Dora supercannon: the largest and most useless weapon of the Third Reich

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

According to the Chief of the General Staff of the Ground Forces of Hitlerite Germany, Colonel-General Franz Halder, the Dora supercannon, although it was a real work of art, was a useless weapon in terms of combat effectiveness. According to many experts, "Dora" is the most expensive mistake in the entire history of the development of artillery.

BIG "spouse"

The idea of creating a super-powerful gun belongs to Hitler. After visiting the Krupp factories in 1936, the Fuehrer ordered the start of work on the construction of an artillery system capable of breaking through multi-meter concrete shelters of the French Maginot Line and Belgian fortifications. The calculations of the Krupp specialists boiled down to ton-meters: only a seven-ton shell of an 800-millimeter gun could penetrate a seven-meter concrete wall of the shelter.

The artillery system, which has no analogues, was created by a design group led by Professor Eric Mülle. Mülle's wife's name was Dora. The same name was given to the super-weapon. This artillery system was supposed to shoot from a distance of 35-45 kilometers, but for this "Dore" should have a super-long barrel and a mass of at least 400 tons. They conjured over the Dora for more than four years, spending an astronomical sum of 10,000,000 Reichsmarks for those times. Fortifications, about which Hitler spoke, ordering to create a supergun, the Germans at that time, without waiting for "Dora", had already taken.

The Dora's barrel length exceeded 32 meters, and the mass of the gun itself, without the railway platform on which it was installed, was 400 tons. Its concrete-piercing shell weighed 7 tons, the high-explosive shell - 4.8 tons. After fifteen shots, the barrel was already beginning to wear out, although it was originally calculated for a hundred. "Dora" in the complex was a rather bulky and unwieldy structure - being fortified on a special railway 80-wheeled transporter, the complex artillery system moved along two parallel tracks at once. In total, the system was served by about 3 thousand people. It took more than a month to prepare for the Douro shot.

Sevastopol "waltz"

The baptism of fire "Dora" took place near Sevastopol in 1942, and the effectiveness of the super-cannon shots upset the Hitlerite command - the hassle of delivering and putting the artillery system on alert was more than the benefit of it.

General Halder placed the Douro at the disposal of Field Marshal Manstein's army. The dismantled cannon and ammunition were transported by 5 trains (more than a hundred wagons). The artillery system service personnel alone occupied 43 cars. On the spot, "Douro" was "courted" by a collective of nearly four thousand - soldiers and officers of a transport battalion, a camouflage and guard company, sappers, gendarmes, engineers, and air defense units.

Arriving at the location (not far from Bakhchisarai) at the end of April, Dora fired its first shot only in the early morning of 5 June. Residential buildings in Bakhchisarai were left without window panes from such a roar. From 5 to 7 June, the positions occupied by the 96th rifle division, the 16th coastal battery, the anti-aircraft battery of the Black Sea Fleet, and the arsenal in Sukharnaya Balka were fired upon. Of the 48 shots fired by Dora these days, according to the estimates of German observers, only 5 reached the target. In particular, the ammunition depot hidden in the rocks of the Northern Bay was destroyed by a direct hit from a giant cannon shell.

It was not possible to track the trajectory of several Dora's projectiles - obviously, they went into the milk, that is, into the sea. The rest, for the most part, dug into the ground to a depth of more than ten meters, and their breaks did not cause serious damage to our troops.

The second and last "tour"

From near Sevastopol "Doru" was transported to the Leningrad region. True, the barrel had to be sent to Germany for repair - it was no longer good anywhere. “Dora” wanted to throw “hubby” - by that time the Nazis had built another artillery super miracle, nicknamed “Fat Gustav” - but the Red Army, breaking the blockade of the northern capital, mixed up the plans of the Germans. The giant cannons hastily left the front-line zone without firing.

By the way, “Gustav” never had to shoot. And "Doru" in the fall of 1944 was used near Warsaw during the suppression of the Polish uprising - it fired more than 20 shells. At the end of the war, the retreating Nazi troops ferried the "Gustav" and "Dora" to Bavaria, where the guns were blown up. The remains of the superguns were discovered by the Anglo-American allies. Having studied and documented everything that remained of these giants, they sent the "dead" to be melted down.