Big Bertha (howitzer)

This is a good article. Click here for more information.
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

42 centimetre M-Gerät "Big Bertha"
Siege artillery
Place of originGerman Empire
Service history
In service1914–1918
Used byGerman Empire
WarsWorld War I
Production history
ManufacturerKrupp
Variants30.5 centimetre Beta-M-Gerät
Specifications
Mass42,600 kg (93,900 lb)
Length10 m (33 ft)
Barrel length5.04 m (16 ft 6 in) L/12
Width4.7 m (15 ft)
Height4.5 m (15 ft)
Diameter42 cm (17 in)

Caliber420 mm (17 in)
Elevation+65°
Traverse360°
Rate of fire8 shells an hour or 1 shell per 7.5 minutes
Muzzle velocity400 m/s (1,300 ft/s)
Maximum firing range9,300 m (30,500 ft)

The 42 centimetre kurze Marinekanone 14 L/12 (short naval cannon), or

Krupp AG in Essen, Germany and fielded by the Imperial German Army from 1914 to 1918. The M-Gerät had a 42 cm (17 in) calibre barrel, making it one of the largest artillery pieces ever fielded
.

The M-Gerät designed in 1911 as an iteration of earlier super-heavy German siege guns intended to break modern fortresses in

First World War broke out, the two M-Gerät guns, still prototypes, were sent to Liège, Belgium, and destroyed Forts Pontisse and Loncin. German soldiers bestowed the gun with the nickname "Big Bertha", which then spread through German newspapers to the Allies, who used it as a nickname for all super-heavy German artillery. The Paris Gun, a railway gun
used to bomb Paris in 1918, has historically been confused for the M-Gerät.

Due to losses from faulty ammunition and Allied

counter-battery artillery
, a smaller-calibre (30.5 cm (12.0 in)) gun called the Beta-M-Gerät was built and fielded from 1916 until the end of the war. It had a longer and heavier barrel that was mated to the M-Gerät's carriage but was found to be less effective than the base gun.

Development and design

The quick advancement of artillery technology beginning in the 1850s provoked an arms race between artillery and military architecture.

casemates. Combining rings and barriers, France created a vast fortified zone on its border with Germany, while Belgium began construction of the National Redoubt in 1888.[1][2]

The

Krupp AG in 1893. The first result of this partnership was a 30.5 cm (12.0 in) mortar, accepted into service four years later as the schwerer Küstenmörser L/8, but known as the Beta-Gerät (Beta Apparatus) to disguise its purpose as a siege gun.[a][6] Tests in the mid-1890s showed that the Beta-Gerät could not destroy French or Belgian forts, even with improved shells. Interest in a more powerful siege gun waned until the Russo-Japanese War, during which the Japanese Army used 28 cm howitzer L/10 (28 cm (11 in) coastal guns) brought from Japan to end the 11-month long Siege of Port Arthur.[6]

Gamma-Gerät
, predecessor of the M-Gerät

In 1906,

Kaiser Wilhelm II, began in February 1914, and Krupp estimated that the M-Gerät would be complete by October 1914.[9]

Design and production

Assembled and emplaced, the M-Gerät weighed 42.6 

First World War on 31 July 1914, and then two more on 28 August and another pair on 11 November. Krupp eventually built 12 M-Gerät howitzers.[14]

The M-Gerät had to be assembled for firing and for transport was dismantled and towed in five wagons.[15][16] These wagons, weighing 16 to 20 t (16 to 20 long tons; 18 to 22 short tons) each, were designed to hold a specific portion of the M-Gerät, sans the gun carriage, which was its own wagon. These were towed by purpose-built, gas-powered tractors as the wagons were too heavy to be pulled by horses. To move across open country, the wagon wheels were fitted with articulated feet called radgürteln to reduce their ground pressure. Under optimal circumstances, the tractors and wagons could move at 7 km/h (4.3 mph).[17]

The 30.5-centimetre Beta-M-Gerät, called the schwere

Gamma-Gerät guns (a one- to two-month-long process per gun), but 12 L/30 barrels were built.[18]

"Gerät" siege artillery variants[4]
Name Calibre Weight Range Rate of fire Time to emplace (hours)
M-Gerät "Big Bertha" 42 cm (17 in) 42.6 t (41.9 long tons; 47.0 short tons) 9,300 m (30,500 ft) 8 shells an hour 5–6
Gamma-Gerät
150 t (150 long tons; 170 short tons) 14,000 m (46,000 ft) 24
Beta-M-Gerät 30.5 cm (12.0 in) 47 t (46 long tons; 52 short tons) 20,500 m (67,300 ft) 7–8
Beta-Gerät 09 45 t (44 long tons; 50 short tons) 12,000 m (39,000 ft) 12 shells an hour 12
Beta-Gerät 30 t (30 long tons; 33 short tons) 8,200 m (26,900 ft) 15 shells an hour

