1500-ton Self-Propelled 80cm Gun
 By Gary Zimmer

In a paperback titled Tanks of the Axis Powers published over 20 years ago there is a brief mention of some of Germany's armoured follies. It mentions a 1500 ton super heavy tank, cased in 250mm of armour, armed with an 80cm gun and two 15cm weapons, and powered by four U-boat diesels. Although there was no illustration I have always been curious as to what this 1500 tonner would look like.



"Heavy Gustav " or "Dora"

 

However we do know something about the proposed main weapon, the 80cm. Although not the largest calibre gun ever made, or the longest ranged, the 80cm railway gun 'Dora' was the biggest. As far as we know it was used only sparingly, to shell Sevastopol in the Crimea, and later Warsaw. Too large to be transported whole, Dora required several trains to transport it. Before assembly could begin, and this took several weeks to acomplish, a second track had to be laid at the chosen firing site. Movable straddle cranes also had to be assembled, these were on their own additional rails. The two 20 axle halves of the chassis were shunted onto the double tracks side by side, and coupled together. Only then could the cranes start putting the really big bits on. Once assembled Dora must have been an awesome sight, all one thousand three hundred and fifty tons of it. The barrel alone weighed 100 tons, the breech was also another 100 tons. It could fling a 7 ton shell about 45 km. As a piece of static siege artillery there was no question of its effect, but even its creators, Krupp, admitted while it was a valuable research tool, as a practical weapon of war it was useless.

 

Which brings us to the 1500 tonner, aptly named 'Monster' by armaments minister Albert Speer. It may have been an attempt to make some use of Dora, or simply an extension of a policy to self-propell all heavy artillery, but someone got the idea of putting Dora on tracks. 
 

 


 Alleged wartime sketch of the "Monster"


The wartime sketch (provided courtesy Karl Horvat, an Australian researcher) is all we have, but it allows us to deduce a few things.


One reason why you can't simply scale up an existing tank design is ground pressure. If you know the mass and dimensions (i.e. area of track in contact with the ground) of a vehicle, it is quite easy to work out ground pressure. Put simply, weight will be roughly proportional to the volume or the cube of the dimensions, while the area of track in contact with the ground will be proportional to the square of dimensions. If we double the size of a tank, we get eight times the weight but only four times the track area, thus twice the ground pressure. (There's also twice the stress in suspensions, axles and everything else, it's why elephants have thicker legs than flamingos.)


A very light tracked vehicle, such as a Bren carrier, will have what appears to be ridiculously narrow tracks. As a vehicle gets heavier, the proportion of its width covered by track increases. A Centurion has about 40% of its width as track, while for the 188 ton Maus tank, the figure was about 66% or two thirds. In fact the most striking thing about Maus is this proportion of track width to overall width.

 

Assuming a pressure of 1.2 kg per sq cm for this 1500 tonner, that's about midway between that of a Centurion and a Maus, and seems a realistic place to start. Working backwards, we can use ground pressure and weight (1500 tons, or thereabouts) to find how much contact area it needs. Track width appears to be around 80% of the width, giving tracks of 2.4m width (each) for an overall width of 6m. The illustration appears to be about 6m wide, as is the gun on its rail mount. If we stick to an assumed six metre width, close to an upper limit if we ever consider movement by road, this behemoth thus requires 27m of track on the ground. There's only one problem with this, it won't turn.


The shorter a tracked vehicle is, that is track length on the ground, the less resistance there is to turning. Also, the wider it is, the outside track is able to generate a greater turning moment, and overcome the resistance of both tracks to being pushed sideways. A governing aspect of tracked vehicle design is the ratio of the distance between track centres, and track contact length. Typically, this is about 2:1 for most vehicles. The 1500 tonner has a length/width ratio of about 7.5 to 1, and this is horrific. The way out of this is chassis articulation. By using four track units, each 14m long, and allowing each pair to be turned independently, it might just work.

 

Having four track units ties in nicely with the four U-boat diesels. All the Porsche heavy tanks were electric drive, and it seems hard to imagine anything else for a machine this size. In a U-boat, the diesels drove dual purpose electric motor-generators, but on the 1500 tonner these would function as generators only. It seems logical that each diesel would have its own generator. These four generators would each run an electric motor in each of the four track units. Of course the diesels and generators could be anywhere in the vehicle, as no mechanical drive to the tracks would be required. The other pieces of information are harder to fit into the picture. Just where the two turrets, each with a 15cm gun, would fit I have no idea. If the layout of Dora is preserved, as the illustration seems to indicate, there appears to be no place for them. Also, having these turrets side by side, as Axis suggests, implies a much greater width than 6m if these turrets are not to foul. More puzzling still is the 25cm of frontal armour. The illustration shows that the loading decks, and of course the crew doing the loading, had no protection at all, nor would they need any being many miles from whatever they were shooting at. Having this extent of armour is only required if the machine is going to be used as a direct fire weapon, in other words as a tank and not a piece of self-propelled artillery.

