On the death of Friedrich Alfred Krupp in his daughter, Bertha , had inherited the firm as the only child. She was the great-granddaughter of the firm's founder Friedrich Krupp With the marriage Gustav had adopted the Krupp family name as part of his own noble title.
He took on the position as head of the Krupp family firm. Bertha herself may not have been especially flattered by the implication of her size being associated with such a huge gun! Photograph of Big Bertha 42cm howitzer in action courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. It had its genesis in the lessons learned by the Germans and Austrians from the Russo-Japanese War of — During the war, the Japanese had dismounted some of their coastal defence cm howitzers and used them to help break their siege of the fortified Russian naval base at Port Arthur.
This was a complete novelty as, until that time, it had been assumed by military experts that the largest transportable siege guns were around 20 cm in calibre. Nevertheless, most Europeans completely failed to draw the lessons the Japanese had taught — apart from, as mentioned, the Germans and Austrians the latter also developed a series of road-mobile superheavy guns, including the During the early s, therefore, Krupp began to develop a series of road-mobile heavy mortars and howitzers, ranging from 28 cm calibre to A new version of the Krupp first investigated the possibility of building a cm weapon, but instead jumped to cm as this was the smallest shell that could carry the large bursting charge required to fulfil the APK's requirements.
Gamma fired shells weighing up to 1, kg. It had to be transported in sections on ten railway cars — six for the gun and another four for the bedding. Moving Gamma and preparing it to fire required significant resources. The first howitzer was demonstrated to Kaiser Wilhelm II in March , who was greatly taken by the new weapon, and the second was delivered in June The new howitzer was a road-mobile weapon mounted on a two-wheeled field type carriage of conventional, if massive, construction.
The barrel was shorter than Gamma's by 4 calibres length, and reverted to the conventional Krupp sliding-wedge breech. With thinner walls, the barrel was of generally lighter construction than Gamma's and fired lighter shells of around kg.
Fully assembled it weighed 43 tons, much less than Gamma, and did not have to be emplaced in concrete. Special steel "mats" were developed, onto which the wheels were driven, with a steel aiming arc at the rear of the carriage that allowed limited traverse. This aiming arc was fitted with a massive "spade" that was buried in the ground and which helped anchor the weapon. Krupp and Daimler developed a tractor for the Bertha, though Podeus motorploughs were also used to tow the guns, which were broken down into five loads when on the road.
The Austro-Hungarian Army used ten of the In 39 of these were still in service, and many were used by Germany and its allies on the Eastern Front. Oh well. December 2, at pm.
We have a picture of him next to it from the western front dated early So far no luck. Your email address will not be published. Kansas WW1.
0コメント