Ammunition

Photograph of a 42cm shell
A 42 cm projectile in 1918

German siege artillery had three types of projectiles:

armour-piercing, high-explosive and intermediate. The armour-piercing shell was designed to smash through concrete and metal armour but was largely ineffective against reinforced concrete. High-explosive shells were fitted with two charges and could be set to have no delay, a short delay or a long delay. If set to "no delay" the shell burst on impact. If set to a delayed detonation, it could penetrate up to 12 m (39 ft) of earth. Finally, the intermediate, or "short shell", weighed half as much as the high-explosive shell and was fitted with a ballistic tip for range and accuracy. Shells for the 42-centimetre guns were generally 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in) long, weighed between 400 and 1,160 kg (880 and 2,560 lb), and were propelled via primer loaded into the gun with a brass casing. Siege artillery shells were produced in limited runs of varying quality. Beginning in early 1916, German siege guns began to suffer internal explosions due to faulty ammunition. Crews were required to disembark from the gun before firing via a lanyard.[19]

Service history

The kurze Marinekanone (KMK) batteries that formed with M-Gerät guns were 3 (2 August 1914), 5 (June 1915), 6 (Summer 1915) and 7 (early 1916). Battery 3 was split in half in April 1916 to form 10 with a single M-Gerät each. The four Beta-M-Gerät guns produced were fielded by KMK Batteries 8 and 10 after their M-Gerät gun barrels had been destroyed by premature detonation.[c] When the German Army was reorganised in late 1918, only Battery 5 had M-Gerät guns, and schwere Küstenmörser (SKM) Battery 3 was assigned the remaining two Beta-M-Gerät guns.[20]

Western Front

Photograph of the ruins of the Fort de Loncin
Ruins of the Fort de Loncin, 1914

By June 1914, the prototype M-Gerät howitzers had returned to Essen for final adjustments and would have been formed into a reserve artillery battery on completion in October.[d] On 2 August 1914, they were organised into KMK Battery 3 and sent to the Western Front with 240 men.[22] On 4 August, the 1st Army arrived near Liège, Belgium, the first objective of the Schlieffen Plan and began the Battle of Liège. Although German troops entered the city on 7 August, its forts were firing upon the road to be taken by the 2nd Army and had to be reduced. Heavy artillery began their attack on 8 August.[23] KMK Battery 3 was the first siege battery sent into battle to bombard the Fort de Pontisse on 12 August, which surrendered after two days. The battery next moved to the Fort de Liers but the fort surrendered as the battery was being emplaced. KMK Battery 3 relocated to the Fort de Loncin, where Gérard Leman directed the defence of Liège.[24][25] Firing commenced on 15 August and lasted two hours, as the 25th shot fired struck a magazine and caused an explosion that destroyed the fort.[24] The Germans carried Leman, unconscious, out of Loncin, and the last two forts, Hollogne and Flémalle, capitulated on 16 August.[26]

With Liège captured, the 1st Army continued north-west while the 2nd and 3rd Armies marched to Namur, whose forts were undermanned, unmaintained, and poorly stocked with ammunition. The 2nd Army arrived on 20 August 1914 to open the Siege of Namur, but began their main attacks the following day with 400 pieces of artillery.[27] KMK Battery 3 fired upon the Fort de Marchovelette, which was destroyed on 23 August by a magazine explosion. The battery shifted its fire to the Fort de Maizeret, already under bombardment by four Austro-Hungarian Skoda 30.5-centimetre guns, and compelled its surrender.[28] With the eastern forts occupied, the Germans entered Namur and the remaining Belgian forces evacuated from the city.[27]

Photograph of a destroyed cupola at Maubeuge Fortress
A ruined cupola at one of the Maubeuge forts, 1914

Following the defeat of the Western Allies at Charleroi and at Mons, the British Expeditionary Force withdrew past Maubeuge, their base of operations after arriving in France. On 24 August 1914, the advancing Germans arrived at the fortresses of Maubeuge and began the Siege of Maubeuge and its garrison of 45,000 soldiers. The next day, the VII Reserve Corps were left behind the main German armies to take the city.[29] Bombardment of the forts began on 30 August, with KMK Battery 3 tasked with reducing Ouvrage Les Sarts (Fort Sarts) but it mistakenly shelled an interval fortification in front of Sarts. By 5 September, a hole in the fortress ring had been opened by German 21-centimetre guns, but they had by now exhausted their ammunition. To widen that gap, the siege guns then expended their remaining ammunition against Forts Leveau, Héronfontaine, and Cerfontaine on 7 September, and destroyed them in quick succession. The two remaining French forts surrendered that same day and the Germans occupied Maubeuge on 8 September.[30]

