The Schwerer Gustav super weapon of mass destruction once haunted Hitler.
The Schwerer Gustav super cannon - a giant weapon that shook the world, Hitler had high expectations for during the war, but the outcome was full of surprises.
Báo Khoa học và Đời sống•27/08/2025
Since the mid-1930s, Nazi leader Hitler ordered his subordinates to research and manufacture a super cannon of "monstrous" size. Under the orders of the dictator in Nazi Germany, the new super cannon could penetrate the fortified Maginot Line of France. Photo: Cassowary Colorizations/Wikimedia Commons. Therefore, experts, scientists , engineers... of Friedrich Krupp AG started researching and manufacturing the Schwerer Gustav super cannon since 1941. Photo: National WWII Museum.
The Schwerer Gustav was built with a barrel diameter of up to 80 cm. This super gun is 47.3 m long, 7.1 m wide, and 11.6 m high. The combat weight of the Schwerer Gustav is up to 1,350 tons. Photo: Public Domain. With such dimensions, Schwerer Gustav became the largest cannon ever built by humans to date. Photo: German Federal Archives. The Schwerer Gustav super gun can fire a 7-ton shell with a range of about 37 km. Photo: Public Domain.
Bullets from Nazi German super guns could penetrate reinforced concrete walls up to 7m thick or destroy tanks with armor up to 1m thick. Photo: militaryhistoria.com. To move it, the Nazi soldiers needed two adjacent railway lines. About 2,000 soldiers participated in the transportation to the battlefield. Photo: militaryhistoria.com. The Nazis built two Schwerer Gustav guns and used them in the siege of Sevastopol. During the campaign, the Schwerer Gustav super gun fired about 30,000 tons of shells. Although very powerful, this weapon had a very slow rate of fire, about 14 rounds a day. Photo: militaryhistoria.com.
As a result, the Schwerer Gustav super cannon did not achieve the effectiveness that the Hitler regime expected. On April 14, 1945, one day before the American forces arrived, the Nazis destroyed a super cannon to prevent this weapon from falling into enemy hands. Photo: militaryhistoria.com. On April 22, 1945, parts of Gustav were discovered in a forest 15 km north of Auerbach and 50 km southwest of Chemnitz. Photo: Wikipedia.
Readers are invited to watch the video : About 800,000 tons of bombs and ammunition left over from the war. Source: THĐT1.
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