During the First World War, European cities first experienced aerial bombing using the first airplanes and airships. But on March 23, 1918, the inhabitants of the French capital faced another danger. In the morning in the city in different places, one after another, explosions began to be heard, while the weather was clear, there were no planes or airships in the sky. The gloomy Teutonic genius, several decades before the advent of the Fau missiles, figured out a way to reach the enemy capital.
Unexplained explosions in Paris
In the early morning of March 23, 1918, the inhabitants of Paris, living in the area of the Seine River, were frightened by a violent explosion. A cloud of dust, fragments and stones of the embankment rose into the sky in the area of house No. 6 at the moment when soldiers from a sapper platoon were passing nearby. The military quickly got their bearings and lay down, but there were still casualties. Two people died, five more received various injuries. The first explosion in the city occurred at about 7:20 am. A little later, at 7:40 am, an explosion was recorded at Karla V Street, the corner of Botreilis Street. Here, four people were killed, nine were injured, and a taxi car was seriously damaged by the explosion.
Subsequently, the explosions throughout Paris continued, they were noted in the area of Strasbourg Boulevard and near the East Station of the city. The very first explosions practically paralyzed the business life of the capital. The situation was aggravated by the fact that in these morning hours the weather was good, so there were already quite a lot of people on the streets of Paris. In the following days, part of the population of the French capital rushed away, trying to get away from the city blocks.
In the evening of the same day, a radio station located at the Eiffel Tower alerted the inhabitants of France that several German planes had managed to break through the Allied defenses and dropped bombs on Paris from high altitudes. In a few hours, the news of the bombing of the French capital spread around the globe by telephone and telegraph. It is worth noting that telephone communication played a very important role in these events, but we will talk about this later.
Explosions thundered in the city all day until nightfall, a total of 21 were counted. At the same time, according to official data, 15 people died and 36 were injured. It is worth noting that Paris had already been subjected to raids by German bombers and airships before, but from the moment the Allies deployed large forces of fighter aircraft near the city, such raids practically stopped, this happened back in 1915. With the gradual appearance of American fighters near the city, the very idea of such air attacks became more and more suicidal.
The next day, the explosions were repeated, while many finally realized that the point here was not at all in the enemy's aviation. Again, there were practically no clouds in the sky; over the city, no one saw either planes or airships. The collection of fragments at the site of the explosions and their study led to the conclusion that artillery shells were bursting in the streets. But where does the fire come from? After all, the front line passed from the city at a distance of about 100 kilometers …
The strangeness of the situation quickly gave rise to all sorts of rumors. Someone believed that a whole network of saboteurs was operating in the city, someone believed that the Germans were using new planes that had climbed to an inaccessible height. A rumor that shelling is being conducted from the outskirts of the city, and for these purposes, a kind of pneumatic weapon is used as a separate circulation. One way or another, for several days both the police and the journalists really rushed around all the suburbs of the city in an attempt to unravel the mystery of the mysterious explosions. At the same time, experts quickly determined that they were talking about artillery shells. So the appearance of the police in the vicinity of Paris could be explained not so much by the search for a mythical nomadic weapon as by the search for German spies and spotters who, most likely, were in Paris.
Shells from the stratosphere
When creating their long-range cannon, German designers took advantage of the fact that air resistance in the stratosphere decreases, so a projectile flying at high altitudes is able to fly much farther. Moreover, a similar method of shooting was known in the Russian Empire. Back in 1911, a military engineer Vasily Mikhailovich Trofimov suggested considering this method. The project proposed by the engineer was rejected by the Russian military department. But the Germans over time became interested in such a concept, while the German designers, perhaps, even got acquainted with Trofimov's articles, which were published before the start of the First World War.
Especially for the shelling of Paris at the Krupp factories, they made a huge gun, the weight of the assembly in the assembly was 256 tons, the service team was 80 people. The barrel length of the 210-mm gun was approximately 32 meters. Barrel weight - about 138 tons. To hold the relatively thin barrel of such a monstrous mass, which simply sagged under its weight, a specially designed cable system was used. For the arrangement of the first firing position in the forest near the village of Krepi, the Germans spent more than 200 tons of gravel, 100 tons of cement and about 2.5 tons of wire reinforcement. Especially for the transport of the gun, special trains were developed.
Shooting from the "Paris Cannon", which went down in history as well as the "Colossal" and "Kaiser Wilhelm's Trumpet", was carried out with an elevation angle of 52 degrees. The shell described a huge arc, the highest point of which was about 40 kilometers. The ammunition covered the distance to Paris in 176 seconds, of which almost two minutes flew in the stratosphere, the shells fell on the target at a speed of about 922 m / s. Before the invention of rockets, the shells of this cannon held both the record for flight altitude and the record for the duration of stay in the stratosphere - about 100 seconds.
