German Railway Gun That Shelled Britain

a few days ago i found out about a world war ii german railway gun that was able to fire shells from northern france all the way to england the next day i persuaded some of my friends to join me on a day trip to northern france to go and see one of the only two guns of its type that still exist after traveling mostly by car for almost five hours i can say that it was very much worth it to see this gun in person the railway gun was the comp k5 its full designation is crump 28 centimeter canon 5e comp is the manufacturer 28 centimeter is the barrel width on the inside of the gun it's actually 283 millimeters but it's easier to round down canonna translates to canon and 5 refers to the series of the gun e means the gun was railway mounted or in german eisenmanger shots a total of 25 railway guns were built to the k5 specifications the original purpose of these guns were to take on france's maginot line the series of heavy fortifications between france and germany these fortifications were known to be a very formidable obstacle lots of other heavy weapons were also being developed around the period of the 1930s to take on france's maginot line examples being the carl siege mortis and the schwer gustaf railway gun all of these projects were in development as early as 1934 but weren't needed as the german army bypassed the heavy fortifications there was a great love for railway guns by germany as they allowed heavy artillery to be able to be transported quickly over long distances with already existing infrastructure the railway networks the ease of transportation of the railway guns allowed them to be relatively mobile they also could engage targets without worrying about enemy counter artillery as they could outrange even the heaviest allied artillery at the time just to put it in perspective the american long tom could fire shells up to a maximum range of 24 kilometers the russian 203 millimeter b4 had a maximum range of 18 kilometers both of these guns maximum ranges are under half of the k5s and these are some of the heaviest artillery pieces that were made by the allies the k5 weighed 220 tons and could fire its 250 kilogram standard shell up to 65 kilometers away firing speed actually wasn't too bad for a railway gun it was at a rate of 15 per hour but you can also think of it as one round every four minutes at peak efficiency maximum range with standard shells was 65 kilometers but later in the war shows that could reach up to 150 kilometers away were developed we'll talk more about the different shell types later the k5 had a whopping rotation of one whole degree left or right it was common for engineers to build a piece of curved railway track bending left or right so the gun could aim this track was normally built before the gun arrived at the firing site so it wasn't exactly a case of the artillery officer yelling at his engineers to build track as he wanted to aim the gun to fix the issue of traverse it was common when there was time to build a turntable to allow the gun to rotate 360 degrees it took 42 men to crew the k5 and that was just for the firing crew the gun needed the support of engineers to maintain the gun cooks to make meals extra soldiers for security admin personnel and also other miscellaneous personnel bringing the actual total crew number per gun up quite a bit it was standard for railway guns to operate in pairs this is what made up a railway gun battery each battery had free trains for transport two trains would be used to move the railway guns along with its special ammunition carriages these carriages carried the shells and the propellant charges needed for the gun it even had a refrigeration carriage just to keep the explosive powder at a low temperature the third train had approximately 24 railway cars and the cars contained extra ammunition extra food kitchen passenger cars anti-aircraft equipment electrical generator flatbed for vehicles and a whole bunch of other stuff for transportation over long distance a special framework was erected around the k5 over this framework a tarpaulin would be placed helping to disguise the gun it was hoped that it would disguise the railway gun to look more like a standard railway carriage so if the train was spotted by allied recon not too much notice will be given for that particular train the k5 guns saw action in russia northern france italy and even in the defense of germany in the later years of the war six k5s were brought to northern france in preparation for operation sea lion the invasion of england by germany even after the operations cancellation it was decided that the six guns would remain in northern france four massive bunkers were built to accommodate the trains each bunker could fit two of the railway guns with some room for the locomotive and ammunition wagons when there was an allied air presence the railway guns would then back into the bunker to safely wait out the threat after the raid was over the train could then be brought out again and continue firing these train bunkers and their