PARIS SHELLED FROM SEVENTY MILES

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 148, 18 March 1939, Page 6 (Supplement)

PARIS SHELLED FROM SEVENTY MILES

Story Of The World’s Monster

Gun

The next war will be carried to the centres of civilization. The armies of the future will not be the fighting forces on the front lines, but whole nations in arms in the cities and towns behind the lines. How often we have heard such prophecies! And yet, as “The Paris Gun,” a book by Henry W. Miller, reminds us, in the World War Paris was bombarded by long-range guns. It 7 o’clock on a Monday morning in March, 1918, the people of Paris were astir. The day was cloudless, At 7.20 something exploded violently on the Quai de Seine. An air bomb! This was nothing new for Paris. Planes had repeatedly bombed them, but not for years in the daytime. Why no alarm? Twenty minutes later another “bomb” exploded near the Gare del’Est, close to a Metro ' entrance on the Boulevard de Strasbourg. Eight persons were killed, thirteen wounded. In all seven “bombs exploded that day, but it was not until after the seventh had done its, deadly work that the alarm was sounded and all Paris was thrown into confusion. Long before this, Paris officialdom was at work. Anti-aircraft observers scanned the skies vainly. Planes soared aloft to give battle to the enemy planes; there were none. Headquarters at the front were telephoned to ask why no alarm hud been sent, as was usual, of the approach of aircraft. Observers at the front insisted that no aircraft had passed the lines. The artillery office got busy. Fragments of the “bombs” were analysed. A most remarkable conclusion was arrived at; the grooves and copper bands showed the “bombs” to be projectiles fired from n gun.' The suspicious French at first thought French guns had been trained on the capital. But for shortrange shooting the aims were erratic, some of the shells falling almost five mill's away from each other. The idea was dismissed. Tile shells must have come from beyond the German lines. But how? Hie nearest point of Ihe lines was more than 70 miles away. Absurd I No gun could fire even half of that distance, not even the huge la-inch naval guns. The fragments were again examined. It was assumed to be a fairly light shell and the width of its grooves and the curious stepping of the shell aroused the conjecture that it had been fired from a high velocity gun having an extremely long bore. On the assumption that the shells had come from a German gun. the shots were plotted on a map of Paris. A straight line drawn between them led to the nearest point of the front lines. This led to the assumption that a gun was emplaced in the St. Gobain Wood. Aerial photographs were scanned and showed some fresh railroad spurs into the wood.

That was enough. Heavy naval guns were ordered up to counter-attack. For months the shells continued to rain on Paris. Sometimes there was an interval of a few days; once of a month. Many of the shells fell outside of the city, but many of them hit the target, some of them doing considerable damage. On Good Friday a shell hit the Church of St. Gervais. Early in 1916 Dr. von Eberhardt presented theories and calculations showing that a gun of 60 miles range was possible. For once the military powers were enthusiastic and the building of the gun began. At the end of the year Ludendorff saw that a gun with a range of only sixty miles would be useless, and he telegraphed Krupps to increase the range of the gun to seventy-five miles. To the technicians he seemed to be ordering a miracle; but Krupps performed one for him. Three guns were ready in March, 1918. The emplacements necessary were enormous, the steel' carriage plates weighed hundreds of tons, the gun carriage hundreds of tons more, and tlie gun proper, as high as the average 10storey building, weighed almost 200 tons. A monster, indeed I Its shell, however, >was relatively small, 264 pounds, of curious shape. The bore was but 8.26 inches, and—extraordinary feature —smooth; the shell turned itself. It had a range of seventy-five miles and its trajectory was twentyfour miles high ! Five guns were used in this emplacement. Four of them rapidly wore themselves out, one exploded prematurely. The French began bombarding the gun position. Another site was chosen and rebored guns having a larger calibre went into action. Seven guns in all were made or rebored. When the last shot was fired in August a total of 367 had been fired at Paris. The remarkable thing about the operation of the guns was the extraordinary precision of every detail, especially the calculations by the ballistics officer. Each gun had a pressure chamber, and, after the gun had fired, this officer read the pressure in the barrel and from it was able to compute, within a relatively few yards, where the shell had struck. If the pressure was high, the gun overshot: if it was low. the shells fell short. Each shell fired had a new position in the gun, each new position required a new calculation. There were three powder charges: a variable charge in a silk bag, a standard charge in a silk bag. and a huge cartridge charge for firing. Each shot required a different charge in the first silk bag and calculations had to be made of the temperature of the powder and of the gun. Even the curvature of the earth was figured. The Paris gun—a collective name — caused more than 1,000,600 people to leave Paris.