With Maubeuge taken, German siege guns were available for an attack on Paris, but Germany's defeat at the Battle of the Marne blocked the advance of the 1st and 2nd Armies, and the guns were instead sent to Antwerp.[31] King Albert I had ordered a general retreat to Antwerp on 18 August, and his army arrived in the city two days later. From Antwerp, Albert made attacks on the German flank on 24–25 August and 9 September, prompting General Alexander von Kluck of the 1st Army to send the III Reserve Corps to seize Antwerp.[32] It arrived and partially surrounded Antwerp from the south-west on September 27, and bombardment began the next day. KMK Battery 3 arrived on 30 September and opened fire on the Fort de Lier [nl], whose artillery narrowly missed the battery. The fort was abandoned by its garrison on 2 October, allowing KMK Battery 3 to attack and destroy the Fort de Kessel [nl] in a day. The battery then moved to attack the Fort de Broechem [nl], which was also destroyed within two days.[33] From 7 to 9 October, the Belgian army fled from Antwerp and the city surrendered on 10 October.[32]

Early in 1916, all 42-centimetre guns were assigned to the 5th Army, which amassed a total of 24 siege guns, the highest concentration of them during the war.[34] The Battle of Verdun was opened on 21 February 1916 with an intense, nine-hour long artillery bombardment.[35] The 42-centimetre guns had to suppress the artillery of Forts Vaux, Douaumont, Souville and Moulainville [fr] but were unable to penetrate the concrete of the modern fortresses. On the second day of the battle, both of KMK Battery 7's M-Gerät guns were destroyed by premature detonations and KMK Batteries 5 and 6 both lost an M-Gerät each to the same cause. Most of the siege guns at Verdun were moved north in July to participate in the Battle of the Somme, and by September the only M-Gerät units left in Verdun were KMK Batteries 3 and 6.[36]

In the final two years of the war, KMK batteries that suffered losses of their big guns had them replaced with smaller–calibre weapons. Those that remained primarily shelled field works and often had low survivability due to malfunctions or Allied

American Expeditionary Force.[37]

Eastern Front

Picture of Kaunas's II Fort in ruins in 2011
Kaunas's Fort II in ruins, 2011

On 2 May 1915,

Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive. By the end of the month, his forces neared Przemyśl, which had been captured by the Russians from Austria-Hungary on 22 March 1915.[38] KMK Battery 6 took part in the bombardment of forts X, Xa, XI and XIa, opened on 30 March. Two days later, the Germans took and held forts X, Xa and XI against counter-attack, compelling the Russians to abandon Przemyśl. German troops entered the city on 3 June, then took the remaining forts two days later. From 8 August, KMK Battery 6 supported the XXXX Reserve Corps in its attack on Kaunas Fortress by bombarding Kaunas's three westernmost forts. Although the German siege artillery's shelling of Kaunas was slow, the fortifications were outdated and were easily destroyed. The city fell on 18 August.[39]

To the south, KMK Batteries 3 and 5 participated in the

Great Retreat. At Grodno, KMK Batteries 3, 5, and 6 were not even fully emplaced when the fortress was evacuated on 3 September. The last deployment of M-Gerät guns on the Eastern Front was in October 1915, when KMK Battery 6 was attached to the German 11th Army as it invaded Serbia.[40]

Replicas and legacy

The nickname "Big Bertha" appeared early in the war, when German soldiers named the guns Dicke Berta at the Battle of Liège, a reference to Bertha Krupp, who had inherited the Krupp works from her father. The name spread to German newspapers and then to Allied troops as "Big Bertha" and became slang for all heavy German artillery, but especially the 42-centimetre guns.[41][42] The name has since entered the public consciousness, for example being applied as a moniker to a line of Callaway golf clubs and a satirical French-language magazine and a bond-buying policy by Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank.[43][44][45][46]

Two M-Gerät guns were surrendered to the US Army at Spincourt in November 1918. One was taken to the United States, evaluated and then put on display at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, while the other was left unassembled in its transport configuration. Both were scrapped in 1943 and the early 1950s. World War I veteran Emil Cherubin built a replica of an M-Gerät, which toured Germany and appeared on a few postage stamps.[47] The Paris Gun, a railway gun developed during the war and used to bomb Paris in 1918, has historically been confused with the M-Gerät since World War I.[48][49][50]

Big Bertha in soldiers' memories.

