Ww1 logic and Paris guns.

I have learned about the German Paris guns they used to bombard the city from great distances.

And I can' help but wonder what they hoped to gain rather than bomb railways, supply lines or troop movements (if known).

Not sure if this shift of the guns use would have had an impact on the war, because I'm sure the guns accuracy is questionable, but you never know.
 
because I'm sure the guns accuracy is questionable

They aimed at the centre of Paris and missed regulary especially after the first handful of shots as the barrel wore.
Paris_Gun_Combined.png
 
I have learned about the German Paris guns they used to bombard the city from great distances.

And I can' help but wonder what they hoped to gain rather than bomb railways, supply lines or troop movements (if known).

Not sure if this shift of the guns use would have had an impact on the war, because I'm sure the guns accuracy is questionable, but you never know.


Not sure they had much use at all.

They might have been better to use them to bombard Amiens, and perhaps borrow some big naval guns (it's not like the HSF was doing much with them) to bombard Hazebrouck - two rail junctions crucial to supplying the BEF. But there never seems to have been much liaison between Army and Navy.
 
I have learned about the German Paris guns they used to bombard the city from great distances.

And I can' help but wonder what they hoped to gain rather than bomb railways, supply lines or troop movements (if known).

Not sure if this shift of the guns use would have had an impact on the war, because I'm sure the guns accuracy is questionable, but you never know.
The Paris gun was rather pointless, militarily ineffective and not particularly damaging to morale. However aircraft can be shot down, shells not so much.


Though (and here's a new CT) maybe there were no guns and the supposed shells were actually teleported to the atmosphere over Paris by a piece of recovered alien technology. Hence the lack of evidence of them...
 
taunt the populous and sho them that they can be struck.. that was I believe the primary goal.. just terror.

but then again.. Logic and war don't go hand in hand once the dice are in play. Germans could have done a lot more if they did things different, alas the vaunted Prussian military was defeated by lack of internal logic and proper use of what it has in a coordinated fashion on targets that would actually make a difference vs just terrorizing
 

Kaze

Banned
It was terror pure and simple. The original plan was to test the gun under live fire conditions. Then build a second gun able to fire a poison gas shell and then put said shell right into downtown Paris right during rush hour. Unfortunately, the barrel wore down and the money to do the second gun never appeared.
 
Its not just terror, its also very disruptive to the functioning of a city to have shells lobbed in. Were people evacuated at all, or was road and rail traffic diverted due to the threat of a lucky hit? Did Paris get sandbagged, or were sirens sounded when the gun was fired?
 
Its not just terror, its also very disruptive to the functioning of a city to have shells lobbed in. Were people evacuated at all, or was road and rail traffic diverted due to the threat of a lucky hit? Did Paris get sandbagged, or were sirens sounded when the gun was fired?

Short answer is: No, No, No, & No. Paris had been attacked by air, & there had been the perception of a near miss in 1914 when the German armies were driven back. So, the population was used to the stress. The casualties were horrible but relatively light. Some people were removed, a mall amount of traffic was diverted, some windows were covered with boards. Perhaps had a regiment of eight or twelve cannon been deployed & chemical ammunition been used the result would be worse for the Parisians.
 
Each shell carried 15 pounds of TNT and only between 320 and 360 hit Paris. Thats a very expensive way to throw less than 3 tons of explosive at a city of about 40 square miles.
 
Hm. Sounds like the project was a waste of money. They were better off laying down rail road to send armored trains near the front and have mobile artillery or taxi reinforcements and supplies to the front.
 
How many Paris guns were built? I think I have read that at first the mounting etc were concrete but by late 1918 they were prefabricated steel that could be setup in 3 weeks. So perhaps if more guns were available they might be able to achieve something as a battery or regiment.
 
Warnings were impossible, since the shell would arrive before any possible warning that it was being fired could be spread. This is a gun, not a plane. (Shells were, IIRC, the first man made objects to reach the stratosphere.) It was a poor choice of resource use.
 
Each shell carried 15 pounds of TNT and only between 320 and 360 hit Paris. Thats a very expensive way to throw less than 3 tons of explosive at a city of about 40 square miles.
Indeed. By way of comparison for people talking about evacuations etc., if memory serves, the Germans delivered about 300 TONS of explosive to London during World War I, could send about the same amount in a single Luftwaffe air raid the second go around, and a decent Allied-sized air raid (again, WW2) would go up from there into the thousands of tons of ordnance.
 
How many Paris guns were built? I think I have read that at first the mounting etc were concrete but by late 1918 they were prefabricated steel that could be setup in 3 weeks. So perhaps if more guns were available they might be able to achieve something as a battery or regiment.

Probably two, tho only one may have been in operation. Most or all of the records were lost postwar & the interested Brit military and English language historians have not done a good job of documenting the thing.
 
I can see that these guns may be a waste of resources, but was it possible to utilize such resources elsewhere? The whole thing couldn't have used much resources in the context of vast Materielschlact: a few tons of steel and some engineering people and facilities. Was there a shortage of more useful big guns that could have been addressed by not building a couple of Paris guns?

Edit: if wiki is accurate at all the Paris gun used worn out Langer Max guns. If that is true perhaps the Paris gun is a bit of recycling and not as wasteful as we thought.
 
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