The Paris Gun: Germany's Infamous Artillery Weapon from WWI

documentary film experience with MagellanTV, and its binge-worthy documentaries, updated every week, got a bit more on them in just a bit. At 7.18am on the 23rd of March, 1918, an explosive shell landed on the Quai de la Seine area of Paris. France was, of course, four years into the bloodiest war in history, so the presence of shelling shouldn't exactly have been a great surprise. Yes, except that the front line was over 96km, that's 60 miles away, at the time. At first, Parisians looked to the sky, thinking they'd been bombed by a German Zeppelin, but that was not the case. The shell that fell on Paris hadn't come from a Zeppelin, but rather a new piece of German artillery sat 120km, that's 75 miles away from Paris, in the small town of Crepy. 21 further shells landed on the French capital that day, usually in 15-minute intervals, a process that continued sporadically for the next five months. The goliath that was hurling these shells came to be known as the Paris Gun, or as the Germans called it, Wilhelmgeschutz, William's Gun, named after the Kaiser. This is a piece of weaponry that is still very mysterious. We believe that 7 or 8 barrels were adapted to be used as a Paris Gun, but it seems that only one was ever used at any single time. At the end of the war, these simply vanished, and apart from some grainy black and white photos, it was as if these colossal guns had never existed. The gun that the Germans had built was staggering in a lot of ways, yet it was also a bit crap. It was a piece of artillery of truly monstrous proportions, weighing 256 tons and measuring a massive 34 meters, that's 111 feet in length. Nothing like it had ever been created, and it immediately became the largest gun in history, a title that it held for another 23 years until the Nazis introduced the dramatically larger Spära Gustav, which we've already covered on MegaProjekt, so if you're having a bit of a big gun day, maybe make that video your next stop. Anyway, back to the Paris Gun. It initially started pumping out 211mm 8.3 inch shells, but it was later re-bored to accommodate the larger 238mm 9.3 inch shells. I'll explain why that was done a little later in the video. The gun was raised to an elevation of 55 degrees, after which it let rip, firing a shell an extraordinary 40km, 25 miles up into the sky, which was at the time the highest a man-made object had ever reached, before coming back down on the unsuspecting Parisians, digging into their pan au chocolats and coffee… well, that was the plan. The downside of this freakish cannon, for the Germans at least, certainly not for the Parisians, was its poor accuracy and the relatively small amount of explosive that was in the shells. But it nonetheless struck plenty of fear into the citizens of Paris, who no doubt felt a world away from the carnage of the front lines. The first cannons appeared in China, all the way back in the 12th or 13th centuries, and while their caliber and destructive power improved dramatically over the coming centuries, their range never really got above a few kilometers. But then, as World War I got underway, the Germans wheeled out Big Bertha, a 420mm, 16.4 inch Type M mortar capable of smashing targets 9.3km, 5.7 miles away. Nothing like this had ever been seen, and it set off a mad scramble to emulate it. The company behind Big Bertha was Krupp of S, and widely regarded as the preeminent gun manufacturers at the time. As the Germans began rolling back French forces in the early stages of the war, their commanders envisioned soon making it to the English Channel, where they hoped they could use the next generation of guns rolling out of Krupp's factories to begin hitting the English port town of Dover, directly from France. Things didn't quite work out like that, and the advance stalled in the Somme region, where hellish fighting would go on for the next four years. But Krupp had done their part. Testing had already got underway on a 350mm, 13.7 inch gun capable of reaching 49km, 30 miles, easily enough for it to clear the English Channel. But instead of using them against England, these guns saw real combat testing against the French and the English near Verdun and Nancy. It was here that a strange quirk revealed itself. Geometry had long suggested that the optimal angle for a gun to be fired was 45 degrees, but as those taking notes saw, these guns were actually working even better at 55 degrees. They soon determined that because the Earth's atmosphere is thinner the higher you go, long-range further because of the thinner air. So even though it didn't seem at all logical to fire the guns further up into the sky, it did actually mean that you could hit targets that were further away. This was a lesson that was soon put to great use in the development of the Paris Gun. Now