“The Great Gustav,” the single largest cannon every built and used in history! Designed by Krupp Industries, this was one of two super-heavy railway guns designed; the other was “Dora,” which was built but never used. Gustav weighed around 1350 tons, and could fire a 7-ton projectile up to a range of 28 miles. Do you know what a 7-ton projectile looks like? Think of a bullet the size of two oil drums! This thing was big! Why didn’t the Allies simple give up and accept defeat once this monster came online? Well, think about it: railway gun. It took 2500 men, and three days, to lay all twin rail tracks to be able to maneuver this thing around. It had to be shipped in several large pieces, assembled, and then mounted. The gun assembly alone was a massive 800 mm gun, that’s a 31.5-inch caliber, and heck, it took half an hour just to load it. Reportedly, Germany assigned an entire Luftwaffe squadron to provide cover for the assembly, along with another unit to protect against a ground assault.

The only time the Nazis successfully staged this mammoth weapon for combat was when they used it during the siege of Sevastopol in 1942. It fired a total of 42 shells, nine of which were fired at the very fortified “Ammunition Mountain” undersea weapons depot, which was utterly destroyed despite being protected by 100 ft of rock! This behemoth was a technological wonder but ultimately was just too impractical. The Gustav and the Dora were blown up in 1945, to prevent them from falling into Allied hands. Soviet forces still were able to recover the ruins of the Gustav and it disappeared into the Soviet Union.