Ghost gun: Soviet intelligence did not fully believe in the existence of this gun. Gustav Gun - The largest gun in history Dora projectile weight

At 5:35 a.m. on June 5, 1942, the valley near Bakhchisarai was shaken by a thunderous sound, which 20 years later people would have mistaken for a thermonuclear explosion. On railway station and windows flew out in the houses of ordinary people in the southern part of Bakhchisarai. After 45 seconds, a huge shell fell north of the Mekenzievy Gory station, a few tens of meters from the field ammunition depot of the 95th Infantry Division. The next seven shots were fired at the old coastal battery No. 16 south of the village of Lyubimovka. Six more shots on June 5 were fired at an anti-aircraft battery of the Black Sea Fleet. The last shot that day was fired at dusk - at 19:58.

Alexander Shirokorad

Specifications Effective firing range - 40 km. Total weight 1344 tons, barrel weight 400 tons, barrel length 32 m, caliber 800 mm, projectile length (without propellant charge) 3.75 m, projectile weight 7.1 tons

The remains of "Dora" shocked American soldiers

Unique photographs: transporting the captured Gustav to Stalingrad

Until June 26, shells of monstrous caliber covered Soviet positions with a frequency of five to sixteen rounds per day. The shelling ended as suddenly as it began, leaving the Soviet side with an unresolved question: what was it?

The Complete Dora

The Dora, the largest and most powerful cannon created in the entire history of mankind, fired at Sevastopol. Back in 1936, while visiting the Krupp plant, Hitler demanded from the company's management a heavy-duty artillery system to combat long-term structures of the Maginot Line and Belgian forts. The design group of the Krupp company, which began developing a new weapon according to the proposed tactical and technical specifications, was headed by Professor Erich Müller, who completed the project in 1937. Krupp factories immediately began producing colossi.

The first gun, named “Dora” after the chief designer’s wife, was completed at the beginning of 1941 and cost 10 million Reichsmarks. The gun's bolt was wedge-type, and the loading was separate-sleeve. The total length of the barrel was 32.5 m, and the weight was 400 tons (!). In combat position, the length of the installation was 43 m, width 7 m, and height 11.6 m. The total weight of the system was 1350 tons. The supercannon carriage consisted of two railway transporters, and the installation fired from a double railway track.

In the summer of 1941, the first gun was delivered from the Krupp plant in Essen to the Hillersleben experimental site, 120 km west of Berlin. From September 10 to October 6, 1941, firing was carried out at the training ground, the results of which completely satisfied the Wehrmacht leadership. At the same time, the question arose: where can this super-weapon be used?

The fact is that the Germans managed to capture the Maginot Line and the Belgian forts in May-June 1940 without the help of superweapons. Hitler found Doré new goal- fortifications of Gibraltar. But this plan also turned out to be impracticable for two reasons: firstly, the railway bridges in Spain were built without the expectation of transporting cargo of such weight, and secondly, General Franco had no intention of allowing German troops through the territory of Spain.

Finally, in February 1942, the Chief of the General Staff ground forces General Halder ordered the Dora to be sent to the Crimea and handed over to the commander of the 11th Army, Colonel General Manstein, for shelling of Sevastopol.

At the resort

On April 25, 1942, five trains with a dismantled gun mount and a service division secretly arrived at the Tashlykh-Dair station (now the village of Yantarnoye) 30 km south of the Dzhankoy railway junction. The position for "Dora" was chosen 25 km from the targets intended for shelling in Sevastopol and 2 km south of the Bakhchisarai railway station. They decided to build the top-secret gun position in an open field, on an area as bare as a table, where there were no rock shelters or even a small fishing line. A low hill between the Churuk-Su River and the railway was opened with a longitudinal excavation 10 m deep and about 200 m wide, a kilometer-long branch line was built to the Bakhchisarai station, and “whiskers” were laid to the west of the hill, which ensured a horizontal firing angle of 45 degrees.

Work on the construction of the firing position was carried out around the clock for four weeks. 600 military railway builders, 1000 workers of the Labor Front of the Todt organization, 1500 people were recruited local residents and several hundred prisoners of war. Air defense was ensured by reliable camouflage and constant patrolling over the area by fighters from the 8th Air Corps of General Richthofen. An 88mm battery was lined up next to the position. anti-aircraft guns and 20-mm anti-aircraft guns. In addition, the Dora was served by a smoke masking division, 2 Romanian infantry companies security, a platoon of service dogs and a special motorized team of field gendarmerie. In total, the combat activity of the gun was supported by more than four thousand people.

