Obusier de 520 modèle 1916

Obusier de 520 modèle 1916
Gun in transport position
General Information
Military designation:	Obusier de 520 modèle 1916
Manufacturer designation:	Schneider et Cie
Manufacturer country:	France
Development year:	1916
Start of production:	1917
Number of pieces:	2
Weapon Category:	Railway artillery
Technical specifications
Pipe length:	11.90 m
Caliber :	520 mm
Caliber length :	15th
Cadence :	0.17 rounds / min
Elevation range:	+ 40 ° to + 60 ° angular degrees
Side straightening area:	individually

Sectional drawing

The grenade

The Obusier de 520 modèle 1916 ( German  520 mm howitzer model 1916 ) was a super-heavy railway gun of the French artillery during World War I , but it was not ready for use before the end of the war. One of the guns was already made at the test site by a non-starter from the second was after the 1940 western campaign of the German Wehrmacht captured and in the siege of Leningrad used. This gun was also destroyed by a gun blow.

description

The howitzers were ordered from Schneider et Cie in 1916 , but development was delayed and the first gun could not be delivered until the end of 1917. A two-part bogie with eight axles each served as the transport and carriage carriage. The enormous recoil was absorbed by a combined hydraulic system with the help of the tubular cradle and a brake slide. A number of supports were attached under the carriage carriage, which were pressed onto the rails under pressure in order to absorb the recoil that was still arriving here despite the hydraulic brakes in the pipe cradle . Despite this measure, the gun still moved back a meter. After the shot, the supports were raised and the carriage was pushed back into its firing position. This was done by hand cranks via gear wheels or with an electric motor. The gun could only be loaded in the elevation range 0 ° (i.e. with a horizontal barrel), and then it had to be raised again to the required position. A system with an overhead crane behind the bolt made it possible to insert the grenade, which weighs between 1370 kg and 1654 kg, into the bolt. The leveling machine and the ammunition feeder were operated electrically. The electricity was generated by a generator car that was connected to the gun via a cable about 10 meters long.

Calls

The first gun was destroyed in July 1918 during a test firing on the artillery firing range in Quiberon by a gun blow.

The second gun was delivered in 1918, but operational readiness was not yet established at the end of the war. It was then stored and was not included in the mobilization plan, so that it would have had to be activated and overhauled for use after the start of the war in 1940. The Wehrmacht captured it in the Schneider et Cie factory without firing a shot in battle.

The Wehrmacht put it into service as the "52 cm Howitzer (E) 871 (f)" and assigned it to the "Railway Artillery Battery 686". When the Barbarossa company started , it was not involved. On November 21, 1941, it reached the outskirts of Leningrad . On January 5, 1942, the howitzer was destroyed by a gun blow. The abandoned wreck fell into the hands of the Soviets during Operation Iskra in 1943 .

literature

• Guy François: Railway artillery. Histoire de l'artillerie lourde sur voie ferrée allemande des origines à 1945. Editions Histoire et Fortifications, Paris 2006, ISBN 978-2-915767-08-7 .
• Terry Gander, Peter Chamberlain: Weapons of the Third Reich. An Encyclopedic Survey of All Small Arms, Artillery and Special Weapons of the German Land Forces 1939-1945. Doubleday, New York 1979, ISBN 0-385-15090-3 .
• Ian V. Hogg: Allied Artillery of World War One. Crowood Press, Ramsbury, Marlborough, Wiltshire 1998, ISBN 1-86126-104-7 .
• Franz Kosar: Railway artillery in the world. Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-613-01976-0 .

Web links

• Harry W. Miller (Lieutenant Colonel of Ordnance Reserve Corps): Railway Artillery. A Report on the Characteristics, Scope of Utility, etc. of Railway Artillery. Volume 2. Government Print Office, Washington 1922, pp. 120–125 (PDF; 21.59 MB)
• L'obusier de 520. In: Les Canons de l'Apocalypse