343 mm railway gun
The 343 mm railway gun was a British railway gun .
history
During the First World War , two 356 mm railway guns were built by the British and used in France (Boche-Buster and Scene Shifter). After the end of the war, the pipes were scrapped, but the mounts were stored. With the beginning of the Second World War , the British Admiralty handed over three 343 mm cannon barrels to the army. These were roughly the same size as the old scrapped pipes. The army decided to use the pipes in the stored mounts. The fourth mount (Boche-Buster) carried a 457 mm howitzer . The four guns were named "Sceneshifter", "Piece Maker" [sic], "Gladiator" and "Boche-Buster". While the first three guns mentioned often duels with German batteries on the other side of the canal, the fourth gun was only used in the vicinity of Dover for coastal defense.
technology
The carriage is carried by two beams with a total of 15 axles. The front carrier car has eight axles, the rear seven. The elevation range was + 0 ° to + 40 °. As is usual with many railway guns, it was only possible to point to a maximum of 4 ° to a limited extent. For side straightening, the entire gun was usually moved on a track system.
Technical specifications
- Caliber: 343 mm
- Pipe length: 15.90 m
- Total length: 26.62 m
- Combat weight: 243,892 kg
- Ammunition type / projectile weight: highly explosive / 567 kg
- Muzzle velocity: 777 m / s
- Maximum shooting range: 36,575 m
literature
- ^ Dale Clarke: British Artillery 1914-19. Heavy artillery. Osprey Publishing, Oxford 2005, ISBN 1-84176-788-3 , pp. 41-42.
- Ian Hogg : History of Artillery in the 20th Century. Gondrom Verlag, Bindlach 2001, ISBN 3-8112-1878-6 .
