| Printable Version of Topic
Click here to view this topic in its original format |
| WorldWar2.ro Forum > Romanian Army at War > about Skoda heavy guns |
| Posted by: Dan Po April 23, 2004 11:10 am |
| I wonder if the heavy rail way guns Skoda cal 380mm and 420mm was ever used by romanian army ? I thinking at Odessa for instance ...
http://muzeu.mapn.ro/arhf.htm Dragos do you know something about this ? |
| Posted by: dragos April 23, 2004 11:24 am |
Tun greu pe cale ferata sistem Skoda, md.1916, cal.380 mm. Botezat de catre constructori "Gudrun", a fost capturat de armata romana in campania din 1919. 
Tun greu pe cale ferata sistem Skoda, md.1916, cal.420 mm, capturat de armata romana in 1919. Piesa este unicat in lume. Captions are from the page of the museum (http://muzeu.mapn.ro/colectii2.htm) They were never used in combat by Romanian Army. |
| Posted by: Dan Po April 23, 2004 06:26 pm |
| I wonder why the romanian army didn t use those heavy guns at Odessa s siege ...
Wasn t them operational ? They didn t have amunition? - but I think that is not such a big problem to produce a limited number of heavy shelds .... Maybe you know better ... |
| Posted by: C-2 April 23, 2004 08:24 pm |
| Those pieces were to be use against heavy fortifications.I don't think Odessa wwas so .
And like you see in the picture ,they were transported by rail.The railway in Russia in 27cm????wider..... |
| Posted by: Dan Po April 24, 2004 12:59 pm |
| See the heavy siege guns deployed by germans at Sevastopol - they use railway to trasport those guns too ... |
| Posted by: Von Maybach April 24, 2004 03:08 pm | ||
You are talking about the 80 cm Schwere "Gustav" railwaygun... -the largest ever build? ... the problem with railway superguns is logistics. The "Gustav" (or Dora, as it had been called) needed a staff of more than 1000 people (2000, to properly operate, protect and maintain it...), and the gun was commanded by a full Colonel. Besides the gun itself it needed a full maintainance infrastructure, including cranes larger than the gun itself, makeing it a logistical nightmare and a hard to miss target for enemy aircrafts. And the superguns in general, in WW2, had only a psyhological and propaganda role, since aircraft bombers were just as good to use, rather than such a complex gun. 
 |
| Posted by: Florin April 24, 2004 07:14 pm |
| Von Maybach,
What happened with Gustav/Dora after war? I read some accounts mentioning it was lost / dissapeared... Wasn't too big to dissapear?  |
| Posted by: Von Maybach April 24, 2004 07:31 pm | ||
You might say it dissapeared, ...
I remember I've once seen a picture with Dora's broken barrel and some US troops inspecting it... It's a shame it ended this way, instead of beeing preserved in a museum... I consider Gustav to be the most outstanding piece of military kit ever build. http://www.aopt91.dsl.pipex.com/railgun/ |
| Posted by: toniyona April 24, 2004 09:42 pm |
| Gentlemen:
Just so I have this right, Romania had at least 1-15 inch and 1-16.2 inch railway guns? From the caption I take it they captured them from the Autro-Hungarians in WW1 given the reference to 1919 or had Romania bought them earlier? Did they have more than 1 each? From the pictures these seem to be more howitzwer than gun? Yes / No? |
| Posted by: Florin April 25, 2004 01:57 am | ||
Let me tell you a better one. The US repaired and kept operational an U-Boat from the last German generation (those which never saw combat, as they were ready in May 1945). Even president Truman was in that revolutionary U-Boat during a submerge under water. Then, without any reason, the modern German submarine, perfectly operational, was destroyed in 1951. Instead of being preserved in a museum, as you wrote about Dora. What kind of museum? Well, like the one I just saw 3 days ago near Charleston, South Carolina. There is the famous aircraft carrier Yorktown, a destroyer, a smaller patrol vessel, and a submarine. I lost myself for hours in them. (Sometimes I literally lost myself... :roll: ) |
| Posted by: Victor April 25, 2004 08:10 am |
| [quote]Gentlemen:
Just so I have this right, Romania had at least 1-15 inch and 1-16.2 inch railway guns? From the caption I take it they captured them from the Autro-Hungarians in WW1 given the reference to 1919 or had Romania bought them earlier? Did they have more than 1 each? From the pictures these seem to be more howitzwer than gun? Yes / No?[/quote] The pieces on display in the museum were captured in the 1919 campaign in Hungary. |
| Posted by: Dan Po April 25, 2004 02:29 pm |
| This kind of heavy railguns was used also in northen Italy (1944-1945) and in a few situations, very succesfull.