firing positions can be seen on this map some of these bunkers are still around in northern france you can see them on google maps here's two that i found i saw one of these on the day trip it's quite close to the euro tunnel car exit but it's actually not too hard to miss the other one i found is in a quarry here's an actual picture of the k5 rolling out of that bunker from northern france the 6k files were used to battle for control of the channel by shooting at ships that were in range they were used along with heavier coastal guns to deter a sea invasion and sometimes lay down a bombardment on southern england the k5 displayed at the atlantic war museum isn't actually from northern france in 1980 a 31 meter long railway gun was discovered behind the factory building in the state artillery workshops in southern france it was left there to rust but has recently been lovingly restored in the last few years what is kind of odd is that they restored the k5 to have the same markings as leopold the only other surviving railway gun my guess would be because the gun when it was found back in 1980 had so much damage that the original markings were gone nobody's even sure of which railway battery this gun originally belonged to k-5s also saw action in sevastopol leningrad and stalingrad but the most documented account of the k5 in action was in italy where pale railway guns were used to great effect against allied sea landing originally the two guns were destined for africa but the campaign ended before they could be shipped over that's why they have really weird camouflage patterns the 2k fires are called leopold and robot also known by the nicknames given to them by the allies as anzio annie and anzio express the 2k fires were deep inland in the hills of italy firing shelves at the allied beachhead according to american records the k5s caused 83 percent of the casualties received on the beachhead what made these two particular railway guns rather annoying is that the allies did not know their positions the guns had the ability to retreat within a tunnel so when there was a risk of attack the k5s would just withdraw back into the tunnel and when the danger was over the k5s would leave the tunnel and continue bombardment of the beachhead typically they would pop out fire around up to eight rounds and then fall back into the tunnel a back and forth between the allied forces in italy and the two railway guns commenced for the next three months one day the allies finally got eyes on the two k5s as they were in a railway yard shortly after they were spotted an attack by fighter bombers commenced on the rail yard the pilots reported direct hits on the two railway guns the allies then found out that evening that they hadn't destroyed the k5 guns because they were getting shelled again that night it turned out that the pilots had attacked decoys which were in the train yard when the fighter bombers began to attack the k5s were already in their tunnel to mess with allied recon fake flashes to simulate the k5's muzzle flash were used around the italian hills to confuse allied recon into not knowing which flash was the origin of the shelling there's a lovely quote from an american during the anzio sea landings one of its shelves fell short and made a large hole in the ground this show crater was so big that we made good use of it because it was almost like a roman amphitheater sometimes an american band would perform at the base of the crater while we sat all around on the inside of the slopes after three months of this back and forth the guns were abandoned as the allies were closing in to the location of the tunnel and the ammunition for the guns was low to stop the guns from falling into allied hands the guns were ordered to be destroyed when the allies did capture the tunnel and found the two railway guns both of which were partially destroyed but still in relatively okay shape unfortunately the allies still bombed the hell out of the tunnel but luckily the guns had already been removed both leopold and robot were shipped to the us the parts of robots were cannibalized and used to fix up leopold you can still find leopold on display in the us it's currently at fort lee in virginia there were three shells developed for the k5 there was a standard shell a rocket assisted shell and an experimental arrow show the standard shell was the most accurate and had a range of 65 kilometers it weighed just over 250 kilograms and there was 30 kilograms of high explosive in the shell the next type of show was the rocket assisted shell wing at just under 250 kilograms a small rocket motor inside the show ignited 19 seconds into flight when the show was roughly near horizontal in its shell trajectory it had a maximum range of 86 kilometers but this came at the cost of accuracy and the amount of high explosive within the shell the he value is now half of the previous type at only 14 kilograms the last shell developed was the arrow show it weighed half the weight of the previous shows at only 136 kilograms the arrow shell in essence was basically