Submarines and their Weapons - Aircraft of World War II

ARTILLERY
which were employed serially, fired just 303 rounds
towards Paris, slightly more than half of which (183)
actually landed within its boundaries, killing 256 and
wounding 620. These results made the entire project
highly cost-ineffective, except in propaganda terms.
Though these first-generation ultra-long-range
guns were to enjoy only limited success, they did,
albeit imperfectly, solve the problem of how to bombard
high-value area targets with relative impunity
from outside the range of counter-battery fire. In more
modern times they would be sickeningly vulnerable
to air attack, since they presented big targets, were
hard to conceal, and impossible to move at very short
notice, but in 1918, despite a huge campaign to locate
them, they were never found. By the time the Allies
overran the Forest of Crepy, where they were located,
there was no sign of them left save their concrete
emplacements. Another problem - and many said a
more pressing one - remained: how to subdue organised
defensive positions like the modern fortresses of
the Maginot Line, which ran down the French-German
border, in the shortest possible time. For this, a
Below: Krupp made two massive 80cm guns, 'Gustav' and
'Dora'; they fired a 7.1 -tonne (7-ton) anti-concrete shell
32km (20 miles} but required a crew of 2000.
80cm KANONE (EISENBAHN) 'SCHWERE GUSTAV
Calibre: 80.0cm (31.5in)
Barrel length: 28.957m (95.00ft)
Weight (overall): 1,350,000kg (2,976,190lb)
Weight of shell (anti-concrete): 7100kg (15,653lb)
Weight of shell (high explosive): 4800kg (10,582lb)
110
Range (HE): 47,100m (51,510 yards
task which was to be undertaken at shorter range, an
approach which can almost be characterised as 'brute
force and ignorance' was all that was necessary, and
the guns in question were no more than straightforward
developments of the siege guns which were
some of the first weapons deployed in 1914.
'BIG BERTHA'
In August of that year, the German Army advanced
through Belgium in order to execute the Schlicffen
Plan, sweeping through northern France to take Paris
from the northwest and thus avoid the hardened
defensive positions which dominated the approach
routes from Germany. For the most part, and exactly
as expected, they met little resistance, except from the
forts surrounding the vital city of Liege, and to subdue
these, they called up the big guns, the 42cm
(16.5in) siege howitzers. The operation took longer
than envisaged, but in the end ; Big Bertha' and her
sisters, as the British came to call the guns, prevailed.
They were not always to be so successful, however;
they were later taken to Verdun and used against the
fortress complex there to much less effect. These guns
were enormous, by any definition - after all, they
fired a shell which stood almost as high as a man, and
weighed in excess of a ton - and moving them was no