Railway Guns

[reddragon]

Anyone have any interest in the railway guns used during World War II?

 

[mosquitoman]

I've heard of one called Anzio Annie but that's it

 

[evangilder]

There was Anzio Annie and the Anzio Express. I spoke with a veteran recently who was getting fired on by the Anzio Express. He said it was doing some serious damage to the poor guys down on the beaches.

 

[reddragon]

Yes, I spoke with a fellow who was at Anzio and he said they would fire the gun at the same time each day. He said one day it hit their field hospital.

 

[cheddar cheese]

Ive heard of a German one called the Dora, and a big bad Mother F*cker it was too

 

[trackend]

There where many large calibre guns during ww2 indeed at Dover the British had two winnie and pooh. Anzio had 2 guns Leapold and Robert one of which now resides in the US at Maryland

 

[cheddar cheese]

Heres the Dora... 8

 

[trackend]

Im of too Duxford hopefully next week I seem to remember theirs a shell from (it may be dora there) I'll get a pic of it and some info

 

[cheddar cheese]

Be certain to get lots of good shots while youre there! 8)

 

[reddragon]

The limited information I have on Dora says it's only combat action was at Sevastopol, firing 48 rounds at 7 targets in 5 days. It also says Dora was seen outside Warsaw in 1944 and then vanished. I have a few seconds of film of a Gerat 040 Karl-Morser 600 mm caliber heavy mortar firing on Warsaw during the uprising. I wonder if that's what they are thinking of when they say it was seen outside Warsaw?

 

[mosquitoman]

48 rounds in 5 days- that's an incredibly bad rate of fire

 

[CharlesBronson]

The Dora or schwere Gustav, is a demential gun. Expend 1330 metric tons of good steel in a single cannon, show that some nazi generals and technicians where not in his right mind.

 

[mosquitoman]

just think of how many King Tigers that would be!

 

[BombTaxi]

The Germans had a thing for big guns though. They used a range of heavies at Verdun which had little effect of the French forts but were of massive psychological importance to the German command.

 

[mosquitoman]

Do you think they were compensating for something?

 

[BombTaxi]

Do you think they were compensating for something?

Hehe, more than likely

 

[Medvedya]

Blick! Unsere Waffen sind so viel grober als diejenigen Tommi!

 

[mosquitoman]

Ja, genau!

 

[CharlesBronson]

A more equilibrated, usable, and much better artillery piece was the self propelled Mörser de 600mm,

Although his retro-loading and rifling it looks more like a very heavy howitzer

 

[HealzDevo]

All of this sounds cool, never knew there was more than two WW2 railway guns. You are right though that they appear very big, bulky, take a lot longer to load and use a lot of resources. Although they did have a physiological advantage in being able to shell London, from across the channel, with the right Fortifications, the right air defence etc, a battery of these railway guns could really have caused Churchill and the British some headaches. The resources once created just weren't really used to greatest effect towards the end of WW2 especially after the Battle Of Britain, when they would have been useful for continuing the devastation that the large Luftwaffe raids had started. 8)