

The gun was transported by rail. So, “Dora” was delivered to Sevastopol by 5 trains in 106 cars:
1st train: service (672nd artillery division, about 500 people), 43 cars;
2nd train, auxiliary equipment and erection crane, 16 cars;
3rd train: cannon parts and workshop, 17 cars;
4th train: loading mechanisms and barrel, 20 cars;
5th train: ammunition, 10 cars.

Combat use.

In World War II, Dora took part only twice.
The first time the gun was used was to capture Sevastopol in 1942. During this campaign, only one case was recorded of a successful hit by a Dora shell, which caused an explosion of an ammunition depot located at a depth of 27 meters. The remaining Dora shots penetrated the ground to a depth of 12 meters. After the explosion of the shell, a drop-shaped shape with a diameter of about 3 meters was formed in the ground, which did not cause much harm to the defenders of the city. In Sevastopol, the gun fired 48 shells.

After Sevastopol, "Dora" was sent to Leningrad, and from there to Essen for repairs.
The second time Dora was used was in 1944 to suppress the Warsaw Uprising. In total, the gun fired more than 30 shells into Warsaw.

The end of Dora and Gustav.

On April 22, 1945, the advanced units of the Allied army were 36 km away. from the city of Auerbach (Bavaria) they discovered the remains of the Dora and Gustav guns blown up by the Germans. Subsequently, everything that was left of these giants of the 2nd World War was sent for melting down.