- 21 hours ago
For educational purposes
Ground-breaking 3D graphics and state-of-the-art computer animation provide some of the highlights in this authoritative, entertaining look at the great German siege guns of World War Two.
The programme features extraordinary archive footage culled from German and Allied sources and all-new footage of surviving examples of German heavy artillery, among a team of eminent military authorities who help to tell the fascinating.
Ground-breaking 3D graphics and state-of-the-art computer animation provide some of the highlights in this authoritative, entertaining look at the great German siege guns of World War Two.
The programme features extraordinary archive footage culled from German and Allied sources and all-new footage of surviving examples of German heavy artillery, among a team of eminent military authorities who help to tell the fascinating.
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LearningTranscript
00:01In January 1944, the Allied forces in Italy came under fire from enormously powerful German super-heavy artillery.
00:11The massive, high-explosive shells were fired from two huge railway guns located almost 30 miles away.
00:20The Allied troops on the receiving end of these guns christened the two monstrous weapons Anzio Ani and the Anzio
00:28Express.
00:30The two German guns were Type K5E railguns that had originally been sent to Italy for shipment to the Africa
00:37Corps in Tunisia.
00:39The Tunisian campaign had ended before they could be shipped, so the two monstrous guns were pressed instead into service
00:46in Italy.
00:49The K5 railgun was considered one of the finest railguns ever produced. In Italy, they were to prove the point.
01:28The Littlesian campaign was based on the
01:44This is a German K-5 railroad gun. It's called Leopold. During the Anzio campaign, it was
01:51also known as Anzio Annie. It'll fire a 520 pound projectile 31 miles with very great
01:58accuracy. This particular gun had a sister gun named Dorothy. During the French
02:03campaign, at the end of the French campaign, the two guns were taken down to
02:08the coast near Calais and they shelled Great Britain from France. The first K-5
02:17gun had entered service in 1936 and remained in production until 1945. The
02:24final number produced is now uncertain, but it is believed that between 25 and 28
02:30were made. In almost every way, the K-5 was a sound, thorough design, with excellent
02:37ammunition handling equipment and a long, slender barrel that provided the gun
02:41with its German nickname, Schlankerberther or Slim Berther. Every hour, the K-5E could
02:50hurl eight 11-inch shells weighing approximately 250 pounds, just over 38
02:56miles. But this enormous firepower required a huge logistical tail with its own
03:03complete railway train. Besides the specially designed rail carriage for Slim Berther
03:09itself, the train included an ammunition wagon, a railway car for the crew, a railway
03:15car for equipment, various support cars, and of course a locomotive to pull the
03:20enormous load. As the war progressed and the Luftwaffe lost control of the skies,
03:27flak wagons were added to the train to provide anti-aircraft cover for this most
03:32tempting target. Loading the gun for firing was a laborious and time-consuming
03:38process. It consisted of lowering the barrel to a horizontal state and then
03:44swinging the shells onto a loading tray from the ammunition car. Once placed onto
03:49the loading tray, the shells were then mechanically pushed into the breach, after
03:54which powder charges were added. The breach block was then locked. The gunnery
03:59officer, who had determined the charges to be used based upon the range to target
04:03and weather conditions, set the elevation and asimuth. Once this was completed, the gun
04:09was raised to the firing position and the crew took up their firing positions. The gunner,
04:14usually a senior NCO, then fired the gun. The blasts from the gun would rattle windows a mile away.
04:23After the round left the barrel, a forward artillery spotter located up to 35 miles away nearer to the
04:30target would observe the fall of the shot and would radio any corrections to the gunnery officer. New settings
04:37would be calculated and the whole elaborate procedure would start again.
04:42It was a very difficult and complex exercise to bring a gun like a railway gun into operation for a
04:52tactical
04:53situation such as existed around the Anzio beachheads. These guns were really designed to be deployed in
05:00sieges and in this instance they were, it was a kind of siege, but really they were deployed in a
05:07rule of providing harassing fire. So what it meant was obviously the gunners with the gun couldn't see,
05:14because they were so far away, how the shells were actually landing. The guns were between 25 and 35 miles
05:22away from the site where the shells would actually land. So what they needed was an observer close to
05:30the beachhead who would observe where the shells landed and then radio the guns who would then make
05:37any necessary adjustments in how the guns were aimed in order to try and achieve greater accuracy.
05:44The two guns, which became known as Anzio Annie and the Anzio Express, were sent south to the Anzio area
05:52via
05:52Rome at the end of January 1944. Finding a location for the guns and their trains was the first priority.
05:59This position selected was not far from Albano on the main Rome to Netuno railway line at points where the
06:06track entered tunnels.
