Around the 15th century, a new type of artillery appeared on the battlefields of Europe. They had a short, large-caliber barrel, "looking" upwards. The weapon called a mortar was intended for shelling enemy cities in such a way that nuclei, stones or other ammunition flew over the fortress walls. Over time, other types of artillery appeared, designed for firing at high elevation angles - howitzers and mortars - which led to a significant reduction in the number of mortars. Nevertheless, mortars have been used by the armies of different countries for a long time. The last cases of the combat use of this type of weapons occurred during the Second World War, when German self-propelled mortars of the Gerät 040 project came to the front.
In the last years of the existence of the Weimar Republic, its leadership, fearing sanctions from the countries that won the First World War, tried to classify almost all of their military projects. Only those programs that fit into the terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty were covered with a lesser veil of secrecy. Powerful artillery until a certain time existed only in the form of projects on paper, access to which had a limited circle of people. In 1933, the government in Germany changed, which led to significant changes in the economic, political and social spheres. Among other things, the new leadership of the country, headed by A. Hitler, did not become scrupulous about the 1919 peace treaty, or even openly ignore it. The formation of the Wehrmacht and the change in the course of development of the country led to the start of several serious projects, including in the field of large-caliber artillery.
German heavy 600-mm self-propelled mortars "Karl" (Gerät 040, "installation 040"). There are Pz. Kpfw ammunition transporters nearby. IV Munitionsschlepper
In 1934, the Armaments Directorate of the Ground Forces issued an assignment to the industry to develop a heavy artillery gun capable of destroying or at least disabling a concrete object with walls up to 900 millimeters thick with one shell. The task was not easy and several companies were involved in its solution, among which was Rheinmetall Borsig. This enterprise was the first to develop a more or less realistic appearance of a new weapon. With an acceptable propellant charge and tolerable recoil, the hypothetical weapon should have looked like this: a four-ton 600 mm projectile was to be thrown from a relatively short barrel at a speed of no more than 100-110 meters per second. With mounted firing, a 600-mm projectile could ensure the destruction of a given target at a distance of up to a kilometer. In 1935, the leadership of the Wehrmacht instructed "Rheinmetall" to continue work on the project and bring it to the state of a practically usable weapon. At this stage, the future self-propelled mortar was named Gerät 040 ("Installation 040") and the unofficial nickname Karl. The latter appeared thanks to the participation in the project of General Karl Becker. An army representative oversaw the project and submitted some original ideas. As a token of gratitude, Rheinmetall engineers began to name their brainchild after Becker.
Two years after the start of work, the project reached the stage of prototype testing. A mortar of 600 mm caliber, weighing 54.5 tons, was delivered to the landfill. During the development, the customer came to the conclusion that the firing range was insufficient. A four-ton projectile flew only a kilometer, and that was not enough. As a result of consultations and additional calculations, engineers and the military agreed on the possibility of reducing the mass of ammunition by half. The two-ton projectile was already flying three kilometers. At the same time, this figure did not suit the military either. In the course of fine-tuning the artillery system, the barrel length was increased. At the later stages of the development of the mortar itself, this parameter was equal to 5108 millimeters. This led to an increase in the mass of the gun and increased the firing range by more than a third.
The firing characteristics of the new Gerät 040 gun caused a mixed reaction from the military. On the one hand, the 600 mm two-ton projectile fully met the power requirements. On the other hand, the firing range of only four kilometers was clearly not enough for most cases. The heavy-duty mortar could not have time to make a sufficient number of shots and fall under the enemy's return fire. In addition, Germany did not have and did not foresee tractors that could tow a new weapon, which further reduced survivability on the battlefield and excluded the possibility of a relatively quick withdrawal from the position. Based on these considerations, in 1937 the Karl project was continued. In the middle of July, the Rheinmetall-Borzig company received the task to make a self-propelled carriage for the Gerät 040 gun. Considering the mass of the mortar itself, the chassis carriage had to be designed from scratch, only using some developments on other topics.
As a result of design and assembly work in 1940, a gun with a finished tracked chassis was brought to the landfill. The basis of the self-propelled carriage was a 750 horsepower Daimler-Benz DB507 engine located in front of it. Through a hydromechanical transmission with three torque converters, the torque was transmitted to the drive wheels. The undercarriage of the prototype consisted of tracks and eight road wheels per side with torsion bar suspension. The serial chassis received eleven road wheels per side. In view of the colossal recoil force of the "040" gun, an original mechanism had to be used in the suspension. The inner ends of the suspension torsion bars were not rigidly fixed. On the contrary, they were connected to movable arms. In preparation for firing, a special lowering mechanism, located in the rear of the chassis, shifted the levers, which caused the vehicle to sink to the ground underneath. At the end of the firing, the operation was repeated in the opposite direction and the self-propelled mortar could start moving.
