Landships II

JonH · Corporal

mystery large German gun

Tim R · Hero

Hello Jon

Well here is what I have,I am sure some one will no more.

It is a M-Garat 42 cm carriage with a replacement barrel, They replaced the L/12 tube with a longer tube (L/30) which was a smaller calibre of 30.5cm.

With this marriage this piece was named the Schwere Kartaune/Beta M-Garat and it was used in 1918.

Some were camouflaged with white spots, others used the Buntfarbentarnung pattern with handsized spots of yellow,brown and green seperated by black lines.

I hope this helps, if any one would like to see other photos of this giant, I can post some more.

All the best

Tim R.

Matt Heil · Lieutenant

Tim,
I'd love to see some more pics of this monster. Thanks a million.
I never cease to learn something new from this site every day.
Matt

JonH · Corporal

Thanks for answering my question Tim. It sure would be interesting to see this photo in color. I too would like to see other images.

Jon

Roger Todd · Legend

I've attached some more photos - the first is from Axel Turra's Waffen Special on the Dicke Berta, the others are from Herbert Jaeger's book on German artillery. I don't know how many were built.

Note the large equilibrators fitted to the front of the carriage to support the long barrel.

The British Library has a copy of Schindler's 'Eine 42cm Moerser Batterie im Weltkrieg', which contains several excellent photos of a Schwere Kartaune, including a couple of photos of a burst barrel. Sadly, I can't get hold of the book to scan it...

As for colour images, I doubt any will turn up - the only ones I've seen are French, probably because they pioneered an early colour photographic technique. I do have a very large scan of a subtly hand-tinted photo from Aberdeen of a Dicke Berta in American hands, still waiting to be shipped to the US and wearing its dapple camo pattern, but the colouring doesn't look terribly accurate. Nice photo, though.

-- Edited by Roger Todd at 23:06, 2006-03-04

Peter Kempf · Field Marshal

It shouldn't be too complicated to do this gun, using the FSF "Big Bertha". The biggest problem should actually be getting the wheels right - those are bad regardless of which gun you do. Hmmm, interesting project actually...

Perhaps this should be something for some Resin Kit Company? To do a dual kit, with a lot of common parts, for both the 42cm & 30.5cm versions. Perhaps even more guns could be made using a number of common parts. Any suggestions?

Roger Todd · Legend

I've been toying with doing that myself, when/if some decent plans turn up...

Tim R · Hero

Thanks Roger

You posted my pic's

I would not have been able to post them anyway until tomorrow.

All the Best

Tim R

-- Edited by Tim R at 05:00, 2006-03-05