K5 Rail Gun: Krupp's WWII Behemoth: 38 (Legends of Warfare: Ground) (Legends of Warfare: Ground, 38)

gigantic pipes, horizontal or at an angle, emplaced on railway wagons mounted on rails, set my pulse-rate to dawdling, even though they were guns. I almost spurned the book in favour of others on aircraft, ships and AFVs, but I'm pleased that I didn't. I surprised myself, soon immersed in the K5 railguns' forebears, technicalities and evolution into K5(E)s.Large guns were first mounted on rolling-stock during America's Civil War; an inventive bloodbath, this spawned several lethal innovations, including barbed wire, machine guns, magazine-loaded rifles firing cartridged bullets, anti-shipping contact mines, and the the frst battles fought between armoured warships...but I digress. Rail-mounted guns steadily evolved. By WW1, Germany was even using guns from redundant warships, unwilling to reprise Jutland....Which stirred the thought that naval guns and their turrets resemble icebergs when mounted on ships, since their magazines and many of their workings are concealed in their hulls or hulls and superstructures. Their traverse is limited by bridges, masts, funnels and suchlike, but their ships' mobility compensates; it also makes them awkward targets.Emplaced like this on land, every gun could be sited for full traverse, but all would be immobile to bombers, incoming shells and flamethrowers, as well as to being sidestepped, as in the Maginot Line. Deemed impregnable, even this was penetrated by the Germans, a week before France surrendered in June 1940. A victory-roll, in anticipation?Well before then, Krupp had succesfully developed K5(E) railguns, mounting Krupp-designed guns of 28cm/11 inch calibre, with a range of 64,000 metres/almost forty miles. Each gun was accompanied by flat-top rolling-stock, loaded, inter alia, with ammunition and the components of turnstiles for assembly at the end of each gun's journey. These turnstiles granted complete traverse, and carriages housed the 80 plus gunners, soldiers, cooks, medical-staff, etc, per gun.24 K5(E)s were built in total, for location wherever appropriate on Europe's extensive railway system. Their war began when some bombarded England, which was, at its closest, only 33kms/20.5 miles across the Channel from German-occupied France. Some also featured in Russia, in the sieges of Sevastopol, Leningrad and Stalingrad, as well as at Anzio and perhaps elsewhere in Italy. They encored finally in the Battle of the Bulge, having previously shelled D-Day and its immediate aftermath.Two K5(E)s survived the war and scrapyard: one now resides in America, the other in France; there's unsubstantiated mention of a third in Russia. I doubt I shall visit any of them. After reading this book, I feel I have done. It was a merciful diversion from the barrage of publications on warplanes, warships, tanks and AFVs-- admittedly self-inflicted.

This is a primer on the subject.Tries to do a number of things at once (technical history and description, operational description and modeling reference) in only 120 pages of a small format book.Production values are high but do bear in mind a little more than half the book is devoted to walkaround pictures of the gun taken in the present day and half or more of the periods photos are from public archives (and have probably been published elsewhere already as a result) so the amount of original content is really not high. Captions are though pretty decent.Do bear in mind though that I have an interest in the subject and have many original photos of this gun in my collection as well as a large library of books on German world war two artillery so I am not you typical lay person writing a review on this work.

Great collection of photos. The photo captions are very informative. The text provides a reasonable amount of information on the design development and deployments of the guns. There are a couple of tabulations of dimensions, weights, and performance characteristics of the guns and mountings in both metric and US units.