No not really missiles are accurate yes but can be shot down and or miss fired. Artillery is still king and Ukraine and Russia have shown that. Both have positives and negatives but in the end if you have both you can make war.
The problem is that missiles became viable by late 50's while this superheavy artillery were early 1940's tech. There was nothing to breach the gap caused by slow tech advancement and it didn't matter only because Korean War didn't turn into WWIII just because NATO kept appeasing and Tito kept evading soviet assassination attempts.
@@JackWendigo1234 The thing with rail guns is they are only so accurate anyway unless you have spotters near the target, said target being way behind enemy lines and therefore unlikely you'll be able to get a spotter by. Normally, you just pick a "target area" of a high consideration of things you want to blow up, (like a city or mega fortitfcations like the maginot line), and pummel the general area for long enough that you can cause some serious damage.
The condition of the barrel was unavoidable, the way they made it work was amazing and hard to believe. with every shot the barrel expanded. they pre calculated this and EVERY bullet had a different size to fit the new size. it was a bad idea to make the gustav, but it was a engineering marvel
It was a good idea to make Gustav but wrong to put on land. Instead they should have placed Gustav on a battleship and put the 16inch battleship gun on the rail for artillery purposes
I'm finding it hard to believe they actually fired it over 300 times, especially with how long it took to reload. There's only like 2 or 3 times it was actually used, and I don't see them test firing it a bunch knowing that it was slowly ruining the barrel. Now the Karl was used a lot and I could see 300 rounds put through Thor or Odin.
@@nobodyspecial115 5 sec online search: "By the end of the siege on 4 July the city of Sevastopol lay in ruins, and 30,000 tons of artillery ammunition had been fired. Gustav had fired 47 rounds and worn out its original barrel, which had already fired around 250 rounds during testing and development. The gun was fitted with the spare barrel and the original was sent back to Krupp's factory in Essen for relining. "
@@nobodyspecial115it was fired 250 times during its design and production phase for testing purposes. The only other time it was fired was the 47 times during the Battle of Sevastopol, during which it targeted “Ammunition Mountain” an undersea ammunition magazine on June 6, 1942. It fired nine shots at a target 30 meters under the sea, protected by 10 meters of concrete and destroyed it. This was also the only time the original commissioned barrel on Gustav was replaced with its spare after those 47 rounds, which means it took about 297 shots before needing to be repaired. It spent the rest of war on the sidelines, only to be dismantled and destroyed in 1945. Edit; the Karl you’re referring to is the Karl-Gerat 041 siege mortar, if memory serves. Which is a completely different machine that runs on tank treads.
@@SomaCruz500 they fired it that many times during testing? Wow seems a little excessive. But yeah sevastopol and the underwater bunker were the only 2 times I read of it being used, hence my scepticism of it being fired over 300 times. But yeah the Karl's were made for the same purpose, busting the mangino line. They were a lot smaller in size but fired 600mm shells opposed to 800 and were more mobile, fired a lot faster an able to move on their on power. They just didn't have the range of the Gustav, but in my opinion a lot more practical.
Not actually a bad concept given the technology of the time. This was just the mother of all siege guns. Damn effective on fixed targets so long as you had air superiority.
Exactly, this was designed to fire specifically at fixed targets from a huge distance away, mostly enemy fortifications and underground targets, which it did an excellent job for example during the Siege of Sevastopol where 1 shot destroyed one of the Soviet ammo bunkers. Was never a 'shitty' design, it was the "Bunker Buster" of that era. That's not to say it was perfect of course: it was a massive target itself, slow to move and fire, extremely expensive to make and operate and a resource/manpower hog, but calling it shitty without a proper understanding of it's intended use and operational history just shows ignorance. Same argument as "Tigers and Panthers bad because bad engine" yet nobody mentions that some factory workers would sabotage parts, especially P.O.W.s forced to work.
Question: if even normal trains werent operational in a warzone due to rail sabotage, combat damage, debris, different national rail guages etc how would you ever get one remotely in range of anything? Theres a reason that the height of train warfare was the US civil war a century prior, besides using light armour and firearms to chase off raiders and bank robbers train warfare had been proven useless a long long time before WW2
@@derpanzermacher9094a design easily crippled by forced labour is still bad. You cant put things in isolation outside of designing for fun. Logistic always wins out, and is why every cheap little US and Soviet tank was better than any German super heavy shit brick.
