Schwerer Gustav: It's a Really Big Gun

hi everybody welcome back to a brand new episode of mega projects this one is the shredder Gustave it's obviously German German pronunciation there are gonna be some of those I'm gonna screw them up you're gonna have a go at me in the comments it is B circle of YouTube life but I apologize ahead of time I am doing my best I speak English not German I try [Music] so today we're talking about a gun really really big gun I mean this thing was actually bloody massive in fact it's the largest artillery gun ever made yesterday I present to you Shadow Gustav weighing in at a whopping 1,350 tons with an overall length of forty three point three meters that's a hundred and forty two feet for my Imperial friends this heavy weight artillery piece was absolutely no joke and if your pardon the pun it really packs a punch but a bomb boom made by the Germans hardly surprised there this weapon was a super railway gun built in the 1930s with the explicit purpose of reducing the French Maginot Line to dust of course things didn't pan out exactly like that all the same it's still a terrifying example of the height of the German military power during World War two what exactly became of this bear moth of a machine and why did the Germans only ever build - well we're definitely no answer those questions in today's video so let's jump in shall we the French Maginot Line was a line of concrete fortifications obstacles and weapons installations spanning a pretty mind-blowing 943 miles and it was said to be impossible spoiler alert it wasn't I mean I'm pretty sure I'm right to thinking they went around it right I guess we're gonna find out the Maginot Line was invulnerable to aerial bombings and tank fire it had underground railways as a backup it also had state-of-the-art living conditions for garrison troops supplying air conditioning and eating areas for their comfort it was just widely accepted that the Maginot Line was not something that could be broken the Germans decided though that they were going to test that theory and they were gonna do that by blowing a hole straight through the Maginot Line and just marching their armies to the other side to accomplish this feat and break through the line the Germans would need a machine capable of piercing through seven meters of reinforced concrete or one full meter of steel armor plating Krupp engineer Eric moolah calculated that the task would require a weapon with a calibre of around 80 centimeters firing a projectile weighing seven tons from a barrel 30 meters long this weapon would have a weight of over a thousand tons no machine this big had ever been built the outlook of the Germans were simple there's no problem too big and even bigger gun cannot solve Hitler demanded the creation of this machine eager to reduce the Maginot Line to dust and begin that onslaught to show his contribution to the war effort the arms manufacturer Gustav Krupp offered to build this gigantic weapon for free what a good Nazi and so in 1934 Krupp began assembling the super gun [Music] Crippen dedup running a bit late however and schwerer gustav didn't enter service until 1941 this meant the huge railway gun wasn't able to fulfill Hitler's plan and blast that Maginot Line to smithereens talk about that have a missed deadline their time it waits for no man or super artillery piece apparently and the war it just went ahead without Germany's biggest gun stupid impolite war instead of using the super railway gun Germany came up with the innovative solution of just going around the Maginot Line I thought so on the 10th of May 1940 Germany began its invasion of neutral Belgium Luxembourg and the Netherlands but that's definitely a story for another day probably not something I'll cover on the mega-projects channel but you know I've got other channels for covering that sort of stuff Schroeder stuff was the largest caliber rifle weapon ever used in combat and in terms of overall weight the heaviest mobile artillery piece ever built while the weapon was in arguably an engineering marvel it was also pretty damn impractical in order to move this huge machine specially constructed tracks were created for it to run off to transport the railway gun long distances it first had to be disassembled and then reassembled using cranes and not only that but another set of tracks were required for the actual cranes to move on so you might say that this super gun wasn't acquiring a lot of traction and that will be the last pun but above bumped jokes aside though this huge artillery weapon was turning out to be a lot more work than it was worth for the Germans 250 crewmen were required to assemble the gun which took up to three and a half days to complete a further 2,500 men were required to lay down the tracks as well as that in order to protect the weapon from air attacks it had to be accompanied by a number of flak battalions at all times the railway guns massive size meant that it was really visible to planes and you know they would just bomb it another shortcoming of the railway can you imagine being one of those pilots being like looks like a really big gun we should probably destroy that another shortcoming of the railway gun was its limited range of motion the weapons gigantic 30 five meter or a hundred and six foot barrel could only move up or down at an angle of about 48 degrees what's more to achieve horizontal targeting the huge artillery gun could only be moved along the curved track it couldn't do this on its own all the extra steps manpower and resources needed to make this machine even operational it really just begs the question was this all worthwhile I mean yes it looks epically badass and scary and who you know in the modern day doesn't love scary nazi war machines but you know was it worth it like we said already a compact punch the weapon caliber alone on the barrel was 80 centimeters 31 inches also those concrete piercing shells they weighed 7 tons each making them the largest and heaviest shells at that time by a vast margin these shells could be fired for a range of over 47 kilometers that's 29 miles it's incredible just these absolutely vast 80 centimeter sized bullets essentially just being fired 29 miles that's like to the next town it's across the English Channel I think we're getting to that however after about 300 shells were fired the enormous barrel would need to be replaced while 300 shells sounds like a lot at a rate of fire of around 14 rounds a day the barrel would have to be replaced roughly every 22 days this meant another shipment from crips factory back in Germany to wherever the gun was positions this was just another example of the issues that the crew of this super gun faced buta Shraddha Gustav's late arrival to the war it was sent to the Eastern Front and used at the siege of sevastopol as part of Operation Barbarossa four thousand