 

It also appears that the shell hoists are retained, as on the rail gun. While having no on-board stowage of 80cm rounds is not an issue for SP artillery, it would be an absolute must for a 'tank'. Dora was supplied with 80cm rounds from the rail lines it sat upon, but this would not be any use to an SP operating away from any railhead.

I imagine that ammunition vehicles would be required to deliver one round at a time to the hoists, they could possibly be similar to the Panzer IV carriers used with the Karl Mörsers. Apart from these carriers there would probably be a whole retinue of vehicles accompanying this giant machine; fire control and signals vehicles, a flak unit, the cook's truck, and so on.



Munitionsschlepper Panzer IV E-D

We can only speculate how this machine might be moved. As with Dora, it could conceivably be transported by rail in pieces, but once assembled and moving under its own power beyond the rail network the fun would really start. As with all oversize vehicles, the planned route would need to be carefully surveyed. It would occupy the entire width of a road on its own, and travelling through any town en route would no doubt lead to a fair bit of urban renewal. Rivers would be less of a problem, as the machine's great height would permit fairly deep fording. However the greatest problem would be the high centre of gravity due to the mass of barrel, breech, recoil system so high up, and sideslope of the ground would be the main restriction to travel, lest the vehicle keel over. As with other large land vehicles, there is a distinction between 'movable' and 'mobile'.






The 80cm 'Gustav' in Action

 

The largest gun ever built had an operational career of 13 days, during which a total of 48 shells were fired in anger. It took 25 trainloads of equipment, 2000 men and up to six weeks to assemble. It seem unlikely that such a weapon will ever be seen again.

 

The 80-cm K (E), for all its size and weight, to say nothing of its 'overkill' firepower, went into action on only one occasion. It was originally intended to smash through the extensive Maginot Line forts but when the campaign in the West took place in 1940 the 80-cm K (E) was still in the Krupp workshops at Essen and, in any event, the German army bypassed the Maginot Line altogether. Thus when the 80-cm equipment had completed its gun proofing trials at Hillersleben and its service acceptance trials at Rugenwalde there was nothing for the gun and its crew to do. To justify the labour and effort of getting the huge gun and its entourage into action, the potential target had to justify all the bother involved, and there were no really large fortification lines left in Europe for the gun to tackle. The two major fortification systems, the Sudetenland defences and the Maginot Line, were both in German hands and it seemed that the 80-cm K (E), or 'schwere Gustav' (heavy Gustav) as it became known, was redundant even before it had fired an aggressive shot

 

During early 1941 one potential target appeared on the planner's drawing boards and that was Gibraltar. It was planned to assault this isolated fortress at the mouth of the Mediterranean to deny the inland sea to the Allies but as Spain was neutral permission had to be obtained from General Franco to allow German troops to travel through Spain to make the attack. Operational planning for the assault (named Operation 'Felix') got to the stage at which German parachute and glider troops were actively training for the assault before a meeting between Hitler and Franco showed that the wily Spanish dictator was not going to allow himself or his country to become mixed up in a major European conflict, Thus another potential target for the 'schwere Gustav' came and went.

 

The invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation 'Barbarossa') took place during the second half of 1941 without any assistance from the 80-cm K (E), but by early 1942 the advances of the German army were so rapid and deep that they were on the approaches to the Crimea. Ahead of them lay the naval base of Sevastopol, which was potentially a useful supply port and base for the southern German armies. The need for such a supply base was not very pressing, but what attracted the German operational planners was that Sevastopol was a heavily-fortified port. Around the perimeter of the city was a long chain of fortifications. some of them dating back to the days before the Crimean War of 1854-6 but others more modern, and near the sea coasts there were numerous heavy coastal .batteries. The place looked ideal for an investment and siege in the old manner, to be followed up by a huge assault which would demonstrate to the world the power of the German army. Soon the relatively light forces that advanced into the Crimea were supplemented by more and more troops and the German planners started to scour Europe for heavy guns to form an old-fashioned siege train. 

 



Karl-Gerät

For centuries it had been the task of the siege train to bombard a besieged fortress into submission or else open a breach for attacking troops to storm. The Germans decided to repeat this performance on a massive scale. From all corners of Europe the German army assembled a massive gun park of all types of artillery from small-calibre field guns up to pre World War I large-calibre howitzers. Some were German in origin but others were old captured weapons, and to these were added the modern embellishments of artillery rockets and super-heavy artillery. Into this category came the 60-cm (23.6-in) mobile mortars known as the Karl-Gerät, and it was realized that at last the propaganda coup could be topped by the first operational use of 'schwere Gustav'.