@@Rynewulf While I agree that Logistic is king, "a design easily crippled by forced labour is still bad" just isn't right. The validity of the design itself has nothing to do with who works on actually building it. What the problem in that example here is, is bad workplace management. Don't let people work on critical stuff who you don't trust. I have no experience in building a Sherman and that thing would probably break down before leaving the factory hall, even without me wanting too. Doesn't make it a bad design.
@@derpanzermacher9094The panzers 5 and 6 did have poorly designed drivetrains though. They were rushed into production before any of the teething issues were worked out, and many tanks broke down because the transmissions and final drives weren’t properly designed for vehicles that large.
to be fair this was built in response to the maginot defense line which was basically the toughest line of defense in history at that point, and they ended up just going around it through belgium instead of directly crashing into the maginot
It would be awesome to see an alternate history, in which counterintelligence suggested they'd go around, but instead they punch through. Fucking dwarven technology.
Was that one of only 2 or 3 times it was actually used? I seriously doubt they even made over 300 800lb shells for it much less fired that many through it
Ok the way i see it it wasnt a terrible idea Having a big gun you could call in to destroy extremely tough enemy fortifications isnt that bad Its the fact that the gustav gun is exactly the opposite of what it just described that was bad
@@garaltxabushi8214 ya lol if im correct it was created to help int he invasion of France but by the time it was operatable operation barbarossa had already started
@@rooster6461 ok EXTREMELY though enemy fortifications . Also artillery could be destroyed easily(easier than the gustav gun at least ), the gustav gun in the other hand , and i quote, “you could drop bombs on it every day for a month without every disabling it. “ Im not sure how accurate that description is but the gustav gun is definately harder to destroy than normal pieces of artillery Your take still stand though, a bunch of artillery pieces could do an equal amount of damage or more
“As cool as it was impractical.” Meanwhile the Germans in Sevastopol on June 6, 1942: “We took out an undersea magazine 30 meters under the sea protected by 10 meters of concrete. This things pretty cool and effective.” Look, all weaponry is built around the concept of “reach out and touch someone from a distance so the act of murder is less personal”. Gustav and Dora were far from “impractical”.
Gonna be THAT guy again. This was not a new idea. So-called Railway guns had been employed during WW1, which is where Hitler likely saw them. They were typically naval Battleship guns, that had been removed from either scrapped ships, or the guns themselves were just being replaced during a refit owing to the barrels being worn out. The barrels were usually bored out to re-rifle them, which had the effect of increasing the calibre, but seriously weakening the walls of the barrel. Not wanting to waste a big-damned-gun and score some propaganda points, they'd mount them on rails and use them to blast hell out of the enemy at very long range. The most famous of these, having been the so-called Paris Gun.
The shells of the Paris gun were the first man made objects to ever reach the stratosphere. It was such a large range the crew had to account for the rotation of the earth.
@@ThatSpecificIndividual also it had serialized shells that had to be fired sequentially because the friction of the shell going down the barrel actually bored the barrel out
Well, even if it wasnt the most successful project of the reich, "ya got to admit this is cool right??" And no joking, you dont want a 800 mm shell striking your house💀💀
Avarage project after Hitler gave his opinion on it: (In this case hitler was to impatient waitting prepperatian for the break threw french lines and for the Gustav to be finnished and decided invading belgium was faster than ussing a 800mm canon to break threw the magniot line. Beccause the gustav wasnt finished, beccause hitler invaded earlier, he decided to use it outside the only use, where it would had been actually usefull.) Other examples: -The Me262 was much slower and less movable, due to hitler deciding to make it able to carry bombs. - A lot weapon Projects were outdated when they entered Service, beccause hitler suddenly liked 2 years later more than he did 2 yers prior. -Hitler decided that aircraft carriers wer fir pussys, so he ordered the production, of the Graf Zeppelin, to be imidently stopped.
And Gustav still proved itself at Sevastopol, where it broke the siege by destroying the heavily armoured underwater magazines of the White Cliff fortress. Its biggest flaw was much like that of British tanks before the Cromwell - it was a great way to fight the previous war.
@@christiaan12321 Yep, while it proved usefull in a view situations, in the long run it was more expensive to mantain than building multiple smaller siege canons.
