Nazi Germany's V-3 Super 'Gun': The Ultimate Terror Weapon?

Sebastien Roblin

Security,

Target: London.

Nazi Germany famously used V-1 cruise missile and V-2 ballistic missile “Vengeance Weapons” to bomb London in retaliation for the Allies’ strategic bombing campaign of Germany. However, a third Vengeance weapon—the V-3 super cannon—was also developed and even briefly used in action, though not against its intended target. The V-3 might well have been the project of a villain in a James Bond movie: it was an impractical weapon housed in a secret underground base built at immense expense, intended to terrorize the civilian populace of a major city.

The concept behind the V-3 had its origin in the German Kaiser Wilhelm guns that entered action in March 1918, during World War I. The massive Krupp guns could shell the French capital from seventy-five miles away, and were the first weapons capable of shooting a projectile into the stratosphere. The Paris Gun’s greatest “success” came when a shell collapsed the roof of the St. Gervais church, killing ninety-one people attending a Good Friday service. In all, around 350 shells were fired, killing 250. Like many later campaigns by both sides in World War II, which went to great expense to randomly kill civilians on the premise that it would weaken the adversary’s will to fight, the bombardment was as militarily unproductive as it was ethically dubious.

Nonetheless, the French were spurred to design their own gun that could fire back at the German superguns, using the principle of multiple charges blasting down the length of the barrel to achieve the necessary muzzle velocity. This concept had earlier been tested by the American Azel Lyman and the Frenchman Louis-Guillaume Perreaux, to mixed results.

The Paris Gun had required such powerful propellant charges that each shot literally stripped the barrel with its passage, requiring a larger-caliber shell for each subsequent shot. The barrels had to be withdrawn for repairs after sixty-five shots, making sustained bombardment impossible. However, by using the multiple smaller accelerating charges, the strain on any one component of the barrel was reduced.

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