We already talked here at Mega Curious about the most powerful nuclear bomb of all time, but what about the greatest weapon ever developed by man, you know what it was? For those who don't know, it's a little cannon named Gustav Gun that was manufactured by Adolf Hitler in 1941, and the Führer's specs included orders that the gun could pierce a meter of steel, seven of them. concrete or 30 meters of dense earth.

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Gustav was specifically designed to destroy a line of forts that protected the French border during World War II. The cannon was giant and only his numbers were more than enough to intimidate anyone! After all, the weapon was 47 meters long and 11 meters high and was almost 1, 350 tons in weight.

In addition, each of his frightening bullets weighed seven tons, and so heavy it took another ton of gunpowder just so Gustav could fire them. However, once launched, projectiles could hit targets more than 35 kilometers away.

Operation troop

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And don't think it was simple to "play" with such a monster! Once Gustav had reached the location from which the attack was to begin, it took 500 soldiers to assemble and operate the cannon - extremely complex and designed by Krupp AG, the current ThyssenKrupp - and 54 hours of preparation for the weapon to fire.

Gustav was mounted on a special chassis supported by two four-rail platform wagons, and was powered by two diesel locomotives. Despite being commissioned to attack the French borders, France fell without the use of the cannon, and was eventually sent to be used for border combat with the then Soviet Union and later in Warsaw, Poland.

The supercannon had a “twin sister” named after Dora after the project's chief engineer's wife, but neither survived the war. The Nazis themselves blew up Dora so that she would not fall into the hands of the Soviet army, while Gustav was captured by US troops, who dismantled him and scrapped him.