SK L/45 (380 mm)

Description

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Vehicles equipped with this weapon

• SMS Bayern

General info

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Available ammunition

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Comparison with analogues

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Usage in battles

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Pros and cons

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History

By 1910, navies around the world were moving towards guns that were larger than 12-inches in caliber and Germany was not one get left behind in the global naval arms race. Or at least it wouldn't be if it wasn't for the budgetary restrictions of the Kaiserlichemarine (Imperial German Navy). Fortunately for Germany, Britain's condemnation to German "gunboat diplomacy" during the Agadir Crisis in 1911 gave Alfred von Tirpitz, State Secretary of the Riechsmarineamt (Imperial Navy Office), the needed justification to persuade the Reichstag (Imperial Diet or Parliament) to get further funding to make warships with larger caliber guns to face the Royal Navy. Tirpitz first considered arming what would become Bayern-class with 13.6 inch (34 cm) guns, but designers soon found that 25% hit chance would be gained from up-gunning to 15-inch (38 cm) guns and so the decision was made to arm the SMS Bayern and her sister ships with the SK L/45.

The largest guns to be made by Imperial Germany, the SK L/45 would ironically have more noteworthy career on land then at sea. The Germans began prioritize their new U-boats when World War I started leading to the SMS Bayern and her sister ship SMS Baden to be the last dreadnoughts to enter service. Too late to see action at the Battle of Jutland, there was little naval for the SK L/45 which was nicknamed "Langer Max" (Long Max) by the Germans. However, it found a quite successful career as a railway gun and artillery battery. Needing to break the stalemate on the Western Front, Germany decided to take the guns from their low-priority Bayern-class Dreadnoughts, and adapt them as siege artillery in concrete casemates. In capacity, the Langer Max provided the opening salvo of Germany's artillery bombardment during the Battle of Verdun in 1916. Later for the 1918 Ludendorff Offensive, the concrete casemates were replaced with faster to build steel casemates. One of these cannons assigned to Saxon Battery 1015 was used in July 1918 to fire 141 shots from the French town of Bésu-Saint-Germain.

However, these concrete emplacements were time-consuming in construction so for expediency and better mobility, some of the guns were adapted to serve as railway guns during World War I. Fitted with a large counterweight near the trunnions for stability, the gun suffered from some drawbacks. Specifically it was only capable of being loading at zero degrees elevation meaning it had to re-aimed after each shot, its range at 24,300 yards was relatively short, and it could only fire at elevations above 18 degrees 30 minutes to avoid the breach hitting the ground during the recoil action. Worn-out barrels of the L/45 along with the railway carriage built by Krupp would both be used for construction of the infamous Paris Gun. The railway gun variants were used during the Spring Offensive of 1918 and during the Second Battle of the Marne later that year. 8 railway guns were built in total with 7 being destroyed after the war by the Inter-Allied Commission of Control enforcing the Treaty of Versailles' ban on such artillery pieces and the lone survivor being captured by the Belgian Army while serving in a coastal defense role as part of Battery Pommern at Koekelare on October 16th, 1918. The gun was later given to France for testing in 1924 and was recaptured by the Germans in 1940 during World War II, though it did not appear to see service.

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See also

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External links

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