... not bad ... not bad ...
... this is the book from which I'm drawing all these wonderful stories and facts ... apart from the difficult to read old-german letters, it's a real treat ... we are talking about 1934 propaganda type of power monologues, mocking the enemy where possible ... old Adi himself could have been the author :=) ... hilarious at places - mind boggling at others, especially when considering the demand put into the builders and scientists and the accurate results they eventually presented ...
... talking about results ... I was in tears, when I read about the first tries with another long range cannon ... the venue was the "Schießplatz" of Meppen, the cannon a 35.5cm caliber monster, calculated and calibrated to shoot exactly 20km at an angle of 45 degrees ... the shot was fired and it also impacted ... however not where they had it intended to impact ... kinda like in the "There's something about Mary" movie - "where did it go?" ...
ROFLMAO
... only later via the "Wehrmachts Alarmnachrichten" they learned, that they had shot across the border into the neighboring Holland ... ooops - sorry ... the Dutch obviously didn't have a clue what had hit them ... the shot went exactly twice as far as calculated ... by accident they had learned about the principles of ballistics for a projectile entering the stratosphere ... through that they had also learned that an angle at or around 50 degrees was ideal for the "Paris Kanone" ... the distance there was 128km and the granade spent 2 of the 3.5 minutes airborne time within the stratosphere reaching tops at 40km ...
... this is an impression of what the French THOUGHT, the cannon looks like:
... and this is where they were hit throughout a campaign that went on for months and utilised three of those Leviathans of a gun:
... French scientists fought battles over the caliber of that mysterious German "Wunderwaffe" ... "21cm! no, 22.5cm! no, 23cm!" ... well, actually they were all correct, because every shot out of 65 utilised another caliber size ... the reason being, that with every shot the barrel expanded by the fraction of a milimeter ... not only that, but the whip-slashing effect of the detonation also bent the barrel ... this was another one of the problems the scientists were presented with - and failure was not acceptable ... "Wir dulden keinen Widerspruch!!!" :=) ... supporting the barrel with rods etc. was out of the question, because once bent - that's it ... sooo, typical German they came up with an easy one ... they said: "let the barrel bend, if it wants to - we'll bend it back before the next shot" ... chains, claws and a winch type of "Flaschenzug" (dunno the English word for it) was used, with which they bent the barrel right back after every shot ... the chord line twisted by 5000 atmospheres of pressure was re-alined by just another simple device ... they attached a screen with a cross to the muzzle and a conventional scope at the other end of the 34 metre barrel ... a "Peiler" eyeballed and shouted commands to the guys at the winches ... they did that between every two shots and thus successfully fired more than 300 accurately placed slugs into Paris ...
... other and many more measures were taken, to grant accuracy of each and every single shot, such as powder being stored at exactly 15 degrees Celcius etc. etc. ...
well guessed guys and gals ... pdmoderator's link (thanks) gives it away in a nut shell, although some of the data are not quite correct ...
... any questions? ... I got the book infront of me ... love it ...
... and please forgive us our typos and grammar ...
