The most powerful gun of all times

Source:
palpatine.chez-alice.fr...

The immense weapon you can see have existed. Moreover, there were two of these incredible guns. It has been manufactured by Krupp for the third Reich during WW-2. Hitler wanted "a gun able to pierce a meter of stell, seven meters of concrete, or thirty meters of dense earth". As you can see, it's a railroad gun. But it's so large that two railways are just enough to ensure stability and weight distribution.
Three calibers could have been used: 700, 800 and even 1000 mm ! The Oberkommando Heer conducted the fisrt tests of these enormous guns during 1935, for the growing Reich. You must know that railroad guns where very numorous during WW-2: they represented mobile high-power artillery. Before the Dora, the largest of these were 280 mm units. The design of the gun, which was very demanding, ended in 1937.
Even now, we can hardly imagine how we could manufacture the enormous 290 tonnen barrel, an huge steel pipe, 32 meters long. Monobloc trunion craddles, on which are put the trunion pins of the barrel, are as tall as a 4-floor building : these oversized parts needed long preparation, and initial delivery date during spring 1940 could not be met. The gun was ready in '41, and undergone testing at the Hillersleben training ground. It was ready for action in late 1942.
Unfortunately (for the gun), all its targets where almost down or captured at this time: the Maginot line, Gibraltar...
The only target the Dora crushed was Sevastopol. During five days, the gun shot 48 shells over 7 targets. Its monstruous power put down the forts of the town, delivering never seen damage at each shot. You know the "bang" a rifle does, so try to imagine the sound of apocalypse when a 7 ton shell is fired, using thousands pounds of gun powder, enough to send it dozens of miles away... This is not sci-fi, this was the madness of a tyran, and probably the most outstanding achievement in conventionnal balistics.

I love this part:
"This is not sci-fi, this was the madness of a tyran"

And this just blew my mind:
"Hitler wanted "a gun able to pierce a meter of stell, seven meters of concrete, or thirty meters of dense earth". "


Effective range: 40 Kms
Shell Weight: 7100 kg

And with That Said:
www.ezprezzo.com...



[edit on 12/8/2006 by a1ex]

[edit on 12/8/2006 by a1ex]

i would wager that the crews of the various nuclear capable artillery peices would argue that they were the most powerfull

What do you mean by "gun"? You both seem to be talking about artillery.

Yeah I was hoping for a rifle that could splatter an elephant. Something even more hardcore than a 50 cal.

Originally posted by BASSPLYR
Yeah I was hoping for a rifle that could splatter an elephant. Something even more hardcore than a 50 cal.

Looks like you may be a Browning fan.

Originally posted by BASSPLYR
Something even more hardcore than a 50 cal.

How about a 60 cal?

Originally posted by DJMessiah

Originally posted by BASSPLYR
Something even more hardcore than a 50 cal.

How about a 60 cal?

haha, nice one, but like ignorant ape said before me, i consider that the nuclear artillery is the most powerful cannon imo.

Nuclear Artillery Picture

Nuclear Artillery Shell Picture

Originally posted by intrepid
What do you mean by "gun"? You both seem to be talking about artillery.

Artillery is a form of guns

Actually, the synonymous use of "gun" as in "firearm" is only informal. In techspeak, a gun usually is a larger-bore high-velocity cannon.

Originally posted by ignorant_ape
i would wager that the crews of the various nuclear capable artillery peices would argue that they were the most powerfull

Most powerful shells. One could equally, or even easier, have used nuclear shells from the Railway cannons.

The "power" of a gun however can only be measured by its capability, that is a combination of the velocity and shell weight (or conveniently, the muzzle energy). And in that respect, Gustav and Dora were the most powerful ever to be used - possibly only rivalled by the V-3 guns (which were test fired) because of their much larger range and higher firing speed.

From memory:

I believe these guns had such tremendous barrel erosion from each shot that succeeding rounds were several thousandths larger than the previous.
That required firing shells in numerical order.

The story goes that an oversized, out of numerical order shell was fired, failed to travel down the barrel and the gun blew up.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Along these same lines, didn't the Nazi's also start building an even bigger cannon near the end of the war?

This one built into a hill-side and supported by cement foundations and the like.
It never got far enough along to be test fired, but there are photo's of it kicking around somewhere.
Seems too, the History Channel had a documentary on these guns including the hill-side cannon.