Ghost gun

The Gestapo declared the entire area a restricted zone with all the ensuing consequences. Taken measures turned out to be so successful that the Soviet command did not learn about the arrival in Crimea, or even about the very existence of “Dora,” until 1945!

Contrary to official history The command of the Black Sea Fleet, led by Admiral Oktyabrsky, did one stupidity after another. Until 1943, it firmly believed that back in June 1941 the Italian fleet entered the Black Sea, and fought stubborn battles with it - they laid minefields, bombed mythical enemy submarines and torpedoed enemy ships that existed only in the fevered imagination. As a result, dozens of combat and transport ships of the Black Sea Fleet were killed by their own mines and torpedoes! The command of the Sevastopol defensive region either sent Red Army soldiers and junior commanders who reported explosions of huge shells to court for alarmism, or, on the contrary, reported to Moscow about the use of 24-inch (610 mm) railway installations by the Germans.

After the end of the fighting in Crimea in May 1944, a special commission searched for a firing position of a super-heavy gun in the areas of the villages of Duvankoy (now Verkhnesadovoye) and Zalankoy (Frontovoye), but to no avail. Documents about the use of “Dora” were also not among the trophies of the Red Army captured in Germany. Therefore, Soviet military historians concluded that “Dora” did not exist near Sevastopol at all, and all rumors about it were Abwehr misinformation. But the writers had a blast watching “Dora” to the fullest. In dozens of detective stories, heroic scouts, partisans, pilots and sailors found and destroyed the Dora. There were people who were awarded government awards “for the destruction of Dora,” and one of them was even awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Psychological weapon

The emergence of myths around “Dora” was also facilitated by the effect of its 7-ton shells, the effectiveness of which was close to... zero! Of the 53 800-mm shells fired, only 5 hit the target. Observation posts of battalion 672 noted hits on battery No. 365, a strong point of the rifle regiment of the 95th rifle division, and on the command post of the anti-aircraft battalion of the 61st air defense regiment.

True, Manstein wrote in his book “Lost Victories”: “The gun with one shot destroyed a large ammunition depot on the shore of Severnaya Bay, hidden in the rocks at a depth of 30 m.” Note that none of the Sukharnaya Balka adits were blown up by fire German artillery before last days defense of the Northern side of Sevastopol, that is, until June 25-26. And the explosion that Manstein writes about occurred from the detonation of ammunition that was openly laid out on the shore of the bay and prepared for evacuation to the South Side. When firing at other objects, the shells landed at a distance of 100 to 740 m from the target.

11th Headquarters German army I chose my targets rather poorly. First of all, the targets for Dora's armor-piercing shells were to be coastal tower batteries No. 30 and No. 35, protected command posts fleet, Primorsky Army and coastal defense, fleet communication centers, underground arsenal adits, special plants No. 1 and No. 2 and fuel depots hidden in the thickness of the Inkerman limestones, but almost no fire was fired at them.

As for the eight shells fired at coastal battery No. 16, this is nothing more than an embarrassment for German intelligence. The 254 mm guns installed there were removed in the late 1920s, and no one has been there since then. By the way, I climbed around and filmed the entire battery No. 16 up and down, but did not find any serious damage. Later boss General Staff Wehrmacht Colonel General Halder assessed “Dora” as follows: “A real work of art, but, unfortunately, useless.”

Scrap metal

In addition to the Dora, two more of its 800-mm sisters were manufactured in Germany, which, however, did not participate in hostilities. In 1944, the Germans planned to use the Dora to fire at London from French territory. For this purpose, three-stage N.326 rockets were developed. In addition, the Krupp company designed a new barrel for the Dora with a smooth bore of 52 cm caliber and a length of 48 meters. The firing range was supposed to be 100 km. However, the projectile itself contained only 30 kg of explosive and its high-explosive effect was negligible compared to the V-1 and V-2. Hitler ordered work on the 52 cm barrel to be stopped and demanded the creation of a gun that would fire high-explosive shells weighing 10 tons with 1.2 tons of explosive. It is clear that the creation of such a weapon was a fantasy.

April 22, 1945, during the offensive in Bavaria 3rd American army, advanced patrols of one of the units, while passing through a forest 36 km north of the city of Auerbach, discovered 14 heavy platforms at the dead end of the railway line and the remains of some huge and complex metal structure scattered along the tracks, severely damaged by the explosion. Later, other parts were found in a nearby tunnel, in particular, two giant artillery barrels (one of which turned out to be intact), parts of carriages, a bolt, etc. A survey of prisoners showed that the discovered structures belonged to the heavy-duty Dora and Gustav guns " Upon completion of the examination, the remains of both artillery systems were scrapped.

