Heavy Artillery Battalion (E) 672 · Field Log
The German Army High Command (OKH) asks Krupp to study the feasibility of a gun capable of destroying the heaviest concrete fortifications of the day, in particular the French Maginot Line, from a great distance.
During a visit to the Krupp works in Essen, two years after the initial request, Adolf Hitler personally presses company head Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach for a gun capable of breaching the French Maginot Line. The eventual design is named after him: Schwerer Gustav. Chief designer Erich Müller settles on an 80 cm calibre, at the time, and to this day, the largest calibre ever fitted to an operational weapon.
The final design is worked out. The barrel is forged and bored from a single piece of steel: at just over 30 metres long (40 calibres), it is so heavy that it has to be disassembled for transport on its own. Development and test firing take place at the Rügenwalde proving ground: because every shot causes enormous wear, around 250 test rounds wear out the first barrel before the weapon ever reaches the front.
Since no road or bridge could bear its 1,350-tonne weight, the gun rests on two heavy bogies with a total of 40 axles, spread across two parallel tracks: aiming at a target therefore does not mean traversing the barrel, but building a specially laid, gently curved spur of track. Two types of shell are used: a 4.8-tonne HE shell with a range of 47 km, and a heavier concrete-piercing shell of just over 7 tonnes with a range of about 38 km, designed to punch deeper through reinforced targets. Each shot requires around 2 tonnes of propellant charge. Only two examples of this design were ever built: Schwerer Gustav and a sister gun, Dora.
Heavy Artillery Battalion (E) 672 sets off on the long journey to Crimea. The train carrying the gun numbers 25 wagons: 1.5 kilometres long in total.
The gun reaches the Isthmus of Perekop in early March and remains there until early April, awaiting the next phase of the advance on Sevastopol.
Engineer units lay a special rail spur 16 km north of the target, with four curved tracks so the gun can be aimed at different targets. Assembling the 1,350-tonne colossus takes around three weeks and 1,420 men, using two gantry cranes that run along the tracks to lift the components (barrel, carriage, loading mechanism) into place. Operating the gun itself takes about 500 men; including the rail, security, and anti-aircraft units protecting the whole operation, the total complement rises to around 2,500 men.
Gustav opens fire on the Soviet fortifications. Among the targets: an ammunition depot buried more than 30 metres beneath the seabed: an armour-piercing shell bores straight through before detonating. By the end of the siege the gun has fired 48 rounds and the original barrel is worn out.
After Sevastopol, the gun is disassembled and brought to the northern part of the Eastern Front, positioned near Taytsy station, some 30 km from Leningrad, in anticipation of an attack on the city.
The gun is fully operational, but the planned attack on Leningrad is called off. Gustav spends the winter in position without ever firing a shot, then returns to Germany for maintenance.
Some sources claim the gun was brought towards Warsaw to help suppress the Warsaw Uprising, possibly firing a few dozen rounds before the uprising had already been crushed. Other, later sources dispute this entirely, stating that none of the Gustav-type guns was ever at Warsaw.
To prevent the gun from falling into Allied hands, it is destroyed by the Germans. The wreckage is found around 22 April 1945 in a forest roughly 15 km north of Auerbach, some 50 km southwest of Chemnitz. Some sources mention it being found and recovered by American troops shortly after.
No complete example of Schwerer Gustav or its sister gun Dora survived the war. Only components and documentation were studied by Allied intelligence afterwards. At 80 cm, it remains, to this day, the largest calibre ever fitted to an operational weapon, a record that has never been broken since.
Technical specifications