The gun itself looked like this at the time of installation on the chassis. A 600-mm rifled barrel 8, 5 caliber long was made as a single unit with a breech and mounted on the machine in the middle of the chassis. The mechanics of the suspension of the gun made it possible to raise the barrel at an angle of up to 70 ° and turn it in a horizontal plane within a sector four degrees wide. The huge recoil was compensated for by two sets of recoil devices at once. The first system was attached directly to the trunk cradle and took the "first blow". The second, in turn, extinguished the rollback of the mortar machine. Three large-caliber ammunition was developed for the Gerät 040 gun. A light concrete-piercing projectile weighed 1700 kg (280 kg of explosive), a heavy armor-piercing projectile weighed 2170 kg (348 kg of explosive), and a high-explosive one - 1250 kg (460 kg of explosive).
The finished self-propelled mortar weighed 97 tons, the engine power was only enough for movement at low speed. Nevertheless, the combat potential of the gun looked promising and they simply turned a blind eye to insufficient running characteristics. However, the relatively small firing range for such a caliber required an adequate level of protection. After receiving such a requirement, the chassis body received a new design of rolled armor plates 10 millimeters thick. The considerable size of the chassis, combined with thicker and stronger metal, has led to an increase in the weight of the entire installation by 30 tons. It was in this form that the Gerät 040 self-propelled mortars went into mass production.
Due to the complexity of the design and the lack of the need for mass production, the series was limited to only six machines. Each of them received its own name. Beginning in November 1940, the following entered the troops: Adam, Eva, Odin, Thor, Loki and Ziu. As you can see, the first two copies of the self-propelled mortar were named after biblical characters, and then the cars began to be designated by the names of the German-Scandinavian gods. It is worth noting that later this "variety" was discontinued: "Adam" and "Eve", as they say, for the sake of order, were renamed Baldur and Wotan, respectively. In addition, sometimes there are references to a certain seventh self-propelled gun named Fenrir, but there is no exact data on its existence. Perhaps this name was the first prototype. The last of the serial self-propelled mortars "Qiu" was transferred to the Wehrmacht in August 1941.
The production cars had slightly better characteristics than the prototype. A heavy concrete-piercing projectile received an initial speed of 220 meters per second and at ranges of about four and a half kilometers pierced up to 3.5 meters of concrete, or up to 450 mm of armor steel. The explosion following the penetration was guaranteed to destroy manpower and weapons inside the fortification, and also led to the collapse of structures. The lighter high-explosive projectile had a slightly higher muzzle velocity - 283 m / s, which gave it a flight range of 6,700 meters.
The new self-propelled mortars were heavy and quite difficult to operate. Therefore, together with the "Karl" itself, they developed several special means to ensure delivery to the battle area and combat work. The maximum speed of the self-propelled gun of about 10 km / h did not allow it to independently make long marches, and the fuel supply of 1200 liters was enough for only four hours of travel. Therefore, the main way of moving was made transportation by rail. Special hydraulic cranes were mounted on two five-axle railway platforms. Before loading, the self-propelled gun drove onto the rails, where it was attached to the booms of the cranes and hung out between the platforms. Special trailers were manufactured for transportation by road. On them, the self-propelled gun was loaded in disassembled form: the chassis, chassis, machine tool and the gun itself were installed on separate trailers. The self-propelled guns were delivered to the battle area by rail or road, after which, if necessary, it was assembled, refueled and traveled to the firing position under its own power.
In addition to the self-propelled mortars themselves, ammunition loaders entered the position. Each Karlov battery was assigned two vehicles with a reserve of four shells and a crane. The PzKpfw IV tank became the basis for the transport-loading vehicle. Only 13 of these machines were assembled. Before firing, the self-propelled mortar went into position, after which a calculation of 16 people made orientation and calculation of the direction to the target. On its own, Gerät 040 turned in the desired direction, the driver activated the lowering mechanism, and other numbers of the calculation made other preparations. The entire preparation for the shooting took about ten minutes. After lowering the self-propelled gun to the ground, the calculation began to prepare the gun for a shot. With the help of the crane of the transport-loading machine, the 600-mm projectile was loaded onto the mortar tray, from where it was sent to the barrel chamber using a mechanical rammer. Further, the same procedure was carried out with the sleeve. The barrel was locked using a wedge bolt. A hand-operated mechanism was used to raise the barrel to the desired angle. After raising the barrel, additional aiming was carried out in the horizontal plane. After loading and aiming, the calculation was removed to a safe distance and a shot was fired. Then the calculation lowered the barrel to a horizontal position and again loaded the mortar. It took at least ten to fifteen minutes to prepare for a new shot.
