that sucker would make one hell of a model railway... lol:yep:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLroqzVNz2o
If they had found out how to get it to fire these... lol:o

That flash burn always gives me the creeps.... :doh:

yea... lol, but it would be an effecent way to cook dinner... (just make sure its strapped down... lol

That is quite an operation. So really, just how devastating was this shell when she hit? :06:

probably could distroy a small city...:hmmm:
http://www.vincelewis.net/dora.html
The criteria that was required was that the shell had to penetrate 7 meters of steel reinforced concrete or at least 1 meter of hardened armour plate. The range required was to be over 25 miles.
it had a 7 to 8 ton shell...

The shells for Dora and Gustav, including the 1 ton charge was 17 feet long. It needed a ton of charge to send the 7 ton shell over 25 miles from the 100 foot long barrel. The shell on test firing proved to be able to penetrate 30 feet deep into earth making a crater over 90 feet feet across.

90 feet does not seem much to me for the size of the shell. Seems like a whole lot of work for 90 feet in diameter and 30 feet deep. Perhaps I'm haivng trouble visualizing this size crater. :hmmm:

That would be a huge crater... over 3 times the length of the room in in now.. (which is about 26 feet in length.)

Hmm, it was almost used against Leningrad. As if those people needed more hardships with the stuff they had to already endure.

About that Iraqi super gun, pretty amazing that the whole concept was still worth looking into as late as the 1990's. I guess that thing was just so powerfull that even in the era of missiles it would have made sense to have.

I can see that the bigger issue with this gun... was its barrel life, and shelling speed.. and how to move it.:yep:

The gun could reduce the forts at Sevastopol, some of the strongest in the world at the time, to rubble in just a few shells.

Apart from Sevastopol and it's planned use at Leningrad, I don't think it fit the German strategic doctrine much, probably a waste of valuable steel.

If you live close to Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland you can see this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ioanniegun.jpg

Babylon Gun, anyone?