How Germans Turned Trains Into Massive Artillery in WWII

This gun is known as the K5. It was made by one of Germany's largest manufacturers. The K5 was developed by the Krupp Ironworks in the mid-30s, and it was not directed by the Third Reich to do so. It was kind of their own initiative. The K stands for Kanone, or cannon in German. It just represents the best of technology, I'd say, the Germans produced World War II. The big thing is it's placed on railroad trucks to increase mobility. And because it was mounted on rails, this massive artillery piece was technically part of the railway network. This posed a series of engineering problems. As it sits right now, it only has like a two-degree lateral spread. So what you want to do is either put it on a curve and then aim it that way along the curve, or the Germans developed what's known as the Vogella turntable. You can turn the thing on a circle of rails, and that way you have 360-degree firing ability. This K5 now stands at the U.S. Army base at Fort Lee in Petersburg, Virginia. It was during the Siege of Petersburg in 1865 that guns mounted on railway carriages were first used. But they were unsophisticated and unpredictable. Ninety years later, artillery technology had improved significantly. The K5 is loaded from behind. They've got a ramming rod. Then you load propellant within a cartridge, and it forms a seal. So when it does fire, it's not coming out the back. He just pulls on the cord. The primer is hit, igniting the propellant, which then pushes the round out the tube, maybe to go 20 miles to the impact zone. That range meant that the K5 could terrorize not just foreign armies, but also civilians. The K5 was shelling England, actually landing shells on English soil. I'm sure it didn't do English morale a lot of good, but I think the British kept a stiff upper lip, as they say, and dealt with it.