Schwerer Gustav

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Schwerer Gustav
Model of the Dora
Type	Railway gun
Place of origin	Nazi Germany
Service history
In service	1941–1945
Used by	Wehrmacht
Wars	World War II
Production history
Designer	Krupp
Designed	1937
Manufacturer	Krupp
Unit cost	7 million ℛ︁ℳ︁
Produced	1941
No. built	2
Specifications
Mass	1,350 tonnes (1,490 short tons; 1,330 long tons)
Length	47.3 metres (155 ft 2 in)
Barrel length	32.5 metres (106 ft 8 in) L/40.6
Width	7.1 metres (23 ft 4 in)
Height	11.6 metres (38 ft 1 in)
Diameter	300 m
Crew	250 to assemble the gun in 3 days (54 hours), 2,500 to lay track and dig embankments. 2 flak battalions to protect the gun from air attack.
Shell	Armored-Piercing Shell (AP) High-Explosive Shell (HE)
Caliber	80 centimetres (31 in)
Elevation	Max of 48°
Rate of fire	1 round every 30–45 minutes or typically 14 rounds a day
Muzzle velocity	820 m/s (2,700 ft/s) (HE) 720 m/s (2,400 ft/s) (AP)
Effective firing range	c. 39,000 metres (43,000 yd)
Maximum firing range	47,000 metres (51,000 yd) (HE) 38,000 metres (42,000 yd) (AP)

Schwerer Gustav (English: Heavy Gustav) was a German 80-centimetre (31.5 in) railway gun. It was developed in the late 1930s by Krupp in Rügenwalde as siege artillery for the explicit purpose of destroying the main forts of the French Maginot Line, the strongest fortifications in existence at the time. The fully assembled gun weighed nearly 1,350 tonnes (1,490 short tons),^[1] and could fire shells weighing 7 t (7.7 short tons) to a range of 47 km (29 mi).^[2]

The gun was designed in preparation for the Battle of France, but was not ready for action when that battle began, and in any case the Wehrmacht's Blitzkrieg offensive through Belgium rapidly outflanked and isolated the Maginot Line's static defences, which were then besieged with more conventional heavy guns until French capitulation.^[3] Gustav was later deployed in the Soviet Union during the Battle of Sevastopol, part of Operation Barbarossa, where, among other things, it destroyed a munitions depot located roughly 30 m (98 ft) below sea level.^[4] The gun was moved to Leningrad, and may have been intended to be used in the Warsaw Uprising like other German heavy siege pieces, but the uprising was crushed before it could be prepared to fire. Gustav was destroyed by the Germans near the end of the war in 1945 to avoid capture by the Soviet Red Army.^[5]

Schwerer Gustav was the largest-calibre rifled weapon ever used in combat, and in terms of overall weight, the heaviest mobile artillery piece ever built. It fired the heaviest shells of any artillery piece.^[6] It was surpassed in calibre only by the unused British Mallet's Mortar and the American Little David bomb-testing mortar—both at 36 inches (91.5 cm)—but was the only one of the three to be used in combat.