Probably everyone has seen aerial footage showing Syrian cities that have become the arena of hostilities. At first glance, everything is terrible - broken glass, demolished brick walls and partitions. But take a closer look: the houses themselves are standing! The roofs are intact! I put new walls, glazed the windows, plastered the holes from bullets and shrapnel and … live! Because these houses are all made of cast reinforced concrete. There is a photo where the concrete roof from such a house slid down, as the columns on which it rested collapsed, but it slid entirely! So, from the point of view of the defenders of this house, it's even good that it happened!
Type 4. Japanese launcher for 400 mm rockets. But there were also rod mortars of the same caliber.
Well, now footage with destroyed cities during the Second World War - what is there? And there, if the walls are standing, then without a roof and ceilings between floors! Why? And because then they built according to the technology of the Middle Ages: they erected the walls of bricks, and the floors were installed from wooden beams. An aerial bomb falling from above often pierced them through and exploded in the basement, which caused people to hide in special bomb shelters, which again had a concrete ceiling, or in the subway. The resulting fire destroyed the interior of the house from top to bottom, and usually nothing could be done.
One-piece concrete building - a car park in the center of Penza.
What now? Well, yes, the beloved sofa and TV were smashed with fragments, the windows were knocked out (by the way, why didn’t anyone stick them with adhesive tape from the outside and from the inside?), Which made the apartment uncomfortable in the cold. However, it is not difficult to fix these "destruction". Such "evil" also cannot break the morale of people, and what do we have as a result? A pointless waste of resources!
And this is the "Akbar Tower" in Barcelona. Office center. And also solid concrete. Glasses from shelling, of course, will fall out, but you try to "pick it open"!
Meanwhile, already during the First World War, the warring powers were armed with their armies with heavy guns of 305, 320, 406, 420 and even 500-mm caliber, capable of piercing a three-meter reinforced concrete slab with their shells!
Today, the limiting caliber in the artillery of the Russian army is 240-mm (self-propelled mortar "Tulip") and … that's all. Next come MLRS with a caliber of 300 mm, but that's all again. Meanwhile, it is obvious that a shell with a caliber of 406 mm and a weight of 800 kg, of which, say, 250 kg will be used for explosives, the first hit will destroy any brick house to the ground, and a structure made of cast reinforced concrete will cause serious damage. In any case, his defenders will be in trouble!
This is the caliber! But the First World War …
True, today mobility is at the forefront of all military doctrines. But there are also quite successful examples of the use of such powerful shells during the last war, and in a completely "mobile" way. So, the German army used the armored personnel carrier "251" with six rockets fixed on the sides, caliber 280-320-mm with incendiary and high-explosive warheads. The Japanese used 220, 305 and 400 mm rocket mines in a very original way. They were launched from tray and rod launchers. The latter were a cage made of logs or sleepers laid on the slope of the pit. In the center, a launch tube was installed on triangular struts and … that's it! A 400-mm mine was put on the pipe, and the pit itself was carefully camouflaged. Usually such "mortars" were installed on the islands, and were aimed at the water's edge. As soon as the American amphibious landing tanks rushed to the shore and out of the water onto the beach, a volley of such shells followed them and the coast turned into a sea of raging fire and broken steel. It is not for nothing that during the assault on the Tarawa Atoll, the medical ships did not have time to evacuate not so much even the wounded as those who had gone mad!
The German Sturmtiger was also armed with a 380 mm rocket mortar, which threw 350 kg projectiles over five kilometers (5700 m). There is a known case when with one shell this installation destroyed three American Sherman tanks at once and, of course, this machine was indispensable in street battles during the suppression of the same Warsaw Uprising.
And here is another interesting development, and even earlier, during the First World War: a 240-mm wooden German mortar "Albrecht". Already the first tests showed the high efficiency of this weapon, so almost immediately after it, the production of the older brother "Albrecht" with a caliber of 350-mm, and then a 450-mm mortar, to which the prefix "gros" was added to the name, was launched.
Albrecht's mortar captured by the British. September 1917.
