Fam. Wouters
Crisp shot of a 30.5 cm mortar battery near Chazelles, France
A slightly smaller than postcard format picture, but of very nice quality. There's a note on the back, saying "Bèta (38 cm) Batterien bei Chazelles".
It took me a while to find out which model this was, especially as I was off to a bad start: the note on the back is incorrect... it is not a 38 cm mortar... Anyway, after enough browsing around, I found a match with the "Bèta Gerät 1897 or "Schwere Küstenmörser L/8", a 30.5 cm heavy (coastal) mortar.
The German high command noticed that the French were starting to build big fortifications near the border (Elzas-Lothringen), after their defeat in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870/71. The 21 cm artillery was known to be too weak to penetrate thick concrete constructions, hence the design of a heavier weapon was started.
It had a low rate of fire of only 10 shots per hour, but with a range of 8 km and firing 400 kg shells, it could still do quite a bit of damage per day. Repositioning this monster was however more complicated. It weighed 30 tons and required dismantling into several parts to be able to transport it. Special trucks were made, but the cannons were mostly transported via a narrow gauge. It's bed had to be dug into a huge 30 m³ pit and after that was ready, it sitll took up to 5 hours to reconstruct the cannon.
Only 8 of these cannons were available at the start of the war, so I can imagine pictures are fairly scarce also.
This cannon was an important step towards the 42 cm M-Gerät or "Dicke Bertha" that would later be built.
Most gunners are from the same unit, being the 5. Garde-Feldartillerie-Regiment, originating from the Feldartillerie Schiessschule (Field Artillery Shooting Academy), but apparantly, they retained the old cypher.
Crisp shot of a 30.5 cm mortar battery near Chazelles, France
A slightly smaller than postcard format picture, but of very nice quality. There's a note on the back, saying "Bèta (38 cm) Batterien bei Chazelles".
It took me a while to find out which model this was, especially as I was off to a bad start: the note on the back is incorrect... it is not a 38 cm mortar... Anyway, after enough browsing around, I found a match with the "Bèta Gerät 1897 or "Schwere Küstenmörser L/8", a 30.5 cm heavy (coastal) mortar.
The German high command noticed that the French were starting to build big fortifications near the border (Elzas-Lothringen), after their defeat in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870/71. The 21 cm artillery was known to be too weak to penetrate thick concrete constructions, hence the design of a heavier weapon was started.
It had a low rate of fire of only 10 shots per hour, but with a range of 8 km and firing 400 kg shells, it could still do quite a bit of damage per day. Repositioning this monster was however more complicated. It weighed 30 tons and required dismantling into several parts to be able to transport it. Special trucks were made, but the cannons were mostly transported via a narrow gauge. It's bed had to be dug into a huge 30 m³ pit and after that was ready, it sitll took up to 5 hours to reconstruct the cannon.
Only 8 of these cannons were available at the start of the war, so I can imagine pictures are fairly scarce also.
This cannon was an important step towards the 42 cm M-Gerät or "Dicke Bertha" that would later be built.
Most gunners are from the same unit, being the 5. Garde-Feldartillerie-Regiment, originating from the Feldartillerie Schiessschule (Field Artillery Shooting Academy), but apparantly, they retained the old cypher.