06:09The advantage of the K5E was that it could be kept under cover in the tunnel, being pushed out to
06:15fire
06:15and immediately pulled back in again once the huge round had been fired. The fire from the guns was so
06:22regular that the Allied troops immediately assumed they faced only a single weapon, despite the fact
06:28the two guns were actually involved. The shells were so enormous and the high explosive was so enormous it
06:36didn't actually have to cause casualties to cause a very draining effect on morale and of course
06:43occasionally they would strike home at a target in which case they would cause enormous damage.
06:49One of the major benefits of having the railway guns in Italy was a propaganda benefit. The German
06:57newsreels of the period were able to demonstrate these guns in action and use it for its propaganda value
07:04to prop up morale in Germany because people sitting in a cinema and seeing these kind of images of
07:10these guns would get the feeling that their troops were on top and things were happening. Obviously they
07:14did make a big impact on the Allies because the Allies christened what they thought was a single gun
07:20Anzi O'Anni and the name stuck even 40-50 years on. So it made an impact in propaganda terms
07:26and it certainly would have had
07:28an effect in conveying to the German public that they had this enormous powerful presence in the field.
07:39For four months the two guns made the lives of the Allied soldiers in the Anzio beachhead extremely
07:45uncomfortable. A constant traffic of devastatingly high explosive shells was fired into the claustrophobic
07:52confines of the beachhead. In conjunction with the two big guns a constant bombardment from lighter
07:59artillery units added to the misery. There was a lot of very effective constant artillery fire
08:07coming down on the beachhead at Anzio. It made the beach a hellish place to work and it was
08:16uh it was very effective at making the lives of the Allied soldiers holding the beachhead truly miserable.
08:24However most of the artillery fire that came down on the Anzio beachhead was coming from
08:31less spectacular German heavy artillery. It was not so much Anzio Annie and Anzio Express or the slightly
08:41smaller 21 centimeter rail guns that were causing the ongoing daily hell of British and American
08:51servicemen on the beach at Anzio. It was the more mundane 170 millimeter German heavy artillery that was
09:02grouped around the beachhead and that could fire many more rounds quite rapidly at the Allies.
09:09The Allied Air Force did what they could to find and destroy the K-5 firing sites although it was
09:16the RAF
09:17who managed to accurately identify the firing positions. The firing area was well camouflaged
09:23and the guns were always kept inside the tunnel when Allied aircraft approached. During the Anzio
09:29campaign this particular weapon was moved in and out of a railroad tunnel because the Allies had air
09:35superiority and because they had air superiority they could see this from the air so when Allied air
09:40wasn't around they would pull this out of a tunnel fired into Anzio and the round sounded like an
09:48express train coming into the beach so the troops called it the Anzio Express. Every time they were brought
09:56out the cumbersome process of laying the gun getting it ready to fire applying the necessary charge and the
10:03necessary adjustments to the gun had to be gone through every single time so it was a cumbersome
10:11exercise and it was very difficult to achieve achieve the kind of sustained accuracy which you need to make an
10:19artillery bombardment effective. In action the gun brought terrible damage and remained in action until the Allies broke through the
10:27Gustav line.
10:28But with the fall of Casino to Allied forces in March 1944 the Gustav line was effectively broken and the
10:35Allies
10:35stormed north to relieve the Anzio beachhead. They did this by rapidly moving north not along the coastal route but
10:44inland which cut off the railway lines that would have provided the big guns with their escape route.
10:50The guns were captured almost intact and ready to move out. One gun was damaged by its crew before
10:58capture but the other was found almost complete and this example was later shipped to the United States
11:03for examination and test firing. It still sits at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland, USA.
11:26At divisional level the standard Wehrmacht division of World War II deployed more and heavier artillery pieces than their opponents.
11:34On paper, in theory, a fully equipped German infantry division had a regiment of artillery at its disposal.
11:46It was quite a large regiment of artillery as German divisional artillery regiments went. It had
11:52four abteilung, four subdivisions of guns and it had at full strength at the beginning of the war
12:0148 guns to support the division. Later in the war the establishment was changed and there were fewer
12:07guns that went down to about 42 guns for a full strength German division. But the key point to keep
12:13in mind was that throughout the Second World War there was a tremendous problem keeping the divisional
12:21artillery up to full strength and very often German divisional artillery regiments did not have as many
12:28guns as they were supposed to have. The first weapon to be issued to the German army after World War
12:33I
12:34was the 7.5 centimeter LEL G-18.
12:41It was a light sturdy piece of equipment that used an unusual form of construction.
12:47The barrel was carried in a rectangular casing which was hinged into another which carried the fixed
12:53breech block and firing mechanism. The whole process was similar to that of a shotgun breech and though
12:59unusual it was fast and simple. The carriage was a simple box trailer with a shield. The wheels were
13:07either wooden spoked and iron rimmed for horse drawn models or steel disc with pneumatic tires if it were
13:13designed to be drawn by truck. These first guns were used extensively throughout the war but their use
13:20tended to decline towards the end of the war when increasingly heavier weapons were needed.