Accordingly the 80-cm K (E) trundled to the Crimea on specially re-laid track. Well ahead of its progress a small army of labourers started to prepare the gun's chosen firing position at Bakhchisaray, a small village outside Sevastopol.

Well over 1,500 men under the control of a German army engineer unit dug through a small knoll to form a wide railway cutting on an arc of double track, and the sides of the cutting were raised to provide cover and protection for the gun. On the approaches railway troops laboured to re-lay track and strengthen possible trouble points against the passing of the 'schwere Gustav'. Work on the eventual firing site reached the point where the area behind the curve of firing tracks resembled a small marshalling yard over 1. 2 km (0. 75 miles) long. It resembled a marshalling yard, and that was exactly what it was. In the area the 25 separate loads that formed the gun and its carriage had to be assembled and pushed and pulled into the right position and order. Farther to the rear were the accommodation areas where the numerous men of the gun crew lived and prepared for their task
 
The manpower involved in assembling 'Schwere Gustav' was large, Each of the 80-cm K (E)s had a complete detachment of no less than 1,420 men under the command of a full colonel. He had his own headquarters and planning staff, and there was the main gun crew which numbered about 500, most of whom were involved with the complicated ammunition care and handling. Once in action these 500 would remain with the gun, but the rest of the gun's manpower was made up from various units including an intelligence section to determine what targets to engage. Quite a number of troops were involved in the two light anti-aircraft defence battalions that always accompanied the gun when it travelled and also supplied manpower for some assembly tasks. Once the gun was in position these AA battalions warded off unwanted aerial intruders. Two guard companies constantly patrolled the perimeter of the gun position (at one time these companies were Romanian), and at all times there was a small group of civilian technicians from Krupp who dealt with the technical aspects of their monster charge and advised the soldiers. Railway troops and the usual administrative personnel added to the manpower total.
 
Even using this small army of men it took between three and six weeks to assemble the gun, even using the two I 10-tonne cranes that had been designed specially for the task. just getting the right sub-assembly load into position at the right time was a masterpiece of railway marshalling and planning, but eventually it was all sorted out and by early June 1942, 'schwere Gustav' was ready, along with the rest of the siege train with all their cumbersome carriages and ammunition emplaced ready to hand.
 
Firing commenced on June 5, 1942. 'Schwere Gustav' was but one voice in a huge choir that heralded one of the largest and heaviest artillery bombardments of all time. By the time Sevastopol fell early in July 1942 it was calculated that no fewer than 562,944 artillery projectiles had fallen on the port, the bulk of them from heavy-calibre guns and howitzers, and this total does not include the noisy storms of artillery rockets and the extra weight of the infantry's own unit artillery. How the civilians of Sevastopol survived it all can now be explained quite easily. They simply went underground. The city knew the bombardment was coming, for not only had their own party and other authorities told them what to expect, but the Germans constantly assailed them with radio broadcasts and other propaganda as to the wrath that was to befall them. By the time the real bombardment started they had already dug deep shelters both underground and in the walls of quarries and hillsides, and there they lived and remained for weeks, A surprising number survived it all.
 
'Schwere Gustav' was not used against civilian targets. Its first targets were some coastal batteries that were engaged at a range of about 25000 m (27,340 yards), and all shots were observed by a special Luftwaffe flight of Fieseler Fi-156 Storchs assigned to the gun. Eight shots were all that were required to demolish these targets, and later the same day a further six shots were fired at the concrete work known as Fort Stalin. By the end of the day that too was a ruin and preparations were made for the following day. It might be thought that 14 rounds in a day was slow going, but in fact it was good going for a gun with a calibre of 80 cm (31.5 in). At best the firing rate was one round every 15 minutes, and more often the interval was longer. The preparation of each shell and charge was considerable and involved several stages including taking the temperature of each charge, accurately computing the air temperature and wind currents at altitude, and getting the shell and the charge to the breech. Projectile and charge then had to be rammed accurately, and the whole barrel had to be elevated to the correct angle. It all took time.
 
'Schwere Gustav' was in action again on 6 June, initially against Fort Molotov. Seven shells demolished that structure and then it was the turn of a target known as the White Cliff, This was the aiming point for an underground ammunition magazine under Severnaya Bay and so placed by the Sviets as to be invulnerable to conventional weapons. It was not invulnerable to the 80-cm K (E) for nine projectiles bored the way down through the sea, through over 30 m (100 ft) of sea bottom and then exploded inside the magazine. By the time 'schwere Gustav' had fired its ninth shot the magazine was a wreck and to cap it all a small sailing ship had been sunk in the process.
 
