Thread: The greatest GIANT guns ever built...

I'd like to have one round for my cartridge collection.

If you could fit it in the front door, that is...

I'd mount it on a concrete pedistal, and build an addition around it!

Yay! A new wing for the house!

Gustav was indeed a monumental waste of manpower

Interestingly, Gustav was not ordered by the government or the Wehrmacht. It was a private venture initiated by Krupp itself. (or so I've read). I have some more info on Gustav if anybody cares to read it

Can you post your info please? This is an interesting subject...

Krupp's engineers started to work on Gustav in 1937 (!) but it was 3 years before test-firing and another 2 years before completed weapons were actually assembled.

As I mentioned, it was built as a private company project, not something that the German government ordered. (Read The Arms Of Krupp to understand why the various heads of the Krupp family were known as "Kanone König" - Cannon Kings)

It weighed over 1000 tonnes, needed 2 parallel railway tracks to sit on, took over 2000 men working 6 weeks to assemble and it's barrel was over 30 METERS long.

Hitler loved the 800mm gun at first sight and gave it the name of Gustav after the head of the Krupp family. (By the way, Gustav was not a Krupp by blood, he married into the Krupp family.)

Some stats on Kanone Gustav:
Caliber 80-cm (31.5 inches!)
Length 42.976 m (141 ft)
Barrel Length (106' 6.7")
Weight 1350 tonnes (1329 tons)
Max. Elevation 65 degrees
Ammo 4800kg HE or 7100kg concrete-piercing HE
Muzzle Velocity 820 m/sec (HE) or 710 m/sec (concrete-pierceing)
Max Range 47000m with 4.8 tonne round or 38000 with 7 tonne round
Crew 1500 men to build and 500 men to serve it while action.

Damn, that thing was almost twice as big as Snipe's 16"! That's pretty big.

There is of course the "Iraqi supergun" some of Britain and Canada's finest engineering ... for satellite launch or pipelines of course :-



From March of 1988 until the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Iraq contracted with Gerard Bull to build three superguns: two full sized 'Project Babylon' 1000 mm guns and one 'Baby Babylon' 350 mm prototype. Nine tonnes of special supergun propellant could fire a 600 kg projectile over a range of 1,000 kilometres, or a 2,000 kg rocket-assisted projectile. The 2,000 kg projectile would place a net payload of about 200 kg into orbit at a cost of $ 600 per kg. The 1000 mm guns were never completed. After the war UN teams destroyed the guns and gun components in Iraqi possession. LEO Payload: 200 kg. to: 180 km Orbit. at: 33.0 degrees. Payload: 600 kg. to a: 500 km altitude suborbital trajectory. Total Mass: 2,000 kg. Core Diameter: 1.00 m. Launch Price $: 0.12 million. in 1990 price dollars. Total Development Built: 25.

And the big one :-



Rumours of its "other uses" include :-

* Long-range attack using chemical, biological, or nuclear warheads. However since the weapon was fixed, it could only be fired in one direction, and like the V-3 would be easily identified and neutralised by the targeted country. For this reason the Israelis did not consider it much of a threat.

* As an anti-satellite weapon. It would launch a special shell in space that would explode near the target satellite, covering it with sticky material and blinding it.

There's a book called Fist of God by Forsyth that deals alot with the Supergun