A Pole from Greater Poland serving in the Army of the German Empire during the Battle of Verdun remembered "Fat Berta" as follows: They moved Fat Bertha [about] 20 km closer to the front. At the edge of the forest, a strong concrete base was built on which the cannon was mounted. The area around the gun was reinforced with concrete in a wide radius. Rails were added to the gun on which ammunition is delivered. The cannon is of monstrous size. The gun outlet itself can accommodate an adult person. The missiles, almost the size of a human, are transported on separate carts directly into the mouth of the colossus. Strong shelters and traverses were placed next to the gun, protecting the crew from enemy bullets. Marked cannons are placed further away from the gun to confuse the pilots. The entire position is masked by trees and branches. Specialists have been working on the construction for several weeks. The work is almost finished and shooting will start in two days. [...] On the designated day, we go to the very edge of the mountain to witness the shootings - something interesting for a hiker. The shot is gone! A deep thud splits the air and a huge cloud of smoke rises upwards. We cover our ears and open our mouths to protect our eardrums from damage. To cause confusion, branded cannons also fire only with gunpowder and create similar clouds of smoke. Every ten minutes a shot goes off. You can't shoot more

Ryszard Kaczmarek: Polacy w armii kajzera na frontach I wojny światowej, Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków 2014, p.345 ISBN 978-83-08-05331-7. 

See also

Notes

  1. ironclad warships. By the 1890s, the use of mortars against ships had fallen out of favour, as hitting ships with a mortar was very difficult.[4] Krupp had built and exhibited a 35.5 cm (14.0 in) mortar at the Centennial Exposition in 1876. A year later, The New York Times reported about a Krupp-built coastal defence gun with a diameter of 45 cm (18 in).[5]
  2. Gamma-Gerät and another 12 were needed to assemble the gun. Rail lines also had to be laid to the Gamma-Gerät's position to allow its assembly.[8]
  3. ^
    Gamma-Gerät pieces in May 1916, which were replaced with two Beta-M-Gerät howitzers in early 1918.[51]

Citations

  1. ^ Donnell 2013, pp. 6–8.
  2. ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 5–6.
  3. ^ Donnell 2013, pp. 8–9.
  4. ^ a b Romanych & Rupp 2013, p. 7.
  5. ^ Donnell 2013, pp. 1–2.
  6. ^ a b Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 6, 7–8.
  7. ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 8, 10, 11.
  8. ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, p. 14.
  9. ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 15–16, 19, 22.
  10. ^ a b Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 21, 28.
  11. ^ a b Kinard 2007, p. 362.
  12. ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, p. 21.
  13. ^ Tucker 2019, p. 677.
  14. ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 19, 22, 28.
  15. ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 17–18.
  16. ^ Kinard 2007, p. 257.
  17. ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, p. 16, 18, 28–29.
  18. ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 40, 45–46.
  19. ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 22–23.
  20. ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 25, 44, 47.
  21. ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, p. 23.
  22. ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 19, 23, 25, 26.
  23. ^ Tucker 2014, pp. 958–60.
  24. ^ a b Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 26–27.
  25. ^ Tucker 2014, pp. 958, 960.
  26. ^ Tucker 2014, p. 960.
  27. ^ a b Tucker 2014, p. 1140.
  28. ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 30–31.
  29. ^ Tucker 2014, p. 1051.
  30. ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 30–31, 34.
  31. ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, p. 34.
  32. ^ a b Tucker 2014, p. 118.
  33. ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 35–37.
  34. ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, p. 43.
  35. ^ Tucker 2014, p. 1616.
  36. ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 43–44.
  37. ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 45, 46–47.
  38. ^ Tucker 2014, p. 679.
  39. ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 38–39.
  40. ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 39–42.
  41. ^ Hazell 2021, p. 66.
  42. ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 4–5.
  43. ^ Holley, David (5 June 1994). ".S. Golf Club Manufacturer Carries A Big Stick". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 5 September 2018.
  44. ^ "Very droll: The French have jokes, but do they have a sense of humour?". The Economist. 18 December 2003. Archived from the original on 6 March 2019. Retrieved 5 September 2018.
  45. ^ "Interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung". Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 24 February 2012. Retrieved 5 September 2018.
  46. ^ Reiermann, Christian; Seith, Anne (23 April 2014). "ECB Considers Possible Deflation Measures". Der Spiegel. Retrieved 5 September 2018.
  47. ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, p. 47.
  48. ^ Zaloga 2018, pp. 9–17.
  49. ^ "Paris again Shelled by Long-Range Gun" (PDF). The New York Times. 6 August 1918. p. 3. Retrieved 3 December 2011.
  50. ^ Tucker 2014, p. 224.
  51. ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, p. 25.

References

Further reading

External links

  • Duffey, Michael. "Big Bertha". firstworldwar.com. Retrieved 5 September 2018.