WAR SECRET REVEALED

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18335, 1 March 1934, Page 10

WAR SECRET REVEALED

sftiiiiM 8f iiiii 90-Mile range gun Jealously guarded tor 17 years, Gig secrets of the famous giant German gun which bombarded Pans from 90 miles away are now being revealed. Facts about tins super-gun have been published for the first time in the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung. “The Allies would have given millions,” says the German newspaper, “to have known more of this gun than they could from the shell splinters that sprinkled the Parisian boulevards. But the Allies never saw a. plan, drawing, or description of it. “When the Inter-Allied Commission came to Germany, after the war, the coveted gun was then only a heap Of junk. It had been taken to pieces, to make it unrecognisable. When the French entered Essen, in the Ruhr dis r trict, they only found a ‘Seapa Flow’ of the gun. And the hundred designers and ballistics experts, men who were in the know, kept silent.” Tho barrell was 102 ft. long—as long as four standard telegraph poles placed end to end. Tho wall of the barrel, tapering towards the muzzle, was 40in. thick. The barrel was in diameter, so that two big men could just get their arms around it. WEIGHED 600 TONS The calibre was 19in. Together with the breech mechanism, the barrel had a total weight of 600 tons. The huge gun was cast from faultless steel. The gun mounting weighed over 700 tons, the concrete foundation, on which the monster rested, 800 tons more. These 2100 tons were massed on 12 square yards, thus testing each square yard of earth with a pressure of 175 tons. ,The gun withstood a tremendous maximum pressure of the ICO,COO atmospheres which propelled the steel shell into the stratosphere. The designers realised that orily 65 shells could be safely fired through one barrel, which then had to be taken down, examined, re-cut, or, perhaps, destroyed. Each single gun-barrel had its special shells, all numbered 1 to ,65. each higher number slightly increasing in calibre. Therefore, they had to be fired strictly in numerical order, because, due to the tremendous heat and pressure, there was a tiny increase in the calibre of the gun after each shot. Previously long-barrelled guns had been fired at a maximum elevation of 46 degrees. However, the new long-distance shells had to travel through the stratosphere. Consequently, a firing angle of 60 degrees was used. TO IMMENSE HEIGHT Professor Piccard in his stratospheric gondola, reached an altitude of about 55,0C0ft. „ and; registering balloons have gone to 90,000 ft, but tho shell of this monster gun , reached 120,000 ft., within Imin. 30sef. of fifing fired. During Its jojirriey of ojnfin., the shell spent neatly two minutes in tho stratosphere where the temperature was 50 degrees below zero. To avoid the ‘‘drooping” of the extremely long barrel, special steel cables were attached to it, as, after every phot, the recoil jind vibration were so powerful as often to alter the true axis of the barrel. With the aid of niost exact optical instruments, tile true axis had to be examined after every shot, In two separate charges fjOOlb. qf high explosives : were used. The calibre was ISin. (for tlie first two shots), the length of tho shell 3ft., and the total weight 8001 b. .

“No‘shell must be a ‘dud,’ ” was the strict order, To fire, one cost £3600, and a ‘dud,’ landing in Paris, would have given the French the information they so eagerly sought of the most complicated shell fused ill the war 1 .