SK L/45 (380 mm)

Description

Write an introduction to the article in 2-3 small paragraphs. Briefly tell us about the history of the development and combat using the weaponry and also about its features. Compile a list of air, ground, or naval vehicles that feature this weapon system in the game.

Vehicles equipped with this weapon

• SMS Bayern

General info

Tell us about the tactical and technical characteristics of the cannon or machine gun.

Available ammunition

Penetration statistics
Ammunition	Type of warhead	Penetration @ 0° Angle of Attack (mm)
		1,000 m	2,500 m	5,000 m	7,500 m	10,000 m	15,000 m
380 mm Spr.gr.L/4,1 Bdz.	SAP	458	402	325	266	221	170
380 mm Psgr.L/3,5 APCBC	APC	595	553	492	440	396	332

Shell details
Ammunition	Type of warhead	Velocity (m/s)	Projectile Mass (kg)	Fuse delay (s)	Fuse sensitivity (mm)	Explosive Mass (TNT equivalent) (kg)	Ricochet
							0%	50%	100%
380 mm Spr.gr.L/4,1 Bdz.	SAP	800	750	0.025	26	67.1	47°	60°	65°
380 mm Psgr.L/3,5 APCBC	APC	800	750	0.025	26	25	48°	63°	71°

Comparison with analogues

Give a comparative description of cannons/machine guns that have firepower equal to this weapon.

Usage in battles

Describe the cannon/machine gun in the game - its distinctive features, tactics of usage against notable opponents. Please don't write a "guide" - do not impose a single point of view, but give the reader food for thought.

Pros and cons

Summarise and briefly evaluate the weaponry in terms of its characteristics and combat effectiveness. Mark pros and cons as a list.

Pros:

Cons:

History

By 1910, navies around the world were moving towards guns that were larger than 12 inches in calibre and Germany was not one to get left behind in the global naval arms race. Britain's condemnation of 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 calibre 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 amore 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 decisive 1916 Battle of Jutland, there was little opportunity for naval action 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 loaded 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 below 18.5 degrees to avoid the breech 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 was 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.

Media

Excellent additions to the article would be video guides, screenshots from the game, and photos.

See also

Links to the articles on the War Thunder Wiki that you think will be useful for the reader, for example:

• reference to the article about the variant of the cannon/machine gun;
• references to approximate analogues by other nations and research trees.

External links

Paste links to sources and external resources, such as:

• topic on the official game forum;
• other literature.