Germany spent five years building the heaviest gun ever moved and fired by any army. It weighed one thousand three hundred and fifty tonnes, rode on eighty wheels across two parallel tracks, and could not turn. By the time it was ready, the fortress it was designed to break had already been bypassed. It fired forty eight shells at the enemy, in one week, in one battle, and never fought again.

This is the full story of the schwerer Gustav, the gun the army called Dora. How it worked. What it took to fire it. What it actually achieved at Sevastopol. And why the most famous thing it ever did probably did not happen the way you were told.

00:00 A colonel in a Bavarian wood
02:18 The problem nobody had any more
05:14 Eight hundred millimetres
07:48 How you fire a gun that cannot turn
10:24 The four weeks before the first shot
12:05 This had all been tried before
15:14 The man who was told it was a bad idea
16:50 Five thirty five in the morning
18:45 The white cliff
21:21 Please determine who sent it
23:12 How many men is a gun
27:31 The honest case for the gun
29:36 Two tubes in a Bavarian wood

SOURCES
Erich von Manstein, Verlorene Siege (1955)
Robert Forczyk, Where the Iron Crosses Grow: The Crimea 1941–44
Marc Romanych and Martin Rupp, 80 cm Railway Gun Gustav
Gerhard Taube, Eisenbahngeschütz Dora
Ian V. Hogg, German Artillery of World War Two
Trial transcripts and exhibits, United States v. Alfried Krupp (Nuremberg)

#ww2 #militaryhistory #artillery #schwerergustav #sevastopol