38 cm SK L/45 gun

The latter variants participated in the 1918 German spring offensives and the Second Battle of the Marne. One gun, Batterie Pommern, was captured in Koekelare (16 October 1918) by the Belgians at the end of the war and the seven surviving guns were destroyed in 1921 and 1922.

• Name — 38 cm SK L/45 "Max" • Origin — German Empire • Type — Naval gun Railroad gun • Is Ranged — yes • Is Bladed — no • Is Explosive — yes • Is Artillery — yes • Is Uk — no • Service — 1915–1918 • Used By — German Empire • Wars — World War I • Designer — Krupp • Design Date — 1912–1914 • Manufacturer — Krupp • Production Date — 1914–1918 • Number — > 28 • Variants — B, E, E.u.B. • Weight — 267.9 t • Length — 31.61 m • Part Length — 16.13 m L/45 • Cartridge — separate-loading, cased charge • Caliber — 38 cm • Velocity — 800 – • Range — 22200 m (from rails) • Max Range — 47500 m (if emplaced) • Breech — horizontal sliding-block • Recoil — hydro-pneumatic • Carriage — 2 × 5-axle and 2 × 4-axle bogies • Elevation — +0° to +18.5° (+55° if emplaced) • Traverse — 2° (up to 360° if emplaced)

• Illustration — "Max" in travelling mode. The ammunition hoist is visible at the rear of the mount. They were originally designed as the main armament of the s but were deployed in fixed (Anschiessgerüst) and semi-portable (Bettungsgerüst) concrete emplacements that took weeks to build. One obvious change made for land service was the placement of a large folding counterweight just forward of the trunnions to counteract the preponderance of weight towards the breech. This, although heavy, was simpler than adding equilibrators to perform the same function. It folded to lower the gun's height while travelling. To meet the demand for more mobility and a faster emplacement time, Krupp designed a combination railroad and firing platform mounting (Eisenbahn und Bettungsgerüst - E. u. B.) at the end of 1917 using guns released by the hulking of Sachsen and Württemberg. This mount allowed the gun to fire from any suitable section of track and from a fixed emplacement. The E. u. B. mount used a combination of cradle and rolling recoil systems to absorb the recoil forces when firing from rails. It could traverse a total of 2° for fine aiming adjustments, coarser adjustments had to be made by moving the carriage. The gun had to be loaded at zero elevation and so had to be re-aimed for every shot. One major problem when firing from rails was that the lengthy recoil movement of the gun prevented elevation past 18° 30' lest the breech hit the ground when firing, which limited range to 22.2 km. Nicknamed Max, the gun's (supporting) barrel and railway-transportable carriage was used in the famed Paris Gun. Some guns were also emplaced in the Pommern (Koekelare) and Deutschland coastal defence batteries on the Flanders coast protecting occupied Ostend. The first fixed emