Big Bertha (howitzer)
42 centimetre M-Gerät "Big Bertha" | |
---|---|
Siege artillery | |
Place of origin | German Empire |
Service history | |
In service | 1914–1918 |
Used by | German Empire |
Wars | World War I |
Production history | |
Manufacturer | Krupp |
Variants | 30.5 centimetre Beta-M-Gerät |
Specifications | |
Mass | 42,600 kg (93,900 lb) |
Length | 10 m (33 ft) |
Barrel length | 5.04 m (16 ft 6 in) L/12 |
Width | 4.7 m (15 ft) |
Height | 4.5 m (15 ft) |
Diameter | 42 cm (17 in) |
Caliber | 420 mm (17 in) |
Elevation | +65° |
Traverse | 360° |
Rate of fire | 8 shells an hour or 1 shell per 7.5 minutes |
Muzzle velocity | 400 m/s (1,300 ft/s) |
Maximum firing range | 9,300 m (30,500 ft) |
The 42 centimetre kurze Marinekanone 14 L/12 (short naval cannon), or
The M-Gerät designed in 1911 as an iteration of earlier super-heavy German siege guns intended to break modern fortresses in
Due to losses from faulty ammunition and Allied
Development and design
The quick advancement of artillery technology beginning in the 1850s provoked an arms race between artillery and military architecture.
The
In 1906,
Design and production
Assembled and emplaced, the M-Gerät weighed 42.6
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
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
German siege artillery had three types of projectiles:
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
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]
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 , 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 in a day. The battery then moved to attack the Fort de Broechem , 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 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
Eastern Front
On 2 May 1915,
To the south, KMK Batteries 3 and 5 participated in the
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
- List of the largest cannon by caliber
- German WW II Karl-Gerät SP mortar
Notes
- 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]
- 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]
- ^ Gamma-Gerät pieces in May 1916, which were replaced with two Beta-M-Gerät howitzers in early 1918.[51]
- Imperial Army by Corps.[21]
Citations
- ^ Donnell 2013, pp. 6–8.
- ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 5–6.
- ^ Donnell 2013, pp. 8–9.
- ^ a b Romanych & Rupp 2013, p. 7.
- ^ Donnell 2013, pp. 1–2.
- ^ a b Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 6, 7–8.
- ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 8, 10, 11.
- ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, p. 14.
- ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 15–16, 19, 22.
- ^ a b Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 21, 28.
- ^ a b Kinard 2007, p. 362.
- ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, p. 21.
- ^ Tucker 2019, p. 677.
- ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 19, 22, 28.
- ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 17–18.
- ^ Kinard 2007, p. 257.
- ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, p. 16, 18, 28–29.
- ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 40, 45–46.
- ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 22–23.
- ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 25, 44, 47.
- ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, p. 23.
- ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 19, 23, 25, 26.
- ^ Tucker 2014, pp. 958–60.
- ^ a b Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 26–27.
- ^ Tucker 2014, pp. 958, 960.
- ^ Tucker 2014, p. 960.
- ^ a b Tucker 2014, p. 1140.
- ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 30–31.
- ^ Tucker 2014, p. 1051.
- ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 30–31, 34.
- ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, p. 34.
- ^ a b Tucker 2014, p. 118.
- ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 35–37.
- ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, p. 43.
- ^ Tucker 2014, p. 1616.
- ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 43–44.
- ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 45, 46–47.
- ^ Tucker 2014, p. 679.
- ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 38–39.
- ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 39–42.
- ^ Hazell 2021, p. 66.
- ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, pp. 4–5.
- ^ Holley, David (5 June 1994). ".S. Golf Club Manufacturer Carries A Big Stick". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 5 September 2018.
- ^ "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.
- ^ "Interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung". Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 24 February 2012. Retrieved 5 September 2018.
- ^ Reiermann, Christian; Seith, Anne (23 April 2014). "ECB Considers Possible Deflation Measures". Der Spiegel. Retrieved 5 September 2018.
- ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, p. 47.
- ^ Zaloga 2018, pp. 9–17.
- ^ "Paris again Shelled by Long-Range Gun" (PDF). The New York Times. 6 August 1918. p. 3. Retrieved 3 December 2011.
- ^ Tucker 2014, p. 224.
- ^ Romanych & Rupp 2013, p. 25.
References
- Donnell, Clayton (2013). Breaking the Fortress Line 1914. ISBN 978-1-4738-3012-7.
- Hazell, Paul J. (2021). The Story of the Gun: History, Science, and Impact on Society. ISBN 978-3-03-073652-1.
- Kinard, Jeff (2007). Artillery: An Illustrated History of Its Impact. ISBN 978-1-85109-561-2.
- Romanych, Marc; Rupp, Martin (2013). 42cm "Big Bertha" and German Siege Artillery of World War I. Illustrated by Henry Morshead. ISBN 978-1-78096-017-3.
- ISBN 978-1-85109-964-1.
- Tucker, Spencer (2019). World War I: A Country–by–Country Guide. ABC-Clio. ISBN 978-1-4408-6369-1.
- ISBN 978-1-4728-2609-1.
Further reading
- Herbert Jäger: German Artillery of World War One, The Crowood Press, ISBN 1861264038
- Willy Ley: German Siege Guns of the Two World Wars. Journal of Coastal Artillery, February 1943
- Raimund Lorenz: Die "Dicke Berta" aus Vluynbusch, Museumverein Neukirchen-Vluyn
- Rudolf Lusar: Riesengeschütze und schwere Brummer einst und jetzt, ISBN 3469003637
- Konrad F. Schreier, Jr.: The World War I "Brummer" in 'Museum Ordnance: The Magazine for the U.S. Army Ordnance Museum', November 1992
- Gerhard Taube: Die schwersten Steilfeuer-Geschütze 1914–1945. Geheimwaffen "Dicke Berta" und "Karl", Motorbuch-Verlag ISBN 3879438110
External links
- Duffey, Michael. "Big Bertha". firstworldwar.com. Retrieved 5 September 2018.