Hurst, Stephen F.

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Calhoun: The NPS Institutional ArchiveDSpace RepositoryFaculty and Researchers Faculty and Researchers' Publications2007-01The Biggest Gun in the WorldHurst, Stephen F.Hurst, Steve. The Biggest Gun in the World. Military History, 2007.http://hdl.handle.net/10945/70929This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, UnitedStates Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in theUnited States.Downloaded from NPS Archive: CalhounReproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.IN 1918 THE GERMANS HIT PARIS FROM 68 MILES AWAY WITH 330-POUND ARTILLERY SHELLS FIRED BY A MYSTERIOUS GARGANTUAN CANNON BY STEPHEN F. HURST AT 7:15 A.M. on March 23, 1918, Parisians near Number 6 Quai de Seine, in the n011heastern part of the city, were beginning their daily routine on what promised to be a beautiful spring day when they were suddenly rocked by a huge explosion. Was it an ae1ial bomb? A huge artillery shell? Surpris-ingly, no one was injured. Sixteen minutes later a second explosion occurred outside the Gare de !'Est about a mile and a half away, where three Metro lines con-verged. Eight people were killed and 13 others injured. Most people believed the explosion had been the result of an ae1ial bomb, but fragments of the device that were discovered proved unlike pat1s of an aerial bomb: thick, with grooves and threads. The second mysterious explo-sion got the attention of the police, who in turn contacted the Artillery Office of the Palis De-THE fense Service and observation points along the front lines, which insisted no enemy aircraft had crossed over that morning. More explosions occurred as the com-bined offices of the Palis Defense Service, the Police Department and the Artillery Office went to work at full speed to determine the source of the incoming fire. Rumors of high-altitude bombers persisted (some thought the Germans might have per-fected an invisible aircraft), but the artillery officers believed the devices were artillery rounds, though to even mention the word "projectile" implied an absurdity at that juncture. No artillery piece had ever before achieved the 68-mile range that would be re-quired to hit Palis from the near-est German lines. By 9:30 a.m. of the first day, the experts began to think the un-thinkable-that a German gun was actually shelling Paris. But from where? Analyzing each of the seven impact points and extending the azimuth of fire back to a point inside the German lines enabled officials to estimate the gun-target line. This method of target loca-tion could not determine the weapon's exact firing position, howeve1; only that it was located somewhere along a calculated line passing through the front at a point known as the Leon Corner, a bulge in the German lines ap-proximately 70 miles from Palis. Aelial photographs of the region taken the previous September had shown extensive excavation in the One of the seven "Kaiser Wilhelm Geschutz," or "Paris Guns" built by the Krupp works during Wortd War I, in position to fire one of its 330-pound shells. BIGGEST GUN 50 MILITARY HISTORY JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.IN THE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 MILITARY HISTORY 51 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.  Further reproduction prohibited without permission.THE PARIS GUN SHELLS REACHED A HEIGlIT OF 24 MILES AND TRAVELED THREE MINUTES BEFORE STRIKING THEIR TARGETS area, possibly for the deployment of large guns. Within a few days, British Major J. Maitland-Addison was able to provide officials with what turned out to be an amazingly ac-curate analysis of the weapon as well as the shells fired. He con-cluded that the gun was firing a 210mm projectile 3 feet 8 inches long (2 feet 1 inch of which was a hollow false nose for reducing wind resistance). The shell had two copper rotating bands, pre-rifled to reduce cannon wear. The total weight was 330 pounds. By taking into account the cur-vature of the earth and the effects of the earth's rotation, Maitland-Addison further determined that the gun's barrel was set at an ele-vation of between 50 and 55 de-grees, and that shells achieved a muzzle velocity of 5,000 feet per second, had a flight time of 177 seconds and reached an altitude of 24 miles. On May 1, the Germans halted their bombardment of Paris. Their position was becoming un-tenable by that time, and the bar-rels of the original "Paris Guns" needed replacement. Wear was so rapid on the behemoth guns that Accurate enough at least to strike the city of Paris from 70 miles' distance, Gennany's 92-foot barreled "superguns" fired more than 300 shells in mid-1918, resulting in real damage and some 800 civilian casualties. they required a rebore after ap-proximately 20 shots, and with each and every firing the succeed-ing shell needed to be of slightly greater circumference. Amid this activity the counter-battery fire from the French 305mm and 340mm railway guns was beginning to find its target. Although the French batteries never succeeded in hitting the Paris guns, their sheer concentra-tion of fire inflicted casualties among the German crews. 1lm PARIS.Gf:JNS next began firing, iri conjunctiQn with the start of General Bridt •Ludendorff s third drive, from a new position on May 27. Cqn•ed success of the German att,a¢b· opened new op-portunitie:s t9place the Paris Gun even closet to.its intended target. On June.l:l,. the Paris Gun com-mander was ordered to move his gun once more, this time to the town of Fere-en-Tardenois, just 57 miles from the center of Paris. But the new location was also well within the range of many French batteries. The Paris Guns narrowly es-caped being captured by the ad-vancing Allies during subsequent moves along paths that required constant repair of destroyed rail lines, as Allied forces continued to roll back Ludendorffs last great offensive, and the Germans began their Great Retreat on July 19. By that time, there were no locations available that would allow the gi-gantic shells to reach their targets behind the Allied lines. On August 9, 1918, the last round was fired from the Paris Guns and, in the face of the successful Allied offensive, the weapons were dis-mantled, returned to Germany and destroyed. Although a total of seven guns had been constructed, no more than two or three were employed at any one time. None was captured, and none was destroyed by counter-fire. After the war no trace of them was found by Allied inspectors sent to the Krupp factory specifically for that purpose. The Paris Gun was an undeni-able technological achievement, but in the end it actually had little impact on the course of the war. The mammoth cannons resulted in 256 deaths and scared Pari-sians witless for a brief while. Its main effect was its intriguing rep-utation and lasting impression on the imaginations of people then and now. The German public was awed by the spectacle, making the Paris Gun a tremendous propaganda success. And 89 years later mili-tary historians are intrigued in that way one is intrigued by any vanished species. MH U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Stephen F. Hurst (ret.) is a senior lecturer on the faculty of the Naval Postgradu-ate School, Monterey, Calif For fur-ther reading, he suggests: The Paris Gun: The Bombardment of Paris by the German Long-Range Guns and the Great German Offensives of 1918, by Henry W. Miller. JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 MILITARY HISTORY 53 

The Biggest Gun in the World

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The Biggest Gun in the World

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