Key facts
- Type
- Super heavy field gun
- Place of origin
- German Empire
- Used by
- German Empire
- Wars
- World War I
- Designer
- Dr. Fritz Rausenberger
- Manufacturer
- Krupp
- Mass
- 256 t (252 long tons; 282 short tons)
- Length
- 34 m (111 ft 7 in)
- Barrel length
- 21 m (68 ft 11 in)
- Caliber
- 211 mm (8.3 in), later rebored to 238 mm (9.4 in)
- Breech
- horizontal sliding-block
- Elevation
- 55 degrees
- Muzzle velocity
- 1,640 m/s (5,400 ft/s)
- Maximum firing range
- 130 km (81 mi)
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Subclass of
- siege artillery
- Country
- France
- Operator
- Imperial German Army
- Country of origin
- German Empire
- Mass
- 750000
- Manufacturer
- Friedrich Krupp AG
- Designed by
- Friedrich Krupp AG
- Conflict
- World War I
- Image
- Photograph Q65801A.jpg
- Length
- 37000
Show 7 more facts
- Commons category
- Lange 21-cm-Kanone in 38-cm-Schießgerüst „Paris-Geschütz“
- caliber
- 210
- slope
- 55
- field of view
- 360
- effective firing range
- 122000
- native label
- Lange 21-cm-Kanone in 38-cm-Schießgerüst "Paris-Geschütz"
- muzzle velocity
- 1600
Sources (3)
via Wikidata · CC0
~15 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Scale model of a Paris Gun on its fixed mounting, Wehrtechnische Studiensammlung Koblenz
The Paris Gun (German: Paris-Geschütz / Pariser Kanone) was a type of German long-range siege gun, several of which were used to bombard Paris during World War I. They were in service from March to August 1918. When the guns were first employed, Parisians believed they had been bombed by a high-altitude Zeppelin, as the sound of neither an airplane nor a gun could be heard. They were the largest pieces of artillery used during the war by barrel length, and qualify under the (later) formal definition of large-calibre artillery. Also called the "Kaiser Wilhelm Geschütz" ("Kaiser Wilhelm Gun"), they were often confused with Big Bertha, the German howitzer used against Belgian forts in the Battle of Liège in 1914; indeed, the French called them by this name as well. They were also confused with the smaller "Langer Max" (Long Max) cannon, from which they were derived. Although the famous Krupp-family artillery makers produced all these guns, the resemblance ended there.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Paris Gun” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
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