21 cm cannon 12 (E)
| 21 cm cannon 12 (E) | |
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| General Information | |
| Military designation: | K 12 |
| Developer / Manufacturer: | Croup |
| Number of pieces: | 3 |
| Weapon Category: | Railway gun |
| Technical specifications | |
| Overall length: | 41,360 m |
| Pipe length: | 33.3 m |
| Caliber : |
211 mm |
| Caliber length : | L / 157.8 |
| Twist : | right, constant |
| Cadence : | 0.1 rounds / min |
| Elevation range: | 0 to +55 degrees |
| Side straightening area: | Turntable 360 °, carriage 14 ° |
The 21 cm cannon 12 (E) (short: K 12 ) was a German railway gun of the Wehrmacht in World War II .
history
In the 1930s, the German High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW) was of the opinion that it needed a long-range gun similar to that of the Paris gun of the First World War . The result of the construction work was the K 12 .
1940 hit a bullet from occupied France fired from, km 88.5 in distant Rainham Marshes ( Kent ) one. The actual combat value of the cannon may, however, be questioned. The enormous size of the gun made it extremely vulnerable to air attacks. In addition, the entire mount had to be rotated in order to align the gun sideways, which meant that entire track systems had to be set up that had a curve ( firing curve ) or a turntable.
In total, only 83 rounds were fired by the railroad artillery battery 701 during the entire Second World War .
construction
The cannon was mounted in the middle of a railway carriage that had twenty axles. The mass of the weapon alone was 99,708 kg, the tube consisted of the core tube and a two-part jacket tube. Because of its length, the barrel had to be stabilized by bracing, as with the Paris guns. Theoretically, the life of a tube was 90 rounds.
The tube and the mount had hydraulic return brakes and hydropneumatic peckers. The tube ran back a maximum of 750 mm, the mount up to 980 mm. The mount was pumped up hydraulically to allow the pipe to be raised more. The drawn part of the tube was 27.724 m long and, together with the special projectile, provided a range of 45 to 115 km.
The production of each gun with a gun carriage cost 1.5 million RM .
literature
- Ian Hogg : 20th Century Artillery. Gondrom Verlag, Bindlach 2001, ISBN 3-8112-1878-6 .
- R. Böhm: The German guns. 1939-1945. Edited by FM von Senger and Etterlin . Bechtermünz, Augsburg 2002, ISBN 3-8289-0524-2 .
- Terry Gander, Peter Chamberlain: Encyclopedia of German Weapons 1939-1945. 2nd edition, special edition. Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-613-02481-0 .