13:27One solution was the 10.5 centimeter howitzer which were in use in large numbers during the early war
13:33years. Initially they gave the German divisional artillery the edge over nearly all their opponents,
13:39most of whom used obsolete World War I equipment with a maximum 7.5 centimeter caliber.
13:45The German infantry division gained the backbone of its artillery support from the 105 millimeter FH 18
13:57field howitzer. This was often a horse drawn equipment although in certain units it was transported by
14:04a German artillery half track. In most units it was in fact horse drawn. A German infantry division could rely
14:12on three batteries of these 105 field howitzers supported by another battery of heavier guns 150 millimeter
14:23field howitzers and also 100 millimeter guns. So a fair degree of fire support but very conventional in
14:31fact in its in its general makeup and organization. But as the war went on more modern opponents in the
14:39shape of the British 25 PR or 8.5 centimeter weapon and the deceptively powerful Soviet 7.6 centimeter guns
14:47which showed that the 10.5 centimeter howitzers could be outranged without undue difficulty even by
14:54smaller caliber weapons. The events of the Russian winter campaign of 1941-42 exposed the other major
15:03shortcoming of the German guns. The alternate cycle of frost and thaw during that winter reduced the rough
15:10roads that supplied the eastern front into quagmires. In going like this the heavy German howitzers could
15:18make only slow progress. Many were lost during that winter of 1941 to 42 simply because they got stuck
15:26fast in frozen mud during the retreat and could not be moved. An infantry division's artillery in the German
15:34army at the beginning of the second world war was generally horse drawn and it moved at about the same
15:45walking pace as a foot-borne infantry soldier. So the artillery of a division was no more mobile than
15:57the soldiers in the division and it was drawn slowly by horses. It relied on horse fodder and horse water
16:03for
16:03transport rather than for petrol. And outside of certain particular applications such as mountain divisions
16:11the infantry division artillery was quite slow at the beginning of the war. Later on in the war it became
16:17necessary to motorize the artillery of a division. An infantry division artillery started to be towed by
16:27petrol-powered tractors. In the panzer divisions the guns were generally drawn by half-tracks, large artillery
16:35half-tracks and on occasion if a panzer division was lucky it might get an allocation of either hummels or
16:43vesps which were self-propelled artillery. But in the main for the standard German infantry division it was
16:50horse-drawn artillery throughout the war. Where the problems really came were in not so much in western
16:56Europe where there were good roads so for the fall of Poland and France there wasn't much to encounter and
17:03those were all fought in the summer or the early summer. Where the real problems came of course was
17:09in Russia. There were no good roads and there were these tremendous seasons of mud and snow and ice
17:16and all of the conditions that make moving heavy artillery probably one of the worst things you can
17:21imagine. The guns would sink up to their axles or pass their axles in mud. They would need an enormous
17:28amount of horse and manpower to draw them out of there. Sometimes it just wasn't practical in which
17:33case they would stay stuck in the mud until the mud froze at which point it froze rock solid and
17:39again
17:39they couldn't move it. So the the mobility issue was a huge one for the German army in Russia.
17:47The front line would move up to 1500 miles away from Berlin and then move all the way back so
17:54there were big
17:54distances that people were covering. At the start of Operation Barbarossa for example the German army
18:01in Russia had 625,000 horses on the staff in order to pull the gun so it was by no
18:08means the kind of
18:09armoured juggernaut of legend and that certainly slowed down the the infantry divisions. Despite the
18:16initial success the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 revealed many of the limitations of the German
18:23medium artillery arm. The previous two years of war had seemed to indicate that their artillery weapons
18:29were adequate. As the winter of 1941 turned into the Thor of 1942 it was painfully obvious that the
18:38German artillery pieces were cumbersome and lacked range as opposed to their Soviet equivalents.
18:44New designs were in the works but the gunners in the front line had to do something to counter their
18:50opponents and the easiest solution was to simply use as much captured Soviet material as possible.
18:58During the great attack in 1941 so many Soviet guns and howitzers were captured that the Germans were
19:05able to transport large numbers across Europe to bolster the Atlantic wall defences and to equip the
19:11artillery formations in France and Italy. Russian artillery even saw service with the Africa Corps in the
19:18desert. These German gunners are using captured Russian 76mm guns. Compared with the relatively few
19:27types of equipment taken into the field by many of the Allied armies, the size and scope of German medium
19:33and heavy artillery formations were too diverse and varied to be supplied easily. The presence of large
19:40numbers of captured guns didn't help. Although the logistical situation deteriorated over the course
19:48of the war the training and skill of the German gun teams meant that the German artillery remained a
19:54formidable opponent throughout the war despite the confusion which was caused by the large variety of
19:59guns in service. The heaviest weapon issued to the German infantry division as an inventory gun was the 15
20:08centimeter Schwer Infanterie Geschutz 33, a heavy inventory support gun known to the troops by its initials as a Sig
20:1633.
