305 mm howitzer M1939 (Br-18)
305 mm howitzer M1939 (Br-18) | |
---|---|
300px
Br-18 in Saint Petersburg Artillery Museum.
|
|
Type | Superheavy siege howitzer |
Place of origin | USSR |
Service history | |
Used by | Soviet Union |
Wars | Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) |
Production history | |
Designer | Škoda |
Manufacturer | Škoda |
Specifications | |
Weight | 45.7 t |
|
|
Caliber | 305 mm |
Rate of fire | 1 rounds per 3 minutes |
The 305 mm howitzer M1939 (Br-18) (Russian: 305-мм гаубица образца 1939 года (Бр-18)) was a Czech superheavy siege howitzer used by the Soviet Union during World War II. After the Germans occupied Czechoslovakia in March 1939 they took over the Škoda Works, which had been working on this design and a companion 210 mm gun. As a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact the Germans sold both designs to the Soviet Union. It's not entirely clear that Skoda actually built the weapons itself or merely supplied the blueprints. At any rate, very few weapons seem to have built, so much so that there's no record of the Germans capturing any after Operation Barbarossa.
It used the same carriage as 210 mm gun M1939 (Br-17) as well as the same firing platform and control mechanism. It was transported in three loads.
It was most famously used to defend Leningrad during the Siege of Leningrad. The Soviet troops learned that if they fired all of them at the same time and used high-explosive shells, when the rounds exploded at the same time, they would flip over advancing German tanks.[citation needed]
References
Wikimedia Commons has media related to 305-mm howitzer M1939 (Br-18). |
<templatestyles src="Asbox/styles.css"></templatestyles>
- Pages with broken file links
- Articles containing Russian-language text
- Articles with unsourced statements from December 2014
- Commons category link is locally defined
- World War II artillery of the Soviet Union
- 305 mm artillery
- Artillery of Czechoslovakia
- Siege artillery
- Howitzers of the Soviet Union
- Czechoslovakia–Soviet Union relations
- Artillery stubs