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The largest gun ever built was the "Gustav Gun" built in Essen, Germany in 1941 by the firm of Friedrich Krupp A.G. Upholding a tradition of naming heavy cannon after family members, the Gustav Gun was named after the invalid head of the Krupp family - Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach. The strategic weapon of its day, the Gustav Gun was built at the direct order of Adolf Hitler for the express purpose of crushing Maginot Line forts protecting the French frontier. To accomplish this, Krupp designed a giant railway gun weighing 1344 tons with a bore diameter of 800 mm (31.5") and served by a 500 man crew commanded by a major-general.
Two types of projectiles were fired using a 3000lb. charge of smokeless powder: a 10,584 lb. high explosive (HE) shell and a 16,540 lb. concrete-piercing projectile. Craters from the HE shells measured 30-ft. wide and 30-ft. deep while the concrete piercing projectile proved capable of penetrating 264-ft. of reinforced concrete before exploding! Maximum range was 23 miles with HE shells and 29 miles with concrete piercing projectiles. Muzzle velocity was approximately 2700 f.p.s.
Three guns were ordered in 1939. Alfried Krupp personally hosted Hitler and Albert Speer (Minister of Armaments) at the Hugenwald Proving Ground during formal acceptance trials of the Gustav Gun in the spring of 1941. In keeping with company tradition, Krupp refrained from charging for the first gun - 7 million Deutsch Marks were charged for the second (named Dora after the chief engineer's wife).
France fell in 1940 without the assistance of the Gustav Gun, so new targets were sought. Plans to use Gustav against the British fortress of Gibraltar were scrapped after General Franco refused permission to fire the gun from Spanish soil. Thus, April 1942 found the Gustav Gun emplaced outside the heavily fortified port city of Sebastopol in the Soviet Union. Under fire from Gustav and other heavy artillery, Forts Stalin, Lenin and Maxim Gorki crumbled and fell. One round from Gustav destroyed a Russion ammunition dump 100 feet below Severnaya Bay; a near miss capsized a large ship in the harbor. Gustav fired 300 rounds during the siege wearing out the original barrel in the process. Dora was set up west of Stalingrad in mid-August but hurriedly withdrawn in September to avoid capture. Gustav next appeared outside Warsaw, Poland, where it fired 30 rounds into Warsaw Ghetto during the 1944 uprising.
Dora was blown up by German engineers in April 1945 near Oberlichtnau, Germany, to avoid capture by the Russian Army. The incomplete third gun was scrapped at the factory by the British Army when they captured Essen. Gustav was captured intact by the U.S. Army near Metzendorf, Germany, in June 1945. Shortly after, it was cut up for scrap thus ending the story of the Gustav Gun.
Credits: Printed in the American Rifleman, February 1998. Page 26.
有史以來建造的最大的槍是“古斯塔夫槍”建於埃森，該公司弗里德里希克虜伯股份公司堅持傳統的重型火砲命名後的家庭成員，古斯塔夫槍被命名為無效後，克虜伯家族的頭 - 克虜伯古斯塔夫馮波倫有限公司的Halbach。戰略武器的一天，古斯塔夫槍建於希特勒的直接命令為明確目的的粉碎馬其諾防線的法國邊境要塞保護。要做到這一點，克虜伯炮設計了一個巨大的鐵路用重1344噸孔直徑為800毫米（31.5“），並擔任由500名船員指揮一少將。兩種類型的砲彈射向使用三千磅。負責無菸火藥：一一萬零五百八十四英鎊高爆（HE）的外殼和一個一萬六千五百四十英鎊混凝土穿刺彈。隕石坑從他彈測量 30英尺寬，30英尺深的混凝土穿刺彈，同時證明了能夠穿透264 -英尺的鋼筋混凝土，然後爆炸！最大射程為23英里帶著何砲彈和29英里的混凝土穿刺彈。初速約為2700 fps的三槍被勒令於1939年。Alfried克虜伯親自主持，希特勒和希特勒的部長（軍備）在Hugenwald試驗場在正式驗收試驗槍的古斯塔夫在 1941年春天。為了配合公司的傳統，克虜伯忍住收取的第一炮 - 700萬德國馬克被指控的第二個（命名為多拉在行政工程師的妻子）。
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