20:18The Sig 33 was a reliable and robust piece that could hurl a 150 millimeter high explosive charge over a
20:26range of about five kilometers.
20:29Its standard ammunition was usually a high explosive shell but it could also fire a screening smoke shell
20:35if the tactical situation required a smokescreen. An anti-tank hollow shaped charge was also issued in 1941
20:44but the Sig 33 was far too cumbersome to be used in an anti-tank role.
20:50One other drawback was the lack of velocity in the shells fired.
20:56Perhaps the most remarkable projectile fired by the Sig 33 was the 15 centimeter style granate 42.
21:04A 200 pound stick bomb it was used for short-range demolition work against enemy strongpoints.
21:11This had a high explosive warhead mounted on a driving rod and carried three fins on offset arms.
21:20It was muzzle loaded, the rod entered into the barrel and the fins lying alongside the muzzle.
21:26A special blank cartridge was used to launch the bomb much in the same manner as an oversized rifle grenade.
21:33About 150 yards from the muzzle the driving rod fell away and left the finned warhead to continue its flight
21:40to the target.
21:42This was able to deliver 60 pounds of explosive up to one kilometer away.
21:48This unusual payload was used extensively on the Russian front against the concrete defenses of the Stalin line with devastating
21:56effect.
21:58The role of the light field artillery was to provide direct support to units at divisional level and below.
22:06The role of the medium heavy artillery was less precise.
22:09In general heavy artillery was designed to back up the light divisional artillery and provide long-range fire support at
22:17specific targets such as troop concentration areas and fortifications, but often other roles were assigned.
22:26In 1934 production began on the SFH 18, a 15 centimeter howitzer that was built by Rheinmetall GmbH and mounted
22:36on a carriage built by the famous weapons manufacturer Krupp.
22:40This was to become the backbone of the Wehrmacht's medium artillery.
22:45No records exist of the actual numbers produced, but it would have been substantial since the SFH 18 remained in
22:52service throughout the entire war and many were delivered to Finland and Italy for their use.
22:59Despite using eight different charges, the maximum range of the SFH 18 was only 13,325 meters, and early combat
23:09experience revealed that the opposition, especially after 1941, often outranged it when German artillery encountered the formidable Soviet 152 millimeter
23:20guns and howitzers.
23:23Although contracts were awarded to develop new designs and a 17 centimeter version was introduced later in the war, the
23:31pace of events was such that the SFH 18 was never replaced.
23:47Airborne units, mountain troops, and special army formations were a special problem for German weapon designers.
23:55These units needed artillery but did not have the means to transport the heavy pieces.
24:01They needed a range of efficient, lightweight artillery, which could be carried on pack animals or quickly rushed in by
24:08air where necessary.
24:10Decreasing the weight of a conventional artillery piece is usually achieved by the use of light alloys in the barrel
24:17and carriage construction, but these were in short supply in Germany throughout the war.
24:23In a conventional gun, the energy released when a propellant charge is exploded not only drives the projectile from the
24:30barrel, but also forces the barrel to the rear, where it is slowed by the carriage recoil mechanism.
24:38As the forces involved in firing a gun are considerable, the recoil mechanism has to be sturdy and therefore very
24:46heavy.
24:48The recoilless gun was the solution to the problem.
24:54The exhaust gases were allowed to escape through a nozzle placed to the rear of a breech, providing the equal
25:01or appropriate force to the blast, which stopped the gun from recoiling.
25:13The first service version of a recoilless gun was the Krupp LG-11, which entered limited service with the Luftwaffe
25:21paratroops during 1940.
25:24They were first used in action during the airborne assault on Crete.
25:28As a first attempt, the LG-1.300 had its shortcomings, one of which was that the carriage weight had
25:36been reduced to the point where it proved to be too flimsy for the rigorous demands of active service.
25:41The replacement design, the 7.5-centimeter LG-40, was a much more robust weapon, with a revised breech and
25:51small all-metal wheels.
25:53The LG-40 embodied most of the features of the later German recoilless guns.
26:00In 1943, it was decided that a larger gun was required, and the 10.5-centimeter was put into service.
26:12In the airborne role, the 7.5 and 10.5-centimeter guns could be landed in several ways.
26:19One was to drop them in several separate loads in containers suspended from parachutes.
26:25Practiced crews could then assemble the guns and bring them into action in about two minutes.