we'll start shelling the City of Lights in just a moment, don't worry, but first a quick word from today's fantastic sponsor Magellan TV. Magellan TV is a new documentary streaming service founded by filmmakers who love history. Because truth is stranger than fiction, and nothing drives that home like a rich collection of historical shows and documentaries. With Magellan, you'll find one of the broadest catalogues of history content available pretty much anywhere today, with more than 3,000 documentaries available for streaming, and more are added every week. They've got everything from the Greeks to the Great War, plus modern history, biographies, scientific profiles, true crime, and a whole lot more. And one thing you're sure to love about Magellan is the fact that there are no ads, just truckloads of sweet, sweet facts with no interruption. So if you're looking for 4K explorations of binge-worthy topics, you should definitely consider Magellan TV. Today, I'd recommend The Battlefields of the World Wars, because let's face it, those of us that like videos about the Paris Gun will literally watch anything about the World War era. Honestly, if Magellan put out a 17-part documentary on how the US Army sourced MREs for soldiers, I'd probably watch that, and you would too. So, look, if you want to make an awesome addition to your streaming lineup, just click that link in the description below, and Magellan will hook you up. It also supports this show. It's documentary content for days and days. You'll be happy you did, and let's get back to the video. Krupp's technical manager, Dr. Fritz Rausenberger, proposed an ultra-long-range, 100-km, 62-mile gun to the German High Command sometime in 1915, which was immediately accepted as long as it could be delivered in just 14 months. Rausenberger's sights initially settled on a series of 350mm, 13.7-inch naval guns, initially allocated for a battlecruiser, which had since been scrapped. His idea was to insert a 21m, 68ft-long, 210mm, 8.2-inch caliber rifle liner, while modifying the chamber to accommodate 280mm, 11-inch cartridges. His calculations determined that the gun would need to have a muzzle velocity of 1,500 meters a second, nearly 5,000 feet per second, to reach 100km, 62 miles. Things seemed to be progressing smoothly until the German High Command announced that the gun would need an extra 20km, 12.4 miles, in range because there was to be a planned withdrawal. Rausenberger crunched the numbers and found that by increasing the muzzle velocity to 1,610 meters per second, the gun would be able to reach 120km, 74 miles. That's all well and good, but how do you simply increase muzzle velocity? By making the gun longer. They found that to achieve the desired speed, the gun needed to have an in-bore shot travel length of at least 24m, 78ft, but unfortunately Krupp's boring machines only went up to 18m, 59ft. The problem was solved by simply bolting on an additional smooth-bore tube, which came in three sizes depending on the range needed- 3m, 9.8ft, 6m, 19.6ft, and 12m, 39.3ft. The last major hurdle the team faced was barrel droop, which is exactly what it sounds like. Long range guns at the time often suffered from a slight droop in their barrels because of the massive weight. Normally this wasn't a huge issue, but with the Paris gun's size, the droop was as much as 9cm, 3.5 inches at the muzzle, enough for it to horribly skew a shot. The solution was fairly simple. The gun came with a suspension bridge-like truss with screw jacks which straightened out the barrel and allowed it to retain its form. The Paris Gun Now I mentioned earlier in the video that one of the saving graces for the Parisians who would be on the receiving end of the Paris gun was its relatively small amount of explosive. The shell itself fired from the gun weighed 106kg, 234lb, but it came only with 7kg, 15lb of TNT, only around 6% of the shell's total weight. What's more, the shell casing also needed to be much stronger than traditional projectiles to withstand the enormous pressure from the gun. This meant that the damage done by these shells was small, at least in comparison to the size of the shells. A crater left in Tuileries Garden in Paris was recorded as being 3-3.7m, 10-12 feet across and 1.2m, 4 feet deep. That's not tiny by any means, but it is significantly smaller than the 9.1m, 30 feet wide and 9.1m deep crater left by Shreya Gustav in WWII. The strong shell casing also meant that it would normally break apart in large sections rather than tiny fragments like other shells, which, again, was good news for those on the receiving end. The real oddity regarding the ammunition used for the Paris gun came because of barrel wear. These kinds of guns, in their unmodified state, could hope to fire around 800 rounds before accuracy was compromised. The Paris gun, on the other