Железнодорожная артиллерия: конструкция и особенности применения.

Form of large artillery

A railway gun, also called a railroad gun, is a large artillery piece, often surplus naval artillery, mounted on, transported by, and fired from a specially designed railway wagon. Many countries have built railway guns, but the best known are the large Krupp built pieces used by Germany in World War I and World War II. Smaller guns were often part of an armoured train. Only able to be moved where there were good tracks, which could be destroyed by artillery bombardment or airstrike, railway guns were phased out after World War II.

The design of a railway gun has three firing issues over and above those of an ordinary artillery piece to consider. Namely how the gun is going to be traversed – i. e. moved from side to side to aim; how the horizontal component of the recoil force will be absorbed by the gun's carriage and how the vertical recoil force will be absorbed by the ground.

The first method of traverse is to rely entirely on movement along a curved section of track or on a turntable with no provision to traverse the gun on its mount. The second is to traverse the rail car body on its trucks, known as a car traversing mount. Generally this is limited to a few degrees of traverse to either side unless an elaborate foundation is built with a centre pivot and traversing rollers. The design of the foundation is the only limit to the amount of traverse allowed in this latter case. The third choice is to allow the separate gun mount to rotate with respect to the rail car body, known as a top carriage traversing mount. This usually requires the gun to be mounted on a central pivot which, in turn, is mounted on the car body. With few exceptions these types of mounts require some number of outriggers, stabilisers, or earth anchors to keep them in place against the recoil forces and are generally more suitable for smaller guns. The American post–World War I assessment of railway artillery considered that the utility of even a small amount of traverse for fine adjustments was high enough that either of the two latter traversing methods is preferable to a fixed mount.

There are four primary methods to absorb the recoil force for railway guns: cradle recoil, top carriage recoil, sliding recoil and rolling recoil. Cradle recoil means that the gun recoils backward in its cradle, retarded and stopped by hydraulic buffers. It is returned to battery, or the firing position, by either helical springs or by air in a pneumatic recuperator cylinder that is compressed by the force of recoil. This is the most common method used for lighter railway guns and for virtually all field artillery designed after the French introduced their Canon de 75 modèle 1897. Top carriage recoil is the situation in which the gun is mounted in an upper carriage that moves on wheels on fixed rails mounted on the lower. The gun and upper carriage recoil together, restrained by the usual hydraulic buffers. Return to battery is effected either by gravity, through the use of inclined rails, which the gun and carriage have run up, by springs, or even by rubber bands, on some improvised mounts. It is not well suited to firing at steep upward angles because it cannot absorb much of the vertical component of the recoil force. Sliding recoil has the car body sitting on a set of wooden crossbeams or "sleepers" placed underneath it which have been jacked down on to a special set of girders incorporated into the track so that about half the weight of the mount has been transferred to them from the trucks. The gun, car body and trucks all recoil together with the friction generated by the crossbeams sliding on the girders absorbing the recoil force after moving only about to the rear. The sleepers must be jacked up again to allow the gun to roll forward to its firing position. This was often done by handwheels driving gear trains attached to the wheels, or even by electric motors on more modern mounts. Almost all of these type of mounts were of the non traversing type and had to be fired from a curved section of track or turntable. The American post–World War I assessment of railway artillery praised its ruggedness, ease of manufacture and convenience in service, but acknowledged its unsuitability for smaller guns, due to excessive time of operation and lack of traverse, and that it was not suitable for the largest howitzers firing at high angles because of the enormous trunnion forces. The methods were often used in combination with each other. Examples include the French railway howitzer which used cradle sliding recoil. The American 14"/50 caliber railway gun Mark II used cradle rolling recoil as did the 14 and 12 inch railway guns from Great Britain. Only the oldest weapons used a combination of top cradle and sliding recoil. One example being the earliest mounts for the British designed BL 9.2 inch Railway Gun.

The combination of rolling and cradle recoil methods absorbed both the horizontal and vertical components of the recoil force and needed no special preparations, but all other types required some method to transmit the vertical force to the ground. One way is to build a platform on either the ties or the ground with girders, beams, pads or floats. The horizontal component would be alleviated by either sliding recoil or rail clamps, guys or struts to secure the mount in place. The French Schneider and mounts and the British 9.2 inch guns and 12 inch howitzers used rail clamps or guys. The American gun and the French 240 mm Canon de Mle 1893/96 M used struts. followed by Ye. Repin (project, 1855), Pyotr Lebedev (who outlined the theoretical foundations of the railway artillery in Primeneniye Zheleznykh Dorog k Zashite Materika, 1857) and P. Fomin (developed a project of a large caliber cannon, 1860).