26:31Another method was to suspend the guns in tubular steel frames under transport aircraft, which could then land with them
26:38or drop them using large parachutes.
26:42A further alternative was to load the gun together with its light tractor in a Gota G0242 glider.
26:50If an aircraft was available, considerable loads could be flown in by the six-engined Messerschmitt Jagant,
26:57although as we can see from this sequence shot in Russia during 1943, despite the huge size of the aircraft,
27:04loading was never easy.
27:18Numbers of recoilless guns were also issued to mountain troops, but very often their dangerous exhaust characteristics restricted their use.
27:27So specialised, conventional guns were developed.
27:30In mountainous terrain, there were a number of factors which influenced the type of guns you could use.
27:38The troops would always be in need of artillery support, and it posed some very special problems.
27:46In order, obviously, to be able to get a gun up a mountain, you couldn't take vehicles up there,
27:51so the guns had to be capable of being broken down into small loads, which could then be carried by
27:58mules.
27:58And they were actually officially described as being a four-mule load or an eight-mule load, or however many
28:04were necessary.
28:06One of the other things you didn't want in mountain warfare was a gun which recoiled,
28:11because if it recoiled backwards too far, who's to say it wasn't going to keep going in over the side
28:16of a cliff or something like that?
28:17So a great deal of energy and effort went into developing small, light, compact pieces which would be carried up
28:25a mountain,
28:26and which once there, recoiled to the minimum amount.
28:29And paratroops too needed guns that could be taken down and transported either in aircraft or dropped by parachute.
28:39And again, they needed this recoil-less function, because they needed to be light and they needed to be capable
28:46of being manhandled.
28:47So that worked both for mountain troops and for paratroops.
28:52In mountain warfare, you can't rely on roads to move your guns, because mountain roads are restricted and narrow,
29:01and the enemy knows where the roads are, so the enemy can shoot at a road.
29:07So mountain artillery has to be able to move off the road.
29:12And the Germans developed equipment like the Geb 36, which was a 75-millimeter gun that could be easily broken
29:24down,
29:25moved on pack animals, and manhandled by its own crews.
29:28So rather than dragging it along a road behind a team of horses or dragging it along a road behind
29:35a petrol-powered tractor or diesel-powered tractor,
29:39you could take it apart into its component bits and pack it onto mules or have parts of it carried
29:48by its crew
29:48and move it cross-country without relying on restricted mountain roads.
29:54They also had to be capable of firing at extreme angles of elevation and depression,
30:00a condition imposed by the mountainous terrain in which they would be used.
30:05A long-lasting solution was to be the 7.5-centimeter Geb G18,
30:10a version of the standard infantry gun with a lightened carriage.
30:15As a mountain gun, this weapon had some limitations, but it was kept in service until the end of World
30:20War II.
30:21It could be broken down into eight loads for pack transport.
30:25In service, it proved to be a very successful mounting gun, and it was kept in production until at least
30:311944.
30:44In one form or another, the rocket has been a weapon of war for many centuries.
30:49Among the larger rockets used by the Germans were 15, 28, and 32-centimeter missiles.
30:56The 15-centimeter rocket was the most common, and was intended for service in batteries.
31:02Its tactical role was the saturation of large target areas with high explosives, smoke, or poison gas.
31:10It was designated the 15-centimeter Werfgranata 41, and was first issued during late 1940.
31:20The spin-stabilized 15-centimeter WGR 41 was produced with a range of fillings.
31:28As the rocket motors were affected by extremes in temperature, special versions were issued to cope with the tropical encounters
31:34of the Africa core.
31:37Yet another special variant had to be produced to deal with the opposite extremes of cold encountered on the Russian
31:44front.
31:45The main projector used to launch the missiles in Russia was the 15-centimeter WGR 41.
31:51But fired by the specially formed Nebel Trooppen, or fog troops, was the 15-centimeter Nebelwerfer 41.
32:01Nebelwerfer means, essentially, smoke thrower, and it had been designed as a weapon which could lay down a very thick
32:09smoke screen very quickly.
32:11In fact, the Germans realized that this six-barreled rocket launcher could deliver a very heavy bombardment of high explosive
32:21projectiles, as well as a very heavy smoke bombardment.
32:25And thus, the Nebelwerfer, when it first came into use in 1942, was used as an artillery piece that could
32:34lay down its six rocket projectiles over a very concentrated area.
32:42The British described the Nebelwerfer as the moaning mini and grew to hate a Nebelwerfer stonk, as they called it,
32:53as it could be very devastating.
32:59The Nebelwerfer was produced in all different versions. There was a single-barreled version for paratroops.
33:06There was a ten-barreled version that went about in an armored tracked carrier.
33:13And there was a giant 30-centimeter Nebelwerfer that fired a rocket.
33:17There was a ten-barreled 150-millimeter Nebelwerfer.