A feature of the gun was the great wear of the barrels; in total, the German factories produced seven barrels for the "Parisian Cannon". It was believed that the resource of one barrel would not exceed 65 shots. At the same time, after each shot, the caliber of the gun increased slightly. For this reason, all the shells were made with this feature in mind, they were specially numbered and fired strictly in the assigned sequence. The weight of the projectile was approximately 120 kg, of which only 15 kg were explosive, the weight of the powder charge used reached 200 kg, the maximum firing range was up to 130 km.
How the Germans adjusted the fire
Already during the First World War, all the belligerents appreciated the possibility of adjusting artillery fire with the help of the first airships, airships and balloons. However, the Germans could not use such a technique due to the remoteness of Paris from the front line and the city's strong fighter cover. At the same time, the accuracy of their long-range cannon was small, which was compensated for by the very size of the target being fired. Even during World War II, German V-1 projectiles and V-2 missiles could still effectively engage only area targets.
And yet the possibility of adjusting the fire and making corrections when firing was important, and the Germans were also interested in the results of the shelling. It is believed that a German spy network in Paris was responsible for adjusting the firing of the Kaiser Wilhelm Pipe. Later, the French police even found an attic in the city, to which a telephone cable was secretly laid, but they failed to catch the spy.
German spies could both directly transmit information about the events in Paris to addressees on the Franco-Swiss border, and through an agent network. So in the newspaper "Independent Military Review" was described the following way of transmitting information about the first explosions that thundered in Paris on March 23, 1918. The German spy encrypted the information about the place where the shells fell and relayed the encryption to the woman, who relayed the information over the phone to the Franco-Swiss border. The peasant who received the message crossed the border and within a few hours called the town of Bal. From there, the encryption reached the desk of the head of the encryption department of the German Headquarters. The German artillerymen received information about the hits on the table after about four hours. All the information received was plotted on a map of the city and used to make corrections for the next shots. As we can see, the information reached the gunners with a serious delay, but this was better than not having any data on the results of their firing at all.
Consequences of the shelling of Paris in 1918
The Paris Cannon was used by the Germans from March to August 1918. It quickly became obvious that the destructive power of the 210-mm gun was not great enough, the firing accuracy was low, which, however, was quite enough to hit objects within the city, and the barrel had to be changed very often due to very rapid wear. The gun had a lot of shortcomings, with an undeniable record-breaking firing range.
The shells of the "Kaiser Wilhelm Pipes" covered more than 120 kilometers, which made not only the French, but also the British nervous. The command of the British troops seriously considered the options for the use of such a weapon by the Germans against the ports on the French coast, through which the supply of British troops went. Another dangerous scenario is the retreat of British troops from their positions and the abandonment of Calais, from which the Germans could already shell the territory of Great Britain.
In total, the Germans conducted three series of attacks on Paris: from March 23 to May 1, from May 27 to June 11, and from July 15 to August 9, 1918. The first shelling coincided in time with the German Spring Offensive, with the gun positions gradually approaching the French capital. Initially, the "Paris Cannon" was located at a distance of 125 kilometers from the city in the deep rear of the German troops. According to various estimates, from 300 to 400 shots were fired in Paris. About half of the shells exploded in the center of the capital, the rest fell either on the outskirts or outside the city.
During the shelling in Paris, 256 people were killed and 620 were injured. According to other sources, more than 1000 people were injured. The greatest number of casualties occurred on March 29, when a shell hit the Church of Saint-Gervais at a time when the service was going on there. As a result of a direct hit, a 210-mm projectile killed, according to various sources, from 60 to 90 people. The French writer Romain Rolland later dedicated the story "Pierre and Luce" to these events. At the same time, neither the number of victims, nor the material damage inflicted on the city did not cover the costs of developing and producing the weapon itself, which was a very expensive and capricious toy. It is quite obvious that the main effect of using the tool was the psychological effect. The German command planned to break the spirit and will of the inhabitants of Paris to fight against the backdrop of a large-scale offensive at the front. In turn, the German soldiers, on the contrary, were inspired by such a weapon.
The plan was partially implemented, as thousands or even hundreds of thousands of Parisians fled the city, but there was no large-scale panic. Such a weapon could not change the course of the war. And the stake on the psychological and propaganda effect did not work. The history of the "Paris Cannon" at a new technical level will repeat itself 26 years later, when the corporal who had passed through the First World War again relies on the "miracle weapon", but, as in 1918, this will not have any effect on the outcome of the war.