It was necessary to shoot from such mortars not with ordinary mortar mines, but with cylindrical bombs with very thin walls of a very primitive design. The firing range was only about 600 meters. Not far, but what a shell fell on the enemy's heads! So, the mine for the "Albrecht" mortar weighed 100 kilograms (of which explosives accounted for more than 60!), But the "grosAlbrecht" shell already weighed 200, and 114 was TNT! Recall that a 2-fold increase in caliber accordingly increases the projectile volume 8-fold. And for comparison, let us note that the mass of the explosive charge of the FAB-250 aviation bomb is only 100 kilograms, and how much is required to deliver these kilograms to the target? And now let's imagine that this very German mortar, as it should be, is made of the appropriate metal and … what kind of shell and how far will it throw? And it is very important to calculate this in this case, because today the situation is to some extent repeating itself.
German wooden mortar. Photo from the magazine "Niva". Let's replace wood with steel and …
The roof of a building made of solid concrete perfectly protects both the first and second floors from 120 mm. Shells of 122 and 152-mm howitzers, falling on it at an acute angle, again cannot do this. Under the blunt, a hole is left comparable to its caliber or slightly larger, and that's it. It is enough to be not on the second, but on the first floor of such a building so as not to be afraid of such a shelling. It is clear that a flat shot can be fired at a single building, but in a dense urban environment (as in Syria, for example), it is very, very difficult to make such a shot. It is easier to lose both the shooting tank and the SPG.
What is the way out of this situation? Return to large calibers at a new technical level! Let's take a rather commonplace situation today. There is a road in front of us, and on the road just one kilometer from us there is a so-called checkpoint. It is built of concrete blocks and covered with concrete slabs, and what is the best way for us to destroy it with just one shot? We bring to it … a disposable metal barrel of caliber from 280 to 305 mm on an extremely lightweight three-wheeled chassis and with the simplest sighting devices designed for a direct shot range. We install, direct and scatter in all directions. Then - bang! And a huge projectile flies in one direction, and a cart with a barrel "flies" in the other, and, most importantly, no one is there! But a projectile of the corresponding mass and with the appropriate charge sweeps any checkpoint from the ground, be it at least three times from concrete blocks and twice covered with concrete slabs. If necessary, you can set this barrel at an angle and then the range of the shot will increase accordingly. You can bury it in a hole and shoot. The main thing is that even a passenger car will be able to tow such a "supergun", and there will be no problems at all to disguise it. That is, it is, in fact, a disposable firing tube … and that's it!
Japanese wooden mortars near Port Arthur 1905.
It may look even simpler, made on the basis of the same ordinary metal pipe, now not a disposable, but a reusable large-caliber pin-type mortar. The basis of a mortar under a mine with a caliber of 400 mm and a height of a man's height or so, and in this case, will be the same steel pipe, sharpened at one end. Practically a cylindrical pile! It is driven into the ground by a vibrator-penetrator, which is put on and fixed on it, and the desired angle is set using a triangle-lodgment. The pipe itself is screwed in place of two, which makes the entire installation extremely compact: two parts of the pipe, a penetrator and a cradle, and one of this mechanism can serve not one, but many such pipes.
Japanese Type 4 mortar of 203-mm caliber and shells for it.
They scored and got … an "obstacle field" made of pipes bent towards the enemy. But after that, a mine is put on each such pipe, and all of them are connected to the control computer. Mines can be of two types: the first is rotating unguided and non-rotating, with guidance from a drone located in the target area. In the first case, a block for spinning up with obliquely located nozzles like a Segner wheel should be provided on the mine. At the moment of launch, this block spins the mine, after which the main engine starts, and the mine goes to the target. At the same time, it will be enough for it to rise only 3-5 km, so that when falling from there, it will acquire a high speed and corresponding impact power. Such a mine, due to its mass and speed, will pierce through any concrete ceiling of a modern building and explode at its base. In any case, after such a blow, it will not resist! As for the "pipe", it is not a pity for it, since the metal used for it is the most second-rate! By the way, such shells can be used against the enemy's field fortifications from their own trenches, why not? 15 thousand fragments, scattering at a distance of up to two kilometers, will disrupt the attack of any enemy in this area! As a result, cast concrete is a pipe!
