Gustav/Dora 80cm Shells

[Commander Waffle]

When I saw this, all I could do was quote Flavor Flav..."Wow!!"

This thing could go over 26 miles and wieghed over 7 tons. It was orginally designed to blow up heavily fortified strutures in the Manigot Line in France... but it was used over in the USSR some other places. Firing it was lound enough... I would imagine somewhere around 700 desabels but the explosion must have been worse.
There were 2 kinds of shells...AP and high explosive. The high explosives were 700 kg of explosives, the APs were 250g of explsives but where coated with nicke-chromine and an allumium blasting cap on the top.
42 shells were fired by Gustav and when Dora arrived on the front, it was time to retreat and it didn't fire at all.

Well...I put it in...now you guys get to scream at me for what I got wrong....oh wait..this isn't ACG...!

[cyberia]

Here you go Waffle. Some pics to go with your post!

Dora

80 cm shell from Gustav compared to a T-34

YouTube - WW2: German Dora gun, the biggest gun ever, firing

An under a minute vid clip of Dora rolling out, being loaded and fired

[Commander Waffle]

I was going to post that pci fo the shell but forgot...oops, thansk Paul!

[Pirate-Drakk]

Dora was one of those, "Look what we can do." weapons that wasn't all that effective in terms of the resources required to lay the dual tracks and the battalion of men to fire/move it etc. It did blow some stuff up but not enough to make it worth the expense.

[Scout32]

Agreed.They were an anachronism fron pre aviation days.With the development of attack and bomber aircraft,they became a waste of resources

[cyberia]

Consider the stats:

It took 25 trainloads of equipment, 2000 men and up to six weeks to assemble and fire Dora.

In total the weapon had an operational career of only 13 days, during which a total of 48 shells were fired in anger.

The quintessential waste of men and material.

[Commander Waffle]

Originally Posted by cyberia

Consider the stats:

It took 25 trainloads of equipment, 2000 men and up to six weeks to assemble and fire Dora.

In total the weapon had an operational career of only 13 days, during which a total of 48 shells were fired in anger.

The quintessential waste of men and material.

It was the Gustav that fired the 48, not the Dora...I think, not sure on that one.

[cyberia]

You know what, you may be right. The article I'm working off jumps back and forth between the two guns and that passage falls right between two paragraphs.

This thread Waffle has started might be the place to continue looking at other large rail guns as well.

That is of course if the original poster agrees.

[Commander Waffle]

Originally Posted by cyberia

You know what, you may be right. The article I'm working off jumps back and forth between the two guns and that passage falls right between two paragraphs.

This thread Waffle has started might be the place to continue looking at other large rail guns as well.

That is of course if the original poster agrees.

Fine with me. Jim said I needed to get more active anyway

[Jim O]

Originally Posted by Commander Waffle

Fine with me. Jim said I needed to get more active anyway

I said that you should spend less time alone in the chat and suggested that your time could be better spent in the forums. Good work today, BTW.