The next day was 7 June, and it was the turn of a target known to the Germans as the Südwestspitze, an outlying fortification that was to be the subject of an infantry attack. After seven shots the target was ready for the attentions of the infantry and the gun crews were then able to turn their attentions to some gun maintenance and a short period of relative rest until 11 June. On that day Fort Siberia was the recipient of a further five shells, and then came another lull for the gun crews until 17 June, when they fired their last five operational shells against Fort Maxim Gorki and its attendant coastal battery. Then it was all over for 'schwere Gustav'.
 
Once Sevastopol had fallen on I July the German siege train was dispersed all over Europe once more, and 'schwere Gustav' was taken apart and dragged back to Germany, where its barrel was changed. Including the 48 operational shells fired against the Crimean targets, 'schwere Gustav' had fired about 300 rounds in all, including proofing, training and demonstration rounds. The old barrel went back to Essen for relining.
 
There was nothing more for 'schwere Gustav' to do, It spent some time on the Rugenwalde ranges firing the odd demonstration projectile and being used for the development of some long-range concrete-piercing projectiles, and at one point there was talk of replacing the 80-cm (31.5-in) barrel with a 52-cm (20.5-in) barrel to provide the weapon with more range. That project came to nothing, as did a project to place the 80-cm (31.5-in) barrel on a tracked self-propelled chassis for street fighting. Considerable planning was spent on this outlandish idea before it was terminated, though the idea was no more impractical than the whole 80-cm K (E) project, which had absorbed immense manpower and facilities of all kinds, all to fire 48 rounds at antiquated Crimean fortifications.
 
By May 1945 'schwere Gustav' was scattered all over central Europe. The carefully-planned trains had been attacked constantly by Allied aircraft and what parts were still in one piece were wrecked by their crews and left for the Allies' wonderment. Today all that is left of 'schwere Gustav' and 'Dora' are a few inert projectiles in museums.
 
A Czech book seems to suggest that it was planned to move it to the Channel for bombardment of England, and there are drawings of the proposed tunnel. 
 




Rumor has it, this massive war-machine, dubbed the "Siege Bot" in Western intelligence circles, was built by the Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein. The huge gun tube launched rocket-assisted howitzer rounds, and was intended to crack Iranian fortifications during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. The Siege Bot vanished soon after the first Gulf War, having never fired on Allied troops. The United States denies having it…..

It is reminiscent of the German assault gun ‘Panzermörser Sturmtiger’ of 1944...

Sturmmörser Tiger

 

Type: Gigantic Rocket-Assisted Mortar Tank

 

Specific Features: One of the most fearsome and effective German tanks of World War II was the Panzer Mk VI, or Tiger as it was better known. The Tiger mounted a long-barreled 88mm gun specially designed for it, unlike the later King Tiger and Jagdpanther which mounted modified full-size versions of the 88mm anti-tank gun. The Surmmörser Tiger, or Sturm Tiger, was based on the effective Tiger chassis but replaced the turret and 88mm armament with an enclosed superstructure and a massive 380mm rocket-assisted mortar. The rocket activated shortly after firing and exhaust often backwashed down the stubby barrel of the Sturm Tiger. To counteract this potentially catastrophic effect the gun barrel had a ring of gas vents so that exhaust would vent outwards from the barrel.


The projectile, larger than most naval artillery, was capable of leveling a building in a single shot or penetrating through 2 and a half meters of reinforced concrete. The Sturm Tiger had a surprisingly large internal magazine given the size of the rockets, carrying 15 in total. For replenishing the magazine a special hatch was built into the roof of the superstructure and a loading arm and pulley system was attached to the back. This system allowed the crew to stand outside the tank and "hand" shells in. When the mortar was utilized it was almost always fired over a "flat" trajectory, meaning that unlike conventional mortars this one was also intended to be fired straight at the target and not lobbed in an arc.

 


History: Proposed in early August of 1943 as the Germans were once again mounting an increasingly desperate summer offensive against the Soviets, the Sturm Tiger was championed by Panzer Leader Heinz Guderian. He clearly saw the limitations of even heavy tanks when it came to urban fighting and wanted a weapon that could roll in to support the infantry and route the enemy from the toughest positions. The armament was derived from a secret project of the Navy to develop a means for submarines to bombard shore positions. The Kriegsmarine abandoned this project but it proved perfectly suited for the Sturm Tiger and was adopted with modifications. Unfortunately for the Germans, by the time the first of only 18 Sturm Tigers had rolled out of the Alkett plant in Berlin-Spandau a slow-moving anti-bunker tank was of dubious value. Despite this the Sturm Tiger performed well, proving adequate at anti-tank and infantry engagements in defense of the rapidly collapsing Reich.