The third super-powerful weapon - one of the Gustavs - ended up in the Soviet zone of occupation, and its further fate is unknown to Western researchers. The author found a mention of it in the “Report of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Armaments on work in Germany in 1945-1947.” v.2. According to the report: “...in July 1946, a special group of Soviet specialists, on instructions from the Ministry of Armaments, undertook a study of the 800-mm Gustav installation.” The group compiled a report with a description, drawings and photographs of the 800-mm gun and carried out work to prepare for the export of the 800-mm Gustav railway installation to the USSR.”

In 1946-1947, a train with parts of the 80-cm Gustav gun arrived in Stalingrad at the Barricades plant. The weapon was studied at the factory for two years. According to information received from veterans of the design bureau, the plant was instructed to create a similar system, but I did not find confirmation of this in the archives. By 1950, the remains of the Gustav were sent to the factory landfill, where they were stored until 1960, and then were scrapped.

Along with the gun, seven cartridges were delivered to the Barrikady plant. Six of them were subsequently scrapped, and one, used as a fire barrel, survived and was later sent to Malakhov Kurgan. This is all that remains of the greatest weapon in human history.

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! Maximum range the flight range of high explosive shells was 23 miles, and that of concrete-piercing shells was 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 DM 7 million was paid for the second gun, the Dora (named after Dora, the wife of the chief engineer).

France capitulated in 1940 without the help of a 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 dump, 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 of 1943 occurred a year before the Warsaw Uprising of 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 had certain ideas - from the mass murder of Jews to the conquest of Europe. And he tried in every possible way to show his greatness. The Nazis even built what would have been the world's largest hotel, but the project had to be canceled because there were more pressing issues, such as the invasion of France.

In the 1930s, France built a series of massive fortifications and obstacles called the Maginot Line to protect the country from invasion from the east. These fortifications were among the strongest of the time, with deep underground bunkers, modern retractable turrets, infantry shelters, barricades, artillery and anti-tank guns etc. The Wehrmacht was unable to penetrate this formidable defense. So Hitler went to the ammunition manufacturer Krupp to solve the problem.

11 PHOTOS

1. Krupp engineer Erich Müller calculated that to penetrate seven meters of reinforced concrete or one full meter of steel armored plate they would need artillery with massive dimensions.
2. The gun must have an internal diameter of more than 80 cm and a length of more than 30 meters if it were to fire projectiles weighing 7 tons each from a distance of more than 40 kilometers.
3. The cannon itself will weigh 1,300 tons and will have to be moved by rail. When these figures were presented to Hitler, he approved them, and the creation of the huge weapon began in 1937.
4. Two years later the super gun was ready. Alfred Krupp personally invited Hitler to the Rügenwald test site in early 1941 to evaluate the weapon's power. Alfried Krupp named the gun Schwerer Gustav, or "Fat Gustav", in honor of his father Gustav Krupp.
5. Schwerer Gustav was an absolute monster. Because he was so big and heavy, he could not move on his own. Instead, the cannon was broken into several pieces and transported on 25 freight cars to the deployment site, where it was assembled on site—a task that required 250 men to labor for nearly three days.
6. Laying paths and digging embankments took weeks of work and required 2,500 to 4,000 people working around the clock. 7. Schwerer Gustav moved along many parallel rails, which limited his mobility. Despite the huge firepower, Schwerer Gustav had no means to defend himself. This was decided by Flack's two battalions, which guarded the weapons from possible air attack.
8. For all the time and money spent on building the gun, it did little on the battlefield and did absolutely nothing against the French for whom it was originally intended. 9. Germany had already invaded France in 1940 before the gun was ready. They did this by simply bypassing the Maginot Line.
10. Schwerer Gustav was instead deployed to the Eastern Front at Sevastopol in Russia during its siege in 1942. It took 4,000 men and five weeks to get the gun ready to fire.
11. Over the next four weeks, Gustav fired 48 shells, smashing distant forts and destroying an underwater ammunition depot located 30 meters under the sea, protected by at least 10 meters of concrete protection. The gun was then moved to Leningrad, but the attack was cancelled. Krupp built another weapon with the same dimensions. It was named Dora after the wife of the company's chief engineer. Dora was deployed west of Stalingrad in mid-August 1942, but was hastily withdrawn in September to avoid capture. When the Germans began their long retreat home, they took Dora and Gustav with them. In 1945, the Germans blew up Dora and Gustav.

Hitler and the Generals examine fat Gustav in 1941.

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 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 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 important role in 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.

Based on materials from the Soviet and foreign press. The most big gun Hitler

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 by rail, and it took three whole days to prepare for firing. This thing took part in hostilities only once and was captured by the Allies near Sevastopol.

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

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.

$mob_info$