33:20Lots of these were designed to fire an artillery projectile without the encumbrance of having a gun.
33:29The Nebelwerfer was much smaller and fired much more rapidly than a gun because it was so simple.
33:36It wasn't always very accurate. It could never be as accurate as an artillery piece.
33:41But it was very simple and easy to operate.
33:43There were, in fact, Nebelwerfers that were designed to take the rounds and fire them directly from their packing cases,
33:52without even having to take them out of the box and set them up.
33:55Not an accurate way to fire a rocket, but very rapid and very convenient.
34:10It was never designed to be a weapon that you could fire onto a pinpoint target.
34:15But the morale effect of the noise and the sheer ferocity of the bombardment, which landed with terrific force over
34:25a short period in a given area, was absolutely terrifying.
34:29And, frequently, troops would break under the strain. Even though they hadn't been injured, they would run away from sheer
34:36terror.
34:38The Nebelwerfer, or fog thrower, had six launcher tubes mounted on a carriage.
34:43After the rockets were loaded and connected to an electrical charge for firing, the crew took cover some distance away,
34:50and the rockets were fired, one at a time, in a timed ripple.
34:55The effects of a Nebelwerfer barrage were devastating.
34:59The concussion from such a huge number of shells would suck the air out of a man's lungs,
35:05and although they were not particularly accurate, the terrifying shriek of the missiles and the ferocity of the bombardment
35:12was often enough to cause the dazed survivors of a barrage to surrender, even if they were not physically injured.
35:20There were dangers to the crew. The Nebelwerfer soon became a hated adversary,
35:25and if the dust did not reveal the launcher's position, then the smoke trail left by the rockets certainly would.
35:32The Nebelwerfer batteries were first choice targets for counter-battery fire,
35:37and crews had to be very skilled at getting in and out of firing positions quickly.
35:43As the war progressed, heavier rockets were also used by the Nebeltroepen.
35:48Both 28 and 32 centimeter rockets were fired from a more substantial two-wheeled trailer that held the rockets in
35:56two superimposed rows of three.
35:59Although the fire for the heavy Nebelwerfers was very effective,
36:04those trailers were discovered to be too cumbersome to keep up with fast-moving panzer troops, so a solution was
36:11found.
36:12Simple frames, designed to carry and launch the rockets, were attached three to the side of the 251 half-tracks.
36:20This configuration became very successful, and earned the name Stuka zufus, Ground Stuka.
36:27Later in the war, more sophisticated firing platforms were added for heavier rockets.
36:34All of the German rockets were spin-stabilized in flight.
36:39By contrast, the Allied forces used Finn-stabilized weapons.
36:44When the invasion of the Soviet Union brought the Wehrmacht in contact with the dreaded Soviet Katyusha rocket batteries,
36:52doubts were raised about the value of spin versus Finn stabilization.
36:56Since production was in full steam, the designs were not changed.
37:01The Nebelwerfer wasn't a particularly sophisticated piece of equipment.
37:07How it operated was that what little accuracy there was came from imparting spin to the rockets.
37:14So as they left the barrels, the rockets spun, and that kept them on course.
37:19It required some reasonably sophisticated technology.
37:23When the Russians saw how effective the Nebelwerfer was in action, they immediately began to produce their own answer,
37:34and that became the famous Stalin organ, or the Katyushka.
37:37The Katyushka employed fins on the rockets.
37:42It meant that the launching mechanism could be very simple,
37:46because they didn't have to impart any spin onto the projectiles.
37:50It could be literally almost an orange box, a crate, that these finned rockets were fired from.
37:57They were stuck onto the back of trucks and taken to the front line.
38:01The Nebelwerfer, on the other hand, was increasingly experimented with.
38:06They found that by mounting rockets on half-tracks, they had not only a very powerful weapon, but a very
38:14mobile weapon.
38:16Needless to say, there were other calls for the half-tracks, and they never really got them into the numbers
38:21that they really needed.
38:24Having said that, once they were mounted on half-tracks, you had a very, very sophisticated weapon,
38:30which brought a tremendous amount of force to bear, and it also gave mobility,
38:34which was something that was essential for a war like the Russian Front.
38:38Post-war trials demonstrated that the Nebelwerfer was more accurate than the feared Stalin-Organ Katyusha rocket.
38:45It was only the fact that the Soviets were able to throw more ordnance downrange at a cheaper cost,
38:50which gave the receiving Germans that impression.
39:08In May of 1942, spurred on by victories at Kersh and Kharkov on the Russian Front,
39:14Hitler decided to take Sevastopol.
39:17The port was one of the world's strongest fortresses, and was protected by 12 naval gun batteries comprising 42 guns,
39:26varying in calibre from 152mm to 305mm.