@@elijahmutter7394 Killing Hitler durring ww2 would had been the worst decision possible. If people like Himmler or Heidrich were in power, there would had been much more blood spilled, not only on the battlefield, but also in concentration camps.
@@luzifershadres arguably not - those would've been just as useless. They rarely besieged anything at all - their victories happened fast, and siege guns were mostly useless on the long, grinding defensive war afterwards. Anything would've been more useful than siege weapons, period. (Gustav was set up at Leningrad in 41, but had to be evacuated before it could fire)
I think this short does a bit of a disservice to the Gustav…it was able to destroy bunkers and underground factories up to 40m deep if I remember correctly and the Soviets at the siege of Sevastopol definitely didn’t think it’s was such a shitty weapon. Waste of Resources sure and kidna dumb…but not useless
Germans in WW2 came up with so many amazing inventions, such as the V2 and the ME 262. They also had so many of the dumbest, such as this gun and all the super heavy tanks. I'm adding the Bismarck, that was a foolish decision, they could have built and crew so many Subs
Mate, what are you talking about? The Germans made their tanks heavier to counter the Soviets, it was a simple necessity, and If the Bismarck didn't have the worst luck imaginable it would have absolutely fucked the Allies in the Atlantic.
@@johnkonig865what are you yapping about? heavier tanks comes from the mistake of believing that what made the Tiger sucessful was the heavy armor and guns, the reality is that the soviets didn't have anything to counter it effectivelly but later battles the Tiger and even later on the Tiger II got outclassed by soviets and allies, the best tank by far was the Stug III and the naval vehicle with the worst luck was the Hood, wich was practically one-shotted. The Bismark earned a free ticket to be chased by the whole british fleet then, wich is not bad luck, just bited the wrong animal. That and OC is right, BismarkGraf Spee and other similar ships went into raiding the supplyies of the allies (brits mostly), you don't need a massive ship for that, with U Boats were more than fine, maybe the heavy ships to defend the coasts and make it impossible to land in germany directly, but Germany wasted countless resources in wunderwaffens
@@elduquecaradura1468 "what are you yapping about? heavier tanks comes from the mistake of believing that what made the Tiger sucessful was the heavy armor and guns, the reality is that the soviets didn't have anything to counter it effectivelly but later battles the Tiger and even later on the Tiger II got outclassed by soviets and allies, the best tank by far was the Stug III" What does that have to do with my reply? "and the naval vehicle with the worst luck was the Hood, wich was practically one-shotted. The Bismark earned a free ticket to be chased by the whole british fleet then, wich is not bad luck, just bited the wrong animal." I was referring to the hit on the rudder by outdated planes. "That and OC is right, BismarkGraf Spee and other similar ships went into raiding the supplyies of the allies (brits mostly), you don't need a massive ship for that, with U Boats were more than fine" Mate, the Allies have adapted to counter the U-boats for years, the Germans can't win by spamming more of them, you know why, because the Allies learned that spamming destroyers is the counter. Now the big question, what would be a hard counter to destroyers?
@@elduquecaradura1468 "what are you yapping about? heavier tanks comes from the mistake of believing that what made the Tiger sucessful was the heavy armor and guns, the reality is that the soviets didn't have anything to counter it effectivelly but later battles the Tiger and even later on the Tiger II got outclassed by soviets and allies, the best tank by far was the Stug III" What does that have to do with my reply? "and the naval vehicle with the worst luck was the Hood, wich was practically one-shotted. The Bismark earned a free ticket to be chased by the whole british fleet then, wich is not bad luck, just bited the wrong animal." I was referring to the hit on the rudder by outdated planes. "That and OC is right, BismarkGraf Spee and other similar ships went into raiding the supplyies of the allies (brits mostly), you don't need a massive ship for that, with U Boats were more than fine" Mate, the Allies have adapted to counter the U-boats for years, the Germans can't win by spamming more of them, you know why, because the Allies learned that spamming destroyers is the counter. Now the big question, what would be a hard counter to destroyers?
The much smaller and rather more significant railway guns were the ones carried by single rail car or armored trains. Those would be devastating in defending cities. So long the tracks go unbombed.