I don t think that somebody want to be near a 800 mm shell explosion :shock: |
| Posted by: Von Maybach April 25, 2004 04:11 pm |
| [quote]This kind of heavy railguns was used also in northen Italy (1944-1945) and in a few situations, very succesfull.
I don t think that somebody want to be near a 800 mm shell explosion :shock:[/quote] The guns used in Northen Italy were smaller in calliber..., the Gustav/Dora was the only gun with 80cm calliber. |
| Posted by: Dan Po April 25, 2004 04:23 pm |
| [quote]"Von Maybach"
The guns used in Northen Italy were smaller in calliber..., the Gustav/Dora was the only gun with 80cm calliber.[/quote] I think that u re right. Those guns were smaller in calliber. |
| Posted by: Florin April 26, 2004 03:48 am |
| The super canon used in Italy, against the Anzio pocket, was nicknamed by the Americans "Annie". It is possible that Annie to be the same piece with the one captured in the Ruhr pocket in March 1945 (The famous photo with 10...12 American soldiers standing in row on the barrel.) |
| Posted by: mihai June 25, 2004 09:34 am | ||||
|
| Posted by: Dan Po October 13, 2004 09:29 pm |
| Even I m started this topic maybe is not a problem to close it. After 1919 the romanians use those heavy guns only as a trophy, not as an operational guns. So, they didn t have trained crews to fire with this guns, they didn t maintain them in an operational state .... so, was impossible to be used, after more than 20 years, in a battle. |
| Posted by: Robert October 18, 2004 04:03 am | ||
The standard guage (distance between the rails) for most western European (including Austria) and North American railways is 4 foot, 8 1/2 inches (= 143.51 cm). Russia, and later the Soviet Union used, I think, a 5 foot gage (= 152.4 cm). I'll double check on the exact Russian/Soviet railway guage. I assume that the standard Romanian guage is also 143.51 cm, so the axles on the gun carriage would have been too narrow to run on the Soviet railways unless the tracks were re-laid closer together. This would have been a massive logistical undertaking and would not have been able to be completed within the timeframe of the blitzkrieg. Also, rail guns are much heavier than a normal freight car and the tracks would need to be well ballasted in order to support the weight and recoil of the gun. (Notice how much gravel is under the rails of the "Dora" gun.) The differences in railway gauges significanly hindered the Germans' ability to move supplies east during WWII. I remember reading, (but have never seen photos) that the Germans built railway carriages with two sets of wheels (I think the wheels were designed to be exchanged when the carriage changed guage, rather than having two sets permenantly attached) and laid some track with both guages on the same rail bed. There is an interesting history to the 4 foot, 8 1/2 inch guage: When the British began building railways in the 1830's, they used the same sized axles as those used on regular horse-drawn carriages of the day - that is: 4 foot 8 1/2 inches. Horse drawn carriages in the 1830's used this standard axle size because the ruts in the road were 4 foot 8 1/2 inches apart, and the ruts in the road were that far apart because it was the amount of space that two horses' rumps occupied, when hitched side by side to a wagon. A number of the roads in Britain had been built by the Romans, and had been used to carry two-horse wide wagons since about 55 A.D., so the 4 foot 8 1/2 inch railway guage is a military spec dating from Roman times, and based on the width of two horses' rumps, that is still with us today. (Thank goodness this is the more general discussion list or Dragos would assign me to the Penal Battalion for wandering off topic for sure.  )Thank you for posting the photos of the rail guns. They are very interesting. Rob |
| Posted by: dragos October 22, 2004 08:52 pm | ||
I have heard from a CFR (Romanian Railroads) employee that today the process of changing the set of wheels for a train at the border when entering a country with a different gauge takes a very short time (under one hour). The wagons are lifted with a crane and the new axles are attached. However I can't imagine what cranes were necessary to lift the weight of a rail gun. |
| Posted by: dead-cat October 23, 2004 07:47 am | ||
by dec. 1941, 15000km railroad gauge were modified to the standard 1435mm gauge, so that the regular rolling stock could be used. the "Anzio Annie" was a K5 Leopold type with a 28cm barrel. not really a " super cannon, not even by WW1 standards. the "railroad guns" in the picture were pretty much useless. too short barrel, which means a very low range. i wonder if they actually deserve the name "railroad guns" because they are not more than short howitzers or mortars mounted on a flatcar. the WW1 42cm big bertha had , with a much longer barrel, a range of only about 10-11km. for a railroad gun to be usefull, it has to supplement its limited mobility with range. the K12 could fire a 21cm shell over 120km, while the K5 had a 62km range for a 28cm shell. |
| Posted by: BALLY April 16, 2008 09:14 am | ||||
At one time, the perimeter of this mega cannon war patrolled by two Romanian companies, in Crimea... http://www.aopt91.dsl.pipex.com/railgun/Content/Railwayguns/German/Dora%20index.htm |