Self-propelled mortars Gerät 040 were transferred to the 628th and 833th artillery divisions of special power. First, six self-propelled guns were distributed equally between the units. Soon vehicle No. 4 "One" was transferred to the 833rd division, and all six self-propelled guns were assembled into three batteries of two units each. It was originally planned to use "Karla" in battle during the capture of France, but this campaign was rather short-lived and no special artillery power was needed. The next suitable target was found only in June 41st. Before the attack on the USSR, the first battery of the 833th Battalion was transferred to Army Group South, and the second to Army Group Center. In the early days of the war, the Karl self-propelled guns fired at the Soviet fortifications, including the Brest Fortress. A number of features of the use of mortars led to criticism of the gunners and their commanders. In addition, several problems arose when shooting. So, already on June 22, shells jammed in the barrels of "Odin" and "Thor". After a quick "repair", the shooting continued. The total consumption of shells in a few days was 31 pieces. The first battery of the division took part in the siege of Sevastopol.
By the fall of 1941, the first four self-propelled guns were sent to the plant for repair and modernization. At the same time, "Adam" and "Eve", due to the workload of production, stood idle for almost a year. Mortar "Thor", in turn, in a few months has exhausted the resource of the barrel and it was proposed to use a new gun of a similar class for repairs. The modernization called Gerät 041 meant replacing the native 600 mm rifled barrel with a 540 mm mortar. Around the same time that the fate of the Thor was being decided, the Rheinmetall Borsig plant finished assembling the fifth instance, called Loki. He immediately received a new smaller caliber barrel. Tests of the Gerät 041 gun immediately showed its greater efficiency compared to the 600-mm mortar. The smaller diameter of the bore and the mass of the projectile were compensated for by the greater length of the barrel - 11.5 caliber, which increased the maximum firing range by one and a half times, up to ten kilometers.
Already with two variants of armament, the "Karl" self-propelled guns were used on both European fronts of the Second World War. They managed to take part in almost all operations that required shelling of well-protected targets. For example, during the Warsaw Uprising, self-propelled gun No. 6 "Qiu" fired at the rebels and destroyed several quarters of the city. A characteristic feature of the Gerät 040 was its relatively low accuracy, which allowed it to be used only for firing at large area targets. As a result, even six self-propelled guns built from time to time stood idle due to the lack of suitable targets. With the start of the allied offensive in Normandy, the Wehrmacht command had to use mortars for defense. This, ultimately, had a deplorable effect on the fate of combat vehicles. Already in the summer of 1944, the Allied aircraft seriously damaged the Thor self-propelled guns, the wreckage of which a little later became the property of the advancing troops. At the beginning of the 45th self-propelled gun Wotan (former "Eva") and Loki were blown up by the crew and went to the Americans in broken form. The fate of "Odin" turned out to be similar - due to the impossibility of evacuating it, it was blown up.
With the two remaining copies (Adam / Baldur and Ziu), a very remarkable story happened. The fact is that the wreckage of one of the cars was never found. But in April 45, the Red Army captured an SPG with tail number VI. Later, based on German documents, it was decided that it was "Qiu". This self-propelled gun became an exhibit of the tank museum in Kubinka. During the restoration, carried out several decades after the inclusion of Ziu in the museum's collection, it was decided to clean off the old paint and paint the tank destroyer in historically correct colors. After removing another layer of paint, the letters Adam appeared on the artillery unit of "Karl". There is still no exact information why there are two designations on the same self-propelled gun, and where the lost sixth car went.
Heavy self-propelled mortars Gerät 040/041 or Karl turned out to be the last representative of this class of military equipment. The great complexity of operation, together with insufficient indicators of range and accuracy, as a result, put an end to the mortars. After the Second World War, the functions of artillery weapons, intended for firing along a hinged trajectory with a high elevation, were assigned to large-caliber mortars, and then to ballistic missiles.