39:32There were 106,000 Soviet troops and more than 80,000 naval personnel manning the forts and gun emplacements.
39:41Hitler felt that this was the perfect opportunity to showcase his super-heavy artillery,
39:47designed to be used against the now-defeated Maginot Line.
39:51The Germans brought up 33 pieces of siege artillery, ranging in calibre from 280mm to 800mm.
40:02Sevastopol, and it's captured by the Germans in 1942, was in many respects a unique operation in the Second World
40:09War.
40:09Sevastopol, the great port for the Russian Black Sea Fleet, was incredibly heavily defended by concrete casemates and very large
40:20artillery pieces.
40:21In this way, the operations to capture Sevastopol did resemble a kind of classic siege in which artillery pieces played
40:32a very important part.
40:33General Manstein, the German commander of the operation, assembled over 200 batteries of artillery, including over 450 pieces of super
40:46-heavy artillery.
40:47These guns were vital in puncturing the very heavy defences of Sevastopol and raining one and sometimes two-ton shells
40:56down on the Russian defenders.
40:58Clearly, in this operation, and as I've said, very unusual, super-heavy artillery pieces were vital for the success of
41:06the operation.
41:07General von Manstein, who was in charge of the siege of Sevastopol, was a very able commander.
41:15He proved to be one of the best in the whole Second World War.
41:18And he decided that there would be this terrific bombardment which endured probably for a period of a month, during
41:27which time the very heaviest guns in the whole siege train would be used very skilfully to reduce all of
41:35the concrete defences.
41:37I mean, there are instances where some defences that were as much as 30 metres underground were pulverised by the
41:45deployment of these huge artillery pieces, which were used as they should be.
41:51They were used en masse, they were used against a single target, and they were used in a concentrated way
41:56under the direction of von Manstein, who really knew what he was doing.
42:00On June the 3rd, 1942, General von Manstein started to rain shells on the Soviet defenders and citizens of Sevastopol.
42:11Over 750 pieces of artillery took part in the bombardment.
42:15Four weeks later, what had been Sevastopol now looked like the surface of the moon.
42:22Finally, as a result of continuous shelling lasting one month, Sevastopol fell on July the 3rd.
42:31Two notable weapon designs, the 42cm mortar Gamma and the 60cm mortar Kahl, both took part in the barrage.
42:41These were super heavy self-propelled mortars, capable of discharging highly efficient shells over a high trajectory, which were powerful
42:49enough to penetrate thick concrete.
42:52The Kahl mortar was the largest of all the self-propelled guns to see action in World War II.
42:59The Kahl series of siege mortars can almost be seen as a throwback to an earlier age.
43:04The First World War had seen the development of rail guns and super heavy mortars to a great degree, and
43:11given the static nature of the fighting on the Western Front, these weapons were very valuable.
43:17However, when the Kahl series of mortars were first posited in 1935, the idea of a 60cm mortar firing a
43:27shell weighing one and a half tons, perhaps 11,000 yards.
43:30While that performance sounds impressive, given the fact that the German army was preparing to fight a series of mobile
43:39actions based on speed and manoeuvre rather than siege weapons,
43:43in some ways the weapons do seem to be a throwback.
43:47In actual use, the two guns, Thor and Eva, first completed in 1939, were transported to the Russian Front and
43:58used in the bombardment of the fortress of Brest-la-Tosk during July 1941,
44:04and then later used in the siege of Sevastopol in 1941 and into 1942.
44:10The Kahl series of siege mortars were very, very effective under the right circumstances.
44:18They were designed for siege warfare and they were designed to be brought up very close to the defences,
44:24where they could fire these enormous heavyweight shells which were so destructive they could take out concrete bunkers and very
44:33well emplaced concrete defences.
44:36The problem with a weapon like that is you must have complete air superiority,
44:42you must have the ability to move it up to the defences and know that it's not going to be
44:47vulnerable to counter-attack.
44:49In a siege like Sevastopol, all of those circumstances prevailed.
44:54The Germans were able to take their heavy artillery right up to the defences of Sevastopol.
45:00They were able to sight them where they wanted.
45:01They were relatively free from interference from the Red Air Force.
45:06Many of the guns in Sevastopol pointed towards the sea, so they were fairly safe from counter-battery fire.
45:13And in that respect, they were used to absolutely devastating consequences.
45:29Although the Carl series' top speed on roads or firm terrain was claimed to be 10 kilometers an hour,
45:36they were simply too large and cumbersome to be considered as self-propellant.
45:41The largest of all the artillery pieces was equally cumbersome.
45:45The 80-centimeter railgun Schwer-Gustav, 80-centimeter KE, known as Dora,
45:52was sighted 16 kilometers away from Sevastopol on specially laid tracks.
