The guns were managed by crews of 80 Imperial Navy sailors. Usually they were surrounded by other standard army artillery, creating "noise-screens" so they couldn't be located by French or British spotters. These guns killed about 250 Parisians and destroyed many buildings, but they didn't affect the French civilian morale or the larger course of the war.
The projectiles from these guns were the first human-made objects to reach the stratosphere. Paris Gun shells weighed 234 lbs. They were mainly made of thick steel, containing 15 lbs of TNT. The barrels weighed 183 tons and needed supports to hold them straight. About 550 lbs of gunpowder were used to propel a shell out of the barrel at 5,260 ft per second.
Info from https://www.warhistoryonline.com/featured/the-paris-gun.html and https://www.britannica.com/technology/Paris-Gun
It sounds like these guns were just a waste of resources, if they were so big and didn't hurt that many people, if they didn't affect French morale. It would probably have been better for the Germans if they had just made several normal guns to replace each of these giant guns.
ReplyDeleteI agree with James that the Paris Guns were overall fairly useless in the war. However, it's important to note that their creation pushed technology forward by a significant amount. After all, they propelled the first human-made object into the stratosphere. Many of humanities great innovations came as a result of war-funded research. For example, nuclear research during WWII led to not only the terrifying nuclear bomb, but also nuclear reactors which are currently one of the best ways to generate energy.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both James and Dan about their respective points, but we must keep in mind that, sometimes, wasting resources is how people find out better ways to utilize resources in the future. All of this contributed to the overall technological progress and innovation that was made during the course of World War I.
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