Dora -a small name for the biggest gun ever made-

I've always been fascinated with what the Germans made during the World War 2 to equip their arsenal to battle against the Allies's army..

One of the craziest military project to date, i think is the Schwerer Gustav 80 cm railway gun --it has a cute nickname; Dora ^^;-- 

Dora, as most mortar based guns that the Germans made, was built intended to blast through heavy barricades, usually in the form of forts, campsites, etc. This gun was specifically made to blast through the Maginot Line forts for the campaign in the West. However at the time of the expansion, this gun is still in development in the Krupp factory. Even in the expansion to the Soviet (Operation Barbarossa), 1941, this gun was still in development.

To give you an illustration of the sheer mammoth size of this gun, i posted an artist's rendering of the massive thing. You can see from the picture that this thing compared to actual humans is like a five or six storrey high building! very massive, yet very inefficient. Why? because it takes 6 full weeks to assemble --a very long time considering wars change rapidly in terms of location, and remember this gun is railway based, so it needs tracks!--

To operate this massive gun, it takes 1,420 soldiers under the command of 1 Colonel! Jeez, that's like a whole bloody squadron right there. The shell of a single Dora is 80cm, it's about 4 meters high! (largest shell on earth), and Dora can fire it within a maximum range of around 25000 meters.. Germans are ambitious yet loony bunch of people when it comes to waging wars LoL..

The funny thins about this weapon is twofold; the name Dora was taken from the engineer that planned this monster --a man named Gustav-- he named the weapon after his wife; Dora! the second funny thing is that this weapon was only made twice, the first managed to fire around 48 shells as tests.. the actual one never fired one, because as it was deployed, German troops lost the battle in the area, and Dora was confiscated by the Red Army hahahahahaha

so all that money and effort for nothing eh? but still very impressive, i can't imagine what would go through my mind if i saw that long barrel pointing upwards (firing position) and i was a Soviet soldier in Fort Maginon.. run!!!!!!!