Gun that Fired 75 Miles

Hawera Star, Volume L, 17 May 1930, Page 18

Gun that Fired 75 Miles

Story Told after 12 Years

rp'HE next wair will ; be carried to the centres of civilisation. The armies of the future will not be the lighting forces on the front lines, but whole nations in arms in the cities and towns behind the lines. How often w r c have heard such prophecies l ! And' yet, as “The Paris 'Gun,”, a new book by Henry W. Miller, reminds us, in the World War Paris was bombarded by long-range guns. It i s a; grim and fascinating story, hero pieced together for the first time.

servers at the front insisted that no aircraft haidl passed the lines. The artillery office got busy. Fragments of the “bombs" were analysed. A most remarkable conclusion was arrived at; the - grooves and copper band's showed the “bombs’’ to be projectiles fired from a gun! The suspicious French at first thought French guns had been trained on the capital. (But for shortrange shooting the aims were erratic, some of the shells falling almost five miles away JTom each other. The idea was dismissed. The .shells must have borne from beyond the German lines. (But, how? The. nearest point ‘of the lines was mare than 70 miles away. Absurd! No gun could fire even half of that distance, not even the huge id-inch naval guns. The fragments were again examined. It was assumed to be a fairly light shell and the width of its grooves and the curious stepping of the shell aroused the conjecture that it had been fired from a high velocity gun having -an extremely long bore. On the assumption that the shells had come from a 'German gun, the shots were platted an, a map of Paris. A straight line drawn between them led to the nearest point of the front lines. This led to the assumption, that mi gun was emplaced, in' the St. Gobain Wood. Aerial photographs were scanned and showed some fresh railroad; spurs into the wood. That was enough. Heavy naval guns- were ordered up ta counter-attack. For months the. shells continued to rain on, Paris. i,Sometimes there was ian interval of a, few days; once of a month. (Many of the shells fell outside of the city, bill, many of them hit the target, some of them doing considerable damage. 'On Goad Fri-day-a shell hit the Church uf ,St. Gorvais. In a twinkling the cathedral resounded with tlie crashing of the roof, the impact of the masses of stone, the shrieks of the injured and dying. Those not caught in the fall made a rush for the door, “The scene was indescribable.

On March 20, T!XLB (writes T. .1. C. Martin, in, a review), after having said' farewell to my commanding officer, who -was leaving the squadron to become a colonel, I escorted in an airplane his car as far as Abbeville from Tselles-Hameaux, a few miles north of Amiens and directly ,to the rear of Arras. The return journey to the airdrome remains am indelible memory. The sun was setting, a blood-red ball of fire, bathing the country below in a beautiful but ominous glow. The shades of night were marching from the cast. With them came a low-lying, fleecy blanket of clouds, as if to shut out the horrors of war bencaith from the peaceful aspect of nature above. Soon the stars began to twinkle in their firmament. Ail was quiet. On the ground there was a hush, as if expectant, of an approaching storm. For hours all was quiet. At 4 o’clock in the morning the western front, amid crashing drumfire of mighty cannon, broke into a. storm of blood and fire. The first German offensive had begun.

It is hero that Colonel Miller’s story starts. To the south, in the; Bois de St. Gobiau, near the village of Crepy-en-Laoivnois, the finishing touches were being; put to the most- stupendous weapons -Off war that the world) had yet seen—the German long-range guns, commonly called ‘‘Big Berthas." Two days later all was in readiness. The drumfire of the artillery was its mark.

At 7 o’clock on Monday morning the people of Paris were astir. The day was cloudless. “At 7.20 something exploded violently on the Qnai de Seine. Aii air bomb! This was nothing now for Paris. (Planes had repeatedly bombed them, but not for years in the daytime. Why no alarm?; Twenty minutes later another “bomb" exploded near the iGare de l’Est, close to a •Metro entrance on the Boulevard do Strasbourg. Eight persons were killed, thirteen w-ounded. In all seven “bombs’’ exploded that day, but it was not until after the seventh had done its deadly work that the alarm was sounded and all Paris was thrown into confusion.

. . . Gradually the dead and dying were uncovered, and receiving- the blessings of the Arch-bishop of Paris, wore carried past the bowed onlookers. Pools of blood were everywhere, over the floor, the stops in front. Eighty-eight were dead, nineteen men, sixty-seven women, two children, and sixty-eight more were injured. The men on the German side responsible for this carnage were not thoughtful of it; as, artillerists they were bent upon the performance -of a gun which was to them a valuable and fascinating toy. If they thought of the suffering and damage, their shells wove causing in Paris, they thought of it in terms of moral effect, quite impersonally. At headquarters, when it was known that an immense public funeral was to be held for the victims of Good Friday’s outrage, firing was ordered to, be slapped. As a gesture it is unique.

Long before this, Paris officialdom was at work. Anti-aircraft observers scanned the skies vainly. (Planes soared aloft to give battle to the enemy planes; there was none. Headquarters at the front were telephoned to ask why no alarm had been sent, as was usual, of the approach of aircraft. Ob-

Story of Germany’s Powerful Weapon

Early in BIG Dr: von Ebcrhairdt presented theories and calculations' showing that a gun of 60 miles range was possible. For once' the military powers were enthusiastic and the building of the gun began. At the end of the year Ludendorff saw that at gun with a range of only sixty miles would bo useless, and he telegraphed Krupps to increase the range of the gun fro seventy-five miles. Tot the technicians he seemed to be ordering a miracle; but. Krupps performed one for him. 'Three guns were ready in March, I'OIS. 'The emplacements necessary were enormous, the steel carriage plates weighed hundreds of tons, the gun carriage hundreds of tons more, and the gun proper, as high as the average ten-storey building, weighed almost 200 tons. ■ A monster, indeed! 'lts shell, however, was relatively small, 2641b5, of eurious shape. The bore was but 8.G6 inches, and—extraordinary feature —smooth; the shell turned itself. It had a range of seventy-five miles and its trajectory was twenty-four miles high. Five guns were used in this emplacement. Four of them rapidly wore themselves out, one exploded prematurely. The French began bombarding the gun position. Another site was chosen and/ removed guns having a larger calibre went into action. Sevenguns in all were made or rebored'. When the last shot was fired’ in August a total of ri'67 had been fired at Paris.

The. remarkable thing about the operation of the guns was the extraordinary precision of every detail,. especially the calculations by the ballistics- officer. Each gun had a pressure chamber, and, after the; gun had fired, this officer read the pressure in. the barrel and from it was able to compute, within ni relatively few yard's where the shell had struck. If the pressure was high, the gun overshot; if it was low, the shells fell short. Each shell fired had a new position in the gun, each new position required a new calculation. There were three powder charges; a. variable charge in a silk bag, a standard enarge in a silk bag, and a huge cartridge charge for firing. Each shot required a different charge, in the first- silk bag and calculations had to be. made of the temperature of the powder and of the gun. Even the curvature of the earth was figured.

This is the story which Colonel Miller tells in his book. It is told with a clarity amd fidelity to detail which can be described 1 only as enthralling. The excitement, the horror, the devastation, in Paris; the excitement and tension and tragedy at the guns—all find a logical place in a narrative of great power and lucidity. The Paris gun—a collective name-—caused more than 1,000,000 people to leave Paris and as many people ought to read about it, for it was one of the World War’s most dramatic chapters.