a discarding saber round it had a maximum range of 151 kilometers and had 25 kilograms of hc this show had the range to be able to hit london from northern france for for sure to leave the gun propellant charges were needed typically free charges would be used but for shorter ranges less charges would be used ideally the first shell of a barrage would be the ranging shell this shell was designed to put out a lot of black smoke to make it easier for artillery observers to spot to keep the loading time as short as possible the crew moved the shelves on little cards on a smaller gauge railway one of these little carts could carry one shell and the propellant rounds needed for that shell in essence one card could carry enough ammunition for one shot these carts would be rolled along their smaller custom railway up to the back of the k5 where a crane would winch up the car and put it onto the loading deck the deck had its own mini railway that allowed the car to be rolled up all the way up to the breach from there it was a simple matter just to push the shelves in with a rod don't get me wrong the shelves weighed up to around 250 kilograms and the propellant charges were 50 kilograms and up it was still hard work just not as bad as if it wasn't automated the train carriage's layout was designed to make loading of the shelves almost like an assembly line there was a small railway track that ran through the ammunition carriages on the train to make loading easier i find it rather neat that later variants of the k5 actually had space to fit two cards on their loading deck this allowed one car to be loaded onto the deck while the other car was being loaded into the gun there were plans to mount the k5 onto two tiger chassis to increase the gun's mobility and to decrease the reliance on a functioning rail network this plan never got out of the design stage and you can kind of see why an already complicated machine such as the railway gun would be made infinitely more complicated if it had to be mounted on two tigers there's one question that a lot of people like to argue about and that is were railway guns useful or in this case what's the k5 useful while it is argued that the k5 is one of the most successful railway guns of all time most successful still does not mean that it was good it just means it wasn't as bad as the rest it took a lot of time and money to keep the k5s operational there was a whole host of problems that plagued the k5 such as not enough ammunition for the guns during the war throughout 1941 all the way to the end of the war there were never enough rounds being produced for the k5 k5s on all fronts were set up and ready to fire but they didn't have any shells too far even in italy with the famous anzio annie shelling the allied beach head all historic media likes to mention the siege went on for three months very few sources mentioned that the gun actually went silent for a period of 21 days because it was our ammo all the specialized equipment like the actual production of the guns itself the trains that pull them the gun firing crew the security detachment other personnel anti-aircraft guns all to protect a big lump of steel that could easily be spotted from the air even with the best intentions to camouflage it no amount of nets and bunkers could ever really hide the k5s forever it's easy to say it was a big waste of time but let's look at the positives a little bit it did make for some great propaganda footage and it's also nice to know as a soldier that in a war your side has the bigger gun than the people you're fighting sure it did have the bonus of being able to bombard targets without having to worry about counterfire but if you didn't control the skies the enemy will see a massive railway gun and find an easy target to destroy the job of the railway gun could have just as easily been done with planes which can drop thousands of kilograms of bombs for a much lower cost the railway gun was already an obsolete concept at the beginning of world war ii due to advances in aviation let's just be thankful that the nazis green lit the railway gun projects because it may have caused the water and slightly earlier than it should have due to misallocation of resources although i will admit though i still think the gun looks really awesome like comment and subscribe or i'll break your [ __ ] likes you

Channel: The Iron Armenian aka G.I. Haigs

Views: 2,869,431

Rating: 4.8639941 out of 5

Keywords: war, thunder, warthunder, gaming, fps, online, k5, railway, railway gun, cannon, dover, london, france, atlantic wall, Krupp 28 cm K5(E), britian, england, germany, Krupp, Batterie Todt Museum, Paris Gun, Schwerer Gustav, Big Bertha, Karl-Gerät, Karl, siege mortar, Anzio Annie, K5, wounder, weapon, wunderwaffe, Top5, Top 10, Weird, big, heavy, mind, blow, blowing, fact, theory, theorists, Operation Sea Lion, blitzkrieg, Best World War 2 Documentary Ever, world war II documentary, World war 2, Best Documentary

Id: jmzFx7cfu7Y

Length: 13min 38sec (818 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 21 2017