The first railway gun used in combat was a banded 32 pounder Brooke naval rifle mounted on a flat car and shielded by a sloping casemate of railroad iron. On 29 June 1862, Robert E. Lee had the gun pushed by a locomotive over the Richmond and York River line (later part of the Southern Railway) and used at the Battle of Savage's Station to interfere with General George McClellan's plans for siege operations against Richmond during the Union advance up the peninsula. Photographic evidence exists of at least one Union 13 inch siege mortar mounted on a rail car during the Siege of Petersburg. It was nicknamed the Dictator or the Petersburg Express. When it was first fired, the recoil destroyed the flatcar on which it was mounted. A flatcar strengthened by additional beams covered by iron plate was able to resist recoil damage from a full charge. The Dictator was then fired from a section of the Petersburg and City Point Railroad where moving the strengthened flatcar along a curve in the track trained the gun on different targets along the Confederate lines. The Dictator silenced the Confederate guns on Chesterfield Heights to prevent them from enfilading the right end of the Union line. Another photo exists of a gun mounted on an armoured rail car with the caption of "Railway battery used in siege of Petersburg" although no textual evidence survives in support of the caption, which makes the claim that it is a photo of the Confederate gun from 1862 dubious.

France also used improvised railway guns during the Siege of Paris (1870–1871). In France, Lt. Col Peigné is often credited with designing the first railway gun in 1883. Commandant Mougin is credited with putting guns on rail cars in 1870. The French arms maker Schneider offered a number of models in the late 1880s and produced a gun intended for coastal defense, selling some to the Danish government in the 1890s. They also designed a model the Obusier de 200 "Pérou" sur affût truck TAZ Schneider for Peru in 1910, but they were never delivered.

The United Kingdom mounted a few guns on railway cars which saw action during the Siege and Relief of Ladysmith during the Second Boer War. A 9.2 inch gun was taken from the Cape Town coast defences and mounted on a rail car to support the British assault on Boer defenses at Belfast, north east of Johannesburg, but the battle ended before it could get into action.

World War II saw the final use of the railway gun, with the massive Schwerer Gustav gun, the largest artillery piece to be used in combat, deployed by Nazi Germany. After the Fall of France Germany added 58 captured French guns to its inventory while Italy was given 19 French guns with many of these being captured by the Germans after the Italian capitulation. The Wehrmacht deployed three 40.6 cm (16 inch) guns. The British Army deployed three 13.5 inch (34.3 cm) railway guns on the East Kent Light Railway, locating them around Lydden and Shepherdswell. These were codenamed the "Gladiator", the "Sceneshifter", and the "Peacemaker". A 12" railway gun is preserved at the United States Army Ordnance Museum, Fort Gregg Adams, Virginia, United States. A US Navy 14"/50 caliber railway gun from World War I is preserved at the Washington Navy Yard, Washington DC, United States. A German 283 mm Krupp K5 gun ("Anzio Annie") is displayed at the United States Army Ordnance Museum, Fort Gregg Adams, Virginia. It was constructed using parts from two German guns that shelled the Anzio beachhead and were partially destroyed by their crews before being captured by the Allies. A second 283 mm Krupp K5 can be seen at the Todt Battery museum, near Audinghen in northern France. Soviet era 305 mm MK 3 12 guns are preserved at the Krasnaya Gorka fort near Lomonosov, Russia, and the Museum of Railway Technology, Saint Petersburg. Soviet 180 mm ТМ 1 180 guns may be seen at Krasnaya Gorka fort, at the Museum of the Great Patriotic War, Moscow, and at the Railway Station in Sevastopol, Ukraine. The last surviving American made 7 inch (178 mm) railway gun is now on display at Museu Militar Conde de Linhares in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. While not a gun the Chehalis Centralia RR of Chehalis, WA has something of great interest. It is a Model 1918 railroad car mount for a 12 inch seacoast mortar. These cars were built in the early 1920s to make obsolete seacoast artillery more mobile. While all the guns were scrapped in the early days of WW II this car survived at the Bremerton Navy Base. There is an 8 inch gun on an M1918 Railway Mount, less car, at the University of Tampa, Tampa, FL.