Paris Gun

The gun was built by Krupp: long 21 cm liners were inserted into worn 38 cm naval gun barrels, and with its extension the barrel was over 30 metres long. The shell, weighing about 100 kg, rose to some 40 km, where the thin air offered almost no resistance, and came down after about three minutes. Each shot stripped the rifling, so barrels were rebored to a larger calibre and replaced. Sailors under Vice-Admiral Maximilian Rogge manned it, and the Germans also called it the Kaiser Wilhelm Gun.

The first shells fell on Paris on 23 March 1918, two days after the spring offensive began, fired from woods near Crépy, outside Laon. On 29 March a shell hit the church of Saint-Gervais-Saint-Protais during a service and killed about 90 people. The shelling went on, with breaks and from successive positions, until 9 August. According to the Paris police prefecture 367 shells fell, killing 256 people and wounding 620; German figures speak of about 320 rounds. The gun was meant to break Parisian morale but did not change the course of the war, and the Allies never captured one.