THE GERMAN SUPER-GUN.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXVII, Issue LXXVII, 2 August 1918, Page 5

THE GERMAN SUPER-GUN.

AN EMPLACEMENT DESCRIBED

HUGE AND COMPLICATED

MECHANISM

(Received Aug. 2, 9.15 a.m.)

NEW YORK, Aug. l. Edwin James, the New York Times' correspondent on the American front, describes a visit to the German supercannon emplacement in the Bois de Chatelet. He says : '-it -j s hard to tell just what it looks like. It reminds me of n Pittsburg steel mill. The emplacement was connected by three switches running from the railway south of Fere en Tardenoise, one of which runs into a pit fifteen feet deep and forty feet across. In the pit is a steel cylinder of complicated construction, 31ft across and '20ft deep, on top of wnich is a huge rotary gun carriage moved by massive machinery, which is ball-bearing, each ball being ten inches in diameter. The cylinder is constructed of armor-plate, 1* inches in thickness, in sections, to each of which is attached big hooks for a derrick lift. An artillery expert said that the cylinder weighs 1100 tons, and the carriage more than 200 tons. The Germans had not left the barrel. The emplacement dwarfed the biggest Dreadnought gun emplacement."— Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn.