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The V-3 gun, also known as the London Gun, was the largest gun ever built by Nazi Germany and was intended to strike London. It used T-junctions filled with charges to achieve muzzle velocities in excess of 4,920 ft/s for a 308.6 lb shell, giving a range of over 102.5 miles. Construction began in September 1943, but the complex was never completed due to Allied bombing. Other large guns include the Schwerer Gustav and Dora railway guns and the “Big Babylon” supergun commissioned by Saddam Hussein.
The largest gun ever built, by at least a factor of 3, is the V-3 gun, also known as the London Gun. At least two of these weapons were built by Nazi Germany and placed in bunkers in chalk cliffs in Mimoyecques, France. It is a common misconception that cannons were never built; they were, even though the whole complex, which was originally supposed to contain five cannons, was never completed due to Allied bombing.
The V-3 guns, codenamed Hochdruckpumpe, “High Pressure Pump” or Tausendfüßler, meaning “centipede,” used a series of T-junctions filled with charges timed to explode just as the projectile passed along each segment of the barrel from 460 feet (140m). This allowed muzzle velocities in excess of 4,920 ft/s (1,500 m/s) for a 308.6 lb. (140 kg) shell, giving a range of over 102.5 miles (165 km). The V-3s, built at a fixed 30° angle into the cliff, were intended to strike London, hence their alternative name. As of 2007, the London Gun is by far the largest gun ever built.
Construction of the London Gun began in September 1943 by slave laborers. Hitler ordered cannons built as a terrorist weapon to augment V-1 and V-2 rockets, nullifying the German army, who feared the chosen location was too susceptible to bombing. The chalk cliff holding the London Gun was 98m high and was protected by a 30m thick concrete dome. The concrete was so thick that even the 16 lb (5 kg) Tallboy piercing bombs used by the Allies proved useless at first.
Informed almost immediately by the French Resistance of the first construction of the London Gun, the Allies commenced bombing raids in November 1943, only two months after construction had begun. On July 6, 1944, three Tallboys, by pure chance, descended from the tunnels used to contain the barrels of the guns, reaching the lower level of the complex and killing dozens of workers. Work on the London Gun stopped at this point, but unaware of their success, the Allies continued to attack the bunker using radio-controlled kamikaze aircraft escorted by controller aircraft. Unfortunately this strategy ended up deadly and several Allied pilots, including the brother of a future president, Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., were killed in the attacks on the compound.
Other very large guns include the Schwerer Gustav and Dora railway guns, built by the Krupp company, which were the largest artillery pieces ever fielded by a wartime army. With a weight of 2,963,012.8 lbs. (1,344 tons), could fire a 15,432-pound (7-ton) shell over a range of 23 miles (37 km), and played an active role in World War II. The largest gun ever designed for construction was the “Big Babylon” supergun, commissioned by Saddam Hussein, which was to be approximately 500 feet (156 meters) long, with a bore over 3 feet (1 m), capable of firing a projectile in orbit and therefore capable of hitting any part of the globe. Plans to build this gun fell apart when its designer was murdered.
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