This wasn't really a weird weapon but more of a rare one Guns developed especially to smash a fortified position have been around for nearly a thousand years The great bombard is comparable to this, many many times the size of other pieces, hard to move, an impressive feat of engineering and decisive on defences
This wasn’t actually a “Hitler brainchild project”; it was a Krupp/German Army project. Historically speaking Hitler had asked about the feasibility of the project while on a visit to Essen, where the Krupp factory it was being designed and made at was located, but gave no actual commitment to it himself. And that was in 1936, two years after German Army High Command had initially commissioned it in 1934. The order for the commissioning actually came from German Army High Command in 1934 for a weapon that could break the forts at the Maginot Line and lay siege to France outside of French artillery range, though the only actual usage the gun saw was in the Battle of Sevastopol in 1942 and firing around 47 rounds, being the only actual firing since the 250 rounds pumped through during it’s designing and testing phases (this was also the only time the original barrel of Gustav was replaced with its spare) over the three-four years previous to its deployment at Sevastopol, which was a year after it finished production, testing and was cleared for field use in 1941. It was then moved to Leningrad, presumably to assist in quelling the Warsaw Uprising, but the Uprising was crushed before German heavy artillery was needed. Never mind the fact the final “working concept” design was completed in 1937 and the only 2 guns; Gustav and Dora, that were originally ordered (Schwerer Gustav specifically was produced for free, by the way) in 1934 were finally produced in 1941. A full seven years out from when it was thought to have been needed and well into the A4/V2 project’s lifespan. Though Hitler did initially favor actual Artillery pieces over Rockets/Missiles due to cost of production, he found missiles to be a more PR friendly German “wonder weapon” due to the missiles long range capabilities and shifted his preference. But overall, the artillery pieces; Gustav and Dora, were successful and not a “misadventure”. Despite how badly this video want to makes it seem like they are. For example at the Siege of Sevastopol on June 6, 1942 Gustav managed to destroy “Ammunition Mountain”, an undersea ammunition magazine that was 30 meters under the sea and protected with 10 meters of concrete. Nine shots were fired, the ammunition magazine was ruined and there were reports of sunk boats. As well, they were successful enough that a model called the Langer Gustav was commissioned, being designed and produced for allowing rocket assisted artillery barrage of the UK from inland, coastal Europe (specifically Calais, France) but was damaged during production due to RAF bombing raids on the Essen factory. There was also a more mobile version of the 80cm Cannon meant to be a tank called the Landkreuzer P. 1500 Monster. Neither of those projects involved Hitler either though and the Monster project was shelved before it even had a chance.
It wasnt a bad design, it just wasnt used for its intended role. The Germans build it to fire at the maginot line, but because they were able to bypass it, the gun was used against other siege. Most effective at the siege of Sevastipol. After that it became obsolete, because of the dominant roles of aircrafts who could easily bomb it.
Hey you like our “little” toy :) Everyone else: WHAT THE FU*K IS THAT EVEN ALLOWED BY THE GENEVA CONVENTION AND IF NOW THEY TOOK GENEVA SUGGESTIONS TO A WHOLE NEW LEVEL
It was a bad idea, but the execution was great. For instance, They anticipated and calculated the barrel expansion and so each shell got progressivly slightly bigger.
I think there was a recording that goes something like this: "Hans, we need better transmission!" "More armor you say?" "No! Better transmission!" "Bigger cannon, you say?" "God damn it Hans..." "Hold on! Battleship cannon!" "...Yes Hans!"
Actually the train gun was a nightmare to deal with because the damn thing fired usually around about a kilometre away from everything else and could hit you still. So it was quite the pain in the ass to go through the entire enemy Line to get to their real line where the cannon usually was
The rail canon was actually a very terrifying weapon to go against. They had to parachute in seak up to it, to blow it up to allow a proper advance on it and the target camp.
To be entirely fair to the gun, it was originally proposed before the war, when it was assumed that the Wehrmacht would have to do a frontal assault on the Maginot Line, and for that purpose it was only slightly overkill. The gun was completely useless by the time it was built, but the money and resources had already been allocated.
Fun fact the gun was so powerful in fact when it fired they said the whole front of it would lift off the tracks and it would break the tracks so not entirely the best idea
I’m pretty sure hitlers solution to this was another one of his ‘Wunderwaffen’. And was similar to his Land Cruiser idea, which involved taking that big gun and placing it on a chassis similar to the land cruisers