men were needed to set up the artillery weapon in position during the siege the huge artillery gun fired 300 shells at the enemy lines including Soviet fortresses and a munitions dumps which were specifically targeted following this siege the gun was transported to be used in the attack on Leningrad however this attack was ultimately cancelled the gun was to remain mostly inactive for the remainder of the war [Music] on the 14th of April 1945 one day before the arrival of US troops the railway gun was destroyed by German troops in order to prevent its capture by the enemy a week later its ruins were discovered by the American troops in the summer of 1945 the remains of schwerer gustav were studied by soviet specialists and in the autumn of that same year the wreckage of the weapon was transported by the Soviets to murrs burg where german military materiel was being gathered that was the last anyone ever saw of this giant machine to this day that whereabouts of its remains are still unknown perhaps it was scrapped for metal or maybe it's just sitting in the backyard of a very wealthy Russian man who really knows and that's why no one messes with Putin allegedly alright so that was the schwerer gustav but fear not the Germans didn't stop at one deadly mega weapon hang around on this mega-projects channel to hear about the second super railgun interesting railgun also another type of thing but when we talk about it here we're referring to a gun that is on Rails we're gonna hear about a lethal barrel attachment and a super tank that would have weighed 1,500 tons had it been completed I love how the Nazis just mace made things that are like straight out of fiction some men by their significant others nice jewelry other men named super artillery after them the chief engineer working for crook was one such man the second huge male gun the Germans made was simply called Dora named after the chief engineer's wife I can imagine if she had like a you know award Jensen aim like oh what's the guy called Sally Dora was deployed briefly in the Battle of Stalingrad however her reign was short-lived Dora was withdrawn when Soviet troops threatened to encircle the German forces when the Germans retreated they took Dora with them whether or not Dora actually existed is still a mystery to historians today some sources claimed that the gun was just a nickname for shuara Gustav however other sources claimed that there are financial records that prove Dora was built and sold by Krupp the truth of the matter is less clear no physical evidence of Dora has ever been found supposedly in March 1945 Dora was transferred to Grafenwoehr where a month later she was blown up by the Germans likely to prevent capture as well the debris of Dora was discovered by American troops sometime after the discovery of shuara Gustav's ruins Dora's debris was scrapped in the 1950s and swell that dear viewer is the ends of super ray guns for Germany I mean maybe they'll bring them back but today we have you know miss Olsen drones and starfish in November 1943 plans were initiated to build a special barrel for shuara Gustav this was a barrel that could have had a devastating effect on the war that barrel was the lung of Gustav this cannon at a caliber of 52 centimeters all 20.5 inches the barrel was 43 meters or 141 feet in length it was designed to fire projectiles at incredible ranges it was said to be capable of reaching a range of 190 kilometers I was I had my mind blown earlier at 40 that's insane four times more this gave the monstrous barrel the ranged hit London if it was positioned in Calais France however the barrel was never completed as it was damaged during construction by a Royal Air Force raid on Essen awesome [Music] another project that never became operational was a machine that sounds like it came straight out of the Terminator the landcruiser p1 500 monster in 1942 it was proposed to construct a machine similar to the schwerer gustav only this time it would be mounted on a self-propelled platform that could move without the railway tracks it was aptly nicknamed monster for all intents and purposes this monster was just an absolutely vast tank like I said earlier this would have weighed 1500 tons that had been constructed which would have been 150 times heavier than shuara Gustav itself the barrel width would have been 80 centimeters similar to shredder Gustav's and for a mental image here that is a tank with a barrel so big a grown man could have crawled inside it easily easily 80 centimeters it is terrifying to imagine the damage that this super tank would have inflicted as well as the huge barrel monster was also designed to be equipped with multiple mg 151 autocannon switch for reference normally just go on combat aircraft however this absolute unit never left the drawing board in 1943 the idea was scrapped by Albert Speer and subsequently deemed impractical had this machine been built it would have surpassed the Panzer 8 as the heaviest tank ever made by nearly eight times the Panzers weight [Music] overall the super railguns were quite impractical while they looked terrifying the impressive they were in fact clunky and inefficient the resources and time required to make these super machines operational just wasn't worth it not to mention the sheer amounts of men that we needed to assemble the tracks operate the weapon protect the weapon and disassemble the weapon for long journeys had things gone differently such as Krupp having schwerer gustav ready on time for the invasion of France or perhaps if longer Gustav was never bombed by the Royal Air Force and maybe the war would have plans out really differently fortunately it didn't perhaps the Maginot Line could have been broken or perhaps London would have faced unparalleled Burridge's from the French coastline the truth of the matter is we'll just never know these super rail guns while they were used relatively effectively they still fell remarkably short of their military potential now they are more of an intimidating sideshow for historians to look back on in all whatever the case soiree Gustav and Dora have cemented themselves in history as some of the most remarkable and/or inspiring military machines ever made even if the Germans ended up being somewhat disappointing so I really hope you found that video of mega-projects interesting if you've got more super weapons that you'd like us to look at let me know in the comments below and I will dig those up and make a video about them just upvote the ones you like it's how it works and if you liked this video smash that like button subscribe all of that great stuff and I'll see you next time [Music] [Music]

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 836,037

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Id: dncl_hVko-k

Length: 14min 26sec (866 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 03 2020