45:58It took two weeks to emplace, so it wasn't until the third day of the barrage that its 1,300
46:04-man crew fired their first round.
46:07By the time they had finished, 48 shells had been fired at a variety of targets, all of which were
46:14completely demolished.
46:16Perhaps the most spectacular success was the destruction of an underground ammunition magazine 30 meters under Sevanaia Bay.
46:25Eight shots were fired at this target, which was completely destroyed, and a small sailing ship was sunk in the
46:33process.
46:34This is an 800-millimeter projectile. It went to a gun called Schwer-Gustav.
46:42The problem with that gun is that it took 5,000 men to erect the gun.
46:47It took six weeks to do it. It had a firing crew of 500. It had a major general for
46:53a gun captain.
46:54So in my own little way, I like to think that that gun helped the Allies win World War II.
47:00By employing massive amounts of super-heavy siege artillery in a concentrated area,
47:05the forces of the Wehrmacht were literally able to dismantle the city of Sevastopol block by block.
47:12The slow-moving siege artillery was extremely vulnerable to attack from the air,
47:17so it was imperative that the Germans controlled the skies.
47:21With this control, the Wehrmacht was able to take its time and set up the siege guns with careful consideration
47:28to their targeting.
47:30Without harassment from the defenders, the siege guns and conventional artillery emplaced around Sevastopol
47:36were able to fire over 1,000 tons of ordnance onto the town.
47:43After Sevastopol, as the Allies took back control of the skies and supplies became scarce,
47:49these weapons became more of a hindrance than a help.
47:53Of the various German schemes for super-weapons, none seems as wasteful as the super-guns,
48:00being costly in raw materials, manpower and supplies.
48:04As static pieces of siege equipment, there was no questioning the effect of morses and railguns,
48:10but even the 80cm KE creators Krupp admitted, while it was a valuable research tool,
48:17as a practical weapon of war it was useless with the advent of the aeroplane.
48:23Blitzkrieg rendered the super-heavy guns obsolete.
48:39Blitzkrieg
48:40In sharp contrast to Sevastopol was the 900-day siege of Leningrad.
48:46The mighty Wehrmacht artillery was able to crush the fortress port of Sevastopol,
48:50but Leningrad held out for nearly three years.
48:55Perhaps the main reason was that Sevastopol was given priority over Leningrad,
48:59in order to prevent the German army's southern flank from being exposed,
49:03as Army Group South made its push to the oil-rich Caucasus.
49:09The Wehrmacht siege train of super-heavy artillery was directed south against Sevastopol and Leningrad,
49:15and was therefore spared from the heaviest of the guns.
49:20South of the city of Leningrad, Observatory Hill near the city of Pushkin was captured in September 1941,
49:27and the tower, situated at the top, provided German artillery spotters with an unimpeded view of the entire city of
49:35Leningrad.
49:35The city was placed within range of the Wehrmacht's artillery batteries, and by November, a continuous artillery barrage had begun.
49:45In just two months, between September and November 1941, a total of 272 German artillery bombardments slammed into the city
49:55over a total of 430 hours.
49:59Conventional German artillery lacked the concrete-smashing ability of the super-heavies being brought to bear on Sevastopol,
50:05and many of the well-constructed buildings of Leningrad stood up to the blasts.
50:11Although Hitler's forces could probably have taken Leningrad by storm in 1941, Hitler was reluctant to give the order.
50:21While the relentless German artillery took many lives in Leningrad, starvation was in fact the biggest killer.
50:30Leningrad was shaken to its very foundations, and resistance nearly collapsed.
50:35But in the end, the German guns were simply not large enough to crush the city into submission.
50:42No single weapon can win a battle.
50:46You can fire a lot of artillery rounds at a town, at a city, in the case of Leningrad.
50:53You can kill a lot of people, maim thousands, make everybody miserable.
50:59But without actually facing the formidable defences of the city, without attacking it with infantry,
51:06taking the losses and the risks that's attached to that, you can't expect the city to just put its hands
51:11up and surrender.
51:12Really, the German army in Russia had the ability to either reduce Leningrad or reduce Sevastopol.
51:20They didn't have the resources to do both in 1942, with the result that the decision was to concentrate on
51:27the operations of Army Group South.
51:31Fresh from the success at Sevastopol in August of 1942, General von Manstein, along with five divisions and the Sevastopol
51:39siege train, were ordered north to Leningrad.
51:44But the offensive was cancelled at the end of September.
51:48Hitler was now concerned about the approaching Russian winter, and the siege guns were never adequately massed and brought to
51:55bear against Leningrad.
51:57By October, Soviet reinforcements were able to enter in the battle sufficient numbers and begin the task of pushing the
52:05German artillery back.
52:08It would take until January 1944, but eventually Leningrad would be saved.
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52:58Transcription by CastingWords