The World's Most Powerful Gun

this is the largest weapon the world has ever seen this is the size of a tank that's a human and this is the size of the weapon's ammo the Nazis called it heavy gusta 1,350 tons of steel a 32 M barrel and 47 km of shooting range it took 4,000 workers just to set it up and another 1 and A2 th000 soldiers to to operated we duck deep into the archives to bring you the story of this monstrosity a megalomaniac weapon commissioned by no other than Adolf Hitler himself but unlike many of his rather delusional

projects this one was actually brought to life heavy Gustav was deployed in battle Fern 1937 Adolf Hitler is neck deep in preparations for his War but one thing is keeping him up at night the mgy no line along the French German border a massive array of heavily armed and fortified concrete strongholds to break through the solid line of defense he needs something new something big so he orders crop steel works the weapons Forge of the German Reich to build the largest Cannon the world has ever seen Hitler wants it to be ready by 1940 the

project is top secret under no circumstances must the plans fall into the hands of the enemy internal documents refer to the cannon only as the Gustaf device choosing cute names for heavy artillery is a long-standing German tradition other examples are KL mortar or Big berther Spring 1940 Hitler is eager to finally invade France ideally with his new super weapon leading the way but heavy gusta is not ready yet and the fura is Fury yes sorry in the end the Nazis decide to bypass the magol line altogether by invading France through the densely wooded ardens in

Belgium a year later the cannon is finally ready it's a railway gun designed to move along twin sets of parallel tracks it weighs 1,350 tons and rolls on 40 axles and 80 Wheels it stretches nearly 50 m long and stands as tall as a four-story building its caliber has a diameter of 80 cm the ammo shells weigh up to 7even tons each this is one of them a tank busting projectile capable of tearing through 6 M of reinforced concrete and this is you working on a beach with nesk nesk is a remote access software that

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your work but want to chill here or here or here for change the applications are Limitless try any desk today it's completely free for personal use just go to an.com Fern or scan the QR code on screen okay back to heavy Gustav tests are run to prob its unprecedented destructive power each shot leaves craters up to 32 M deep and just pulverizes massive concrete walls but by the time the cannon is ready France has already fallen fortunately at least for Hitler there's still another Battlefront 1942 the Nazis have conquered vast stretches of the Soviet Union

as part of operation Barbarosa but the Soviet forces are still fiercely holding on to one particular place Casto then known as the world's strongest Fortress the city is defended by over 100,000 Russian soldiers shielded behind 5 m of concrete walls or hidden in bunkers buried 30 m underground Hitler desperately needs a win and heavy gusta could be the key to breaking through but getting the massive Cannon onto the battlefield is no simple task G has to be disassembled loaded onto five separate trains carrying a total of 100 cars and dragged through Poland once it reaches

the front the next challenge is finding the perfect spot to set it up reconnaissance planes are sent to scout the ideal firing position it has to be far enough from enemy artillery to stay out of range eventually they settle on a site about 25 km from SI to setting gusta up is no small feat either soldiers have to lay 1,200 M of railway tracks and there's a unique challenge the so-called firing curve the barrel itself can't be rotated to attack new targets two massive diesel locomotives have to carefully shift the entire weapon along the tracks

to adjust its aim secrecy is critical too soldiers have to build artificial Hills and trenches to camouflage the weapon and keep it hidden from enemies but heavy ghosta also has to remain invisible from above which is why the Nazis have brought a 500 man special unit called The Smoke troop if need be they can shroud the entire area in a thick cloud of smoke to conceal the weapon from enemy aircraft all in all the operation requires over 5,000 people laying tracks assembling the cannon maintaining guarding and camouflaging it creating smoke screens and ultimately operating the

gun an enormous effort for or a single weapon unsurprisingly Nazi propaganda touts the Cannon as a Marvel of military [Music] [Music] engineering after 3 days of assemblage heavy gustaff is finally ready to fire this is Fort Stalin for days Soviet soldiers have endured Relentless shelling but they remain steadfast sheltered behind massive concrete walls at 430 p.m. they hear a massive explosion ripping through the air from a distance the Soviet soldiers don't know it yet but at this very moment they are the target of the largest Cannon ever built a 7 tonon armor piercing shell is

now hurdling toward them easily capable of blasting through all their defenses even the massive concrete walls of Fort Stalin are no match for a weapon of their [Applause] scale but then nothing happens the shell misses slamming into the ground about 120 M away from them the Germans need almost an hour to reload their gun another shell is fired and misses again this time by 100 50 m then another and another this is an official list of every shot fired on day one and how far they were off Target the next one is marked as a

hit but later when search teams scan the area they find no conclusive evidence of an actual impact by the end of day four only five shells remain they are all fired on day five and not a single one Finds Its Mark and just like that they're out of ammo heavy gusta has fired a total of 48 shots a staggering 360 tons of ammunition the official records claim three of them hit their target but even that is debatable the only confirmed hit was an underground Ammunition Depot and that was probably luck what was supposed to be

a terrifying Mega weapon turned out to be a massive and utterly useless monstrosity there had already been doubts about the Cannon's accuracy before it was first deployed some Nazi military officials suspected that the chances of actually hitting a Target would be near zero given the insane caliber size and shooting range but they neither had the time nor the resources for proper testing on top of that the barrel wore out ridiculously fast it became completely useless after just a handful of shots in the end Seas too fell but Hitler's Mega Cannon had nothing to do with

it did nobody have the heart to tell him or did he simply refuse to accept the bitter truth we don't know for sure despite being a complete strategic and economic disaster heavy gusta still served its purpose as a flashy propaganda piece for Hitler's vision of an Unstoppable German war Machinery after its first and only battle the railway gun returned back home to rugen valda in what was then West Pomerania a few final shots were fired during a demonstration Hitler himself was there to witness as his Masterpiece in action when the Nazis lost the war he

personally ordered the cannon destroyed so the miracle weapon wouldn't fall into enemy hands which was probably a complete waste of time oh and if you ever wondered what it would look like if you were to fire out of fitler 15 mil across Crimea from a 100 foot long Cannon Barrel well