hand, could only handle 60-70 rounds before the barrel needed to be bored out again. And it gets even more complex. Each time the gun was fired, the barrel would extend by roughly 7cm, 2.7 inches, which then required an additional 10kg, 22lbs of propellant. But also, the force and speed in which it fired meant that the barrel was ever so slightly bored out further with each additional shot. Remember I said earlier that the caliber changed? Well, this is why. The Paris gun essentially caused itself so much damage that it had to be re-bored in order to continue operating. The Germans used shells that steadily increased in size to accommodate the changes within the gun. These shells were carefully numbered and then fired in order. And we can tell you that whoever was in charge of that had a very important job. A shell that was too small would have little chance of firing straight while one that was too big would lodge within the barrel, causing the whole thing to explode. So yes, an important job. This was not a gun that you could just wheel out whenever you wished. Their mountings needed to be carefully prepared to house this outrageously large gun and required a purpose-built circular turntable set in a concrete emplacement. While details are a little unclear on this point, it's believed that the Germans built a series of these emplacements along the front lines, but only one was ever captured. American troops northeast of Paris came across an abandoned Paris gun near the end of the war, but unfortunately that's as close as the Allied forces ever came to the giant gun. As I mentioned earlier, the Paris gun was essentially a naval gun. So it came with its own group of 80 Imperial Navy sailors who manned it. When it was first set up, it was surrounded by several traditional pieces of artillery that were designed to provide a sound screen which would cover the deep boom coming from the Paris gun, a move designed to hide its presence from English and French spotters. It was first positioned in a forest area in a crepey to the northeast of Paris, and then it let fly for the first time in the early morning of March 23, 1918, landing in Paris around three minutes later, with a further 21 coming that day. By the end of the day, military authorities were fairly sure that the explosions were coming from shells fired by artillery, and not from bombs dropped from the sky, as had first been thought. Their focus, instead, turned to the possibility that they were coming from German agents located within France. The idea that a shell could have traveled from the front lines seemed preposterous at first. They had to find another explanation. Within a matter of days, reconnaissance aircraft had spotted three large-scale gun emplacements. The closest was targeted by a French 340mm 13.3-inch railgun, while aircraft attacked the other two. Roughly 360 rounds were fired in the direction of Paris over five months. 250 people died as a result, with 91 of those coming in a single event when, on the 29th of March, 1918, a shell hit the roof of a church, collapsing the entire structure upon the Sunday service that was in progress at the time. There were three notable pauses in the shelling, which, on reflection, were probably when the gun was taken back to Germany to be re-bought. the 25th to the 29th of March, the 7th to the 11th of April, and the 21st to the 24th of April. French authorities also noticed an increase in the diameter of the shells, which seemed to support this theory. In August 1918, with the war looking increasingly bleak for the beleaguered Germans, the Paris gun was withdrawn and returned to Germany. A little over three months later, the Great War came to a close. It was a conflict that had decimated Northwest France and Belgium, causing an estimated 20 million deaths along the way. But the French didn't forget the Paris gun, and part of the Versailles Agreement stipulated that Germany would hand over one of these mighty guns to their Gaelic neighbours. Which didn't happen. And that was the last we ever heard of the Paris gun. Dr. Fritz Rautzenberger knew full well that the Paris gun was nowhere near accurate enough to hit designated targets. Instead, it was a weapon that carried a psychological impact that far outweighed its physical impact. The Germans hoped that by shelling Paris, they might be able to break the will of the French, which might, in turn, lead to a vital break in the lines. It never happened. While the Paris gun caused much Parisian consternation, it did little to dent morale. For that reason, it's difficult to look at the gun as more than a glorious, taut-at-force of a weapon that looked better than it actually was. A mighty, thunderous cannon that certainly paved the way for big guns in the future. But it was itself a complicated pain in the arse to use that really wasn't very good.