One of the projects that can be attributed to the space development of the Third Reich was the construction of the ultra-long-range cannon "V-3" ("V-3"). "Centipede", "Buddy", "Hardworking Lizchen", "English Cannon" - this project is known under these names.
The prototype "V-3" is supposedly at the test site on Wolin Island near Międzyzdroje.
The beginning can be considered the work of Hermann Obert and Max Valier, back in the 1920s. Oddly enough, but Jules Verne pushed the idea of a supergun. According to the project of the inventors, the length of the gun was supposed to be nine hundred meters, and it was supposed to shoot from the equator. It was planned to bombard the moon with seven-meter blanks, a meter twenty centimeters in diameter. According to Valier's calculations, the speed of the projectiles was twelve km / s and made it possible to overcome the gravity of the Earth.
* Space cannon * of Baron Guido von Pirquet.
There was also the Viennese baron Guido von Pirke, who in 1928 finalized the project of Obert and Valier, proposing to equip the gun with additional chambers with charges that were detonated when the projectile passed nearby and giving additional impetus.
And this is the project and became interested in the Third Reich. Taking as a basis the principles of building a gun proposed by Baron von Pirke, in 1943, an engineer at a company producing ammunition, August Kenders, proposed a supergun project. The project was reviewed because of Kenders' previous successful invention, the Rechling projectile. The super-weapon was called the "high pressure pump" ("Hochdruckspumpe").
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Already in May of the same year, a twenty mm prototype was tested in Poland, after which Hitler himself approved the construction of a battery of fifty such guns in the area where the English Channel is now located. At the same time, the gun received its name "V-3". Five thousand foremen and technical workers with the support of four hundred miners began their work in September.
The gun barrel was transported in parts and assembled on the spot, where a concrete base was prepared for it. The total length of the barrel was one hundred and twenty four meters. And it consisted of thirty-two sections, each of which had a pair of charging chambers. One hundred and forty kilogram shells with a length of two and a half meters (according to other sources up to three meters twenty-five cm) were equipped with stabilizers and looked like rockets.
The barrel of the "Hochdruckpumpe" ("V-3") ultra-long-range cannon.
It was the shells that became the "stumbling block". No matter how hard Kenders tried to modify them, he could not manage to achieve the required speed of the outfits. A thousand meters per second has become an insurmountable boundary. And in March 44, the project was decided to close. But before that, a real assault was arranged, six large firms were involved. But the troubles did not stop. During the May and July tests, despite the increased firing range, the side chambers of the gun exploded.
On July 6, 1944, after an air raid by the British Air Force, the V-3 site was completely destroyed. And on May 9, 1945, British sappers laid under the unfinished complex of a large gun on the coast of France, 25 tons of explosives each and detonated it.
