Saturday, July 22, 2023

giant German WW2 rail gun Dora (Schwerer Gustav)


Schwerer Gustav (Heavy Gustav) was a German 80-centimetre (31.5 in) railway gun. It was developed in the late 1930s by Krupp in Rügenwalde as siege artillery for the explicit purpose of destroying the main forts of the French Maginot Line, the strongest fortifications in existence at the time. The fully assembled gun weighed nearly 1,350 tonnes (1,490 short tons), and could fire shells weighing 7 tonnes (7.7 short tons) to a range of 47 km (29 miles).

Gustav was later deployed in the Soviet Union during the Battle of Sevastopol, part of Operation Barbarossa, where, among other things, it destroyed a munitions depot located roughly 30 m (98 ft) below ground level. The gun was moved to Leningrad, and may have been intended to be used in the Warsaw Uprising like other German heavy siege pieces, but the uprising was crushed before it could be prepared to fire. Gustav was destroyed by the Germans near the end of the war in 1945 to avoid capture by the Soviet Red Army.


This is available as a 1:72 scale model -- details.

1 comment:

Graham Clayton said...

One of the most ridiculous weapons ever built - the time, money and other costs in construction far outweighed the actual damage that the gun caused.