Hitler sure had some grand ideasfrom mass murdering Jews and conquering Europe, torebuilding Berlinanddraining the Mediterranean sea.
Nothing the German Wehrmacht had in their armory was capable of penetrating this formidable defense.
So Hitler went to munitions maker Krupp for a solution.
The gun itself would weight over 1,300 tons and would have to be moved on sets of railways tracks.
In a little more than two years, the super gun was ready.
Alfried Krupp personally took Hitler to the Rugenwalde Proving Ground in early 1941 to watch the guns test firing.
Alfried Krupp named the gun Schwerer Gustav, or Heavy Gustav, after his father Gustav Krupp.
Schwerer Gustav was an absolute monster of a weapon.
Because it was so large and heavy the gun couldnt be moved as a whole.
Assembling the gun took a massive effort.
Here the barrel is being lowered into the carrier using two gantry cranes.
Multiple tracks resembling a station junction had to be laid wherever the gun was deployed.
Schwerer Gustav moved on a set of parallel tracks which limited its mobility.
In addition, the gun barrel could only aim vertically.
Horizontal aiming was locked along the direction of the tracks.
Despite the tremendous firing power, Schwerer Gustav had no means of protecting itself.
This was provided by two Flak battalions that guarded the gun from possible aerial assault.
Germany had already invaded France in 1940, before the gun was ready.
They did it by simply going around the Maginot Line rendering the complicated set of defenses useless.
Schwerer Gustav was instead deployed on the Eastern Front at Sevastopol in Russia during its siege in 1942.
It took 4,000 men five weeks to get the gun ready for firing.
The gun was then moved near Leningrad but the attack was cancelled.
The Gustav being loaded for firing.
It took 20 to 45 minutes to reload the gun and prepare it for firing.
Krupp built another gun with the same dimensions.
This one was named Dora, after the companys chief engineer’s wife.
Dora was set up west of Stalingrad in mid-August 1942, but hurriedly withdrawn in September to avoid capture.
When the Germans began their long retreat back home they took Dora and Gustav with them.
But only Gustav saw action in the battlefield.
Allied soldiers pose in front of a captured projectile used by Gustav.
A shell of the Gustav gun at the United States Army Ordnance Museum.
Photo credit:Mark Pellegrini/Wikimedia
