about Skoda heavy guns

QUOTE

The pieces on display in the museum were captured in the 1919 campaign in Hungary.

QUOTE

Why didnot The army use this Piece in WW2? Mihai

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.

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

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.

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.

This post has been edited by dead-cat on October 23, 2004 09:44 am

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.

At one time, the perimeter of this mega cannon war patrolled by two Romanian companies, in Crimea...
http://www.aopt91.dsl.pipex.com/railgun/Co...ora%20index.htm