Interesting premise with the hill-side cannon, the only apparent adjustment available would be for range and that simply by altering the weight of the shell and the powder charge.

Regardless, interesting post.

You are most certainly correct Desert Dawg.

I cannot remember the calibre, but this super gun ran along the cliff edge of the Pas de Calais and worked [allegedly] along the lines of a massive recoilles rifle.

I believe that every 50 or 100 metres, there was a venturi with some type of 'charge' and, when the shell or projectile passed, the venturi was fired electrically.

Whether or not this 'V' weapon would have worked, is a matter of conjecture, because allied bombing destroyed the 'barrel' in several places along the coast.

I do believe that their are several sites in France where this wonder weapon may be viewed.

Originally posted by fritz
You are most certainly correct Desert Dawg.

I cannot remember the calibre, but this super gun ran along the cliff edge of the Pas de Calais and worked [allegedly] along the lines of a massive recoilles rifle.

I believe that every 50 or 100 metres, there was a venturi with some type of 'charge' and, when the shell or projectile passed, the venturi was fired electrically.

Yup, you are both speaking of the Vergeltungswaffe 3, or V3, I mentioned earlier. Actually, it was an array of 5 guns with 140m long barrels. They were not like recoilless rifles though, whose rocket exhaust fires back. Every 3.65m there were was a short tube attached at an angle with a rocket charge firing "forward", which were, as you said, fired sequentially.

It gave the ~150kg shell a muzzle velocity of 1500m/s. Thats also why the official name was "Hochdruckpumpe" (high pressure pump), because the whole gun was more or less that instead of a conventional gun.

Whether or not this 'V' weapon would have worked, is a matter of conjecture, because allied bombing destroyed the 'barrel' in several places along the coast.

It would have worked. Several test weapons were built and fired.

Originally posted by Desert Dawg
...
Interesting premise with the hill-side cannon, the only apparent adjustment available would be for range and that simply by altering the weight of the shell and the powder charge.

The installation in Pas de Calais was only intended to fire at the London area. As such, they only had to get the range right. The in herent inaccuracy of a 150km artillery shot would have provided the necessary "shot dispersion"

Adding a charge behind the projectile also works on a small scale.

20-30 years ago, one of the American gun magazines featured such a rifle.
Said rifle was a bolt action.

Not sure of the caliber, but it may have been the very popular 22 Long Rifle rimfire round.

Regardless, the rifle had the barrel drilled transversely going up from the underside of the barrel into barrel bore.

A machined, threaded piece that sat at a right angle to the barrel was brazed on.
This piece was machined internally to match the shape and size of an empty 22 LR brass case.

The operating drill went like so:
The empty brass case was filled level with gunpowder.
The powder filled case - with the powder exposed at the top - was inserted into the machined piece and seated with a T-handled threaded machine screw.

A round was inserted into the rifle as would be done with an unmodified rifle.
When the normal round was fired, the bullet traveled down the barrel and the expanding charge ignited the under chamber powder just after the bullet had passed by.

Since the barrel now had considerably more volume, the added powder firing didn't raise the pressures above a safe level.
An educated guess by the experimenter who built the rifle, but there are easy ways to detect an overpressure situation without exotic instrumentation.

Chronograph tests showed the bullet had gained quite a bit of speed, but I don't remember how much.

An unwieldy arrangement for sure, but an interesting experiment.

i gave the response i did , because the OP had already decided to use " gun " and artillery peice interchangably .

now if we look at the statistics . all the " dora " can claim is that it has the highest projectile mass , and was the heaviest mobile artillery peice

the " paris gun" of the great war , has higher muzzle velocity , longer range . and attained the gighest altitude [ 40km ] of any man made object , untill eclipsed by WWII era rocketry .

the US little david " motar had a larger bore than anything the germans actually used .

geting back to nuclear capability - if we equiped the paris gun with thermonuclear warheads , it would then beat dora in every preformance area except projectile mass

I have to say i always liked the paris gun. The range was about 120km which ment they could hit paris from inside germany (just). The people in paris thought they were being bombed by an airship as they couldnt hear the sound of the bombs or the gun

Hey all ,
I would like to know one thing,
Why would The Thing from the Fantastic 4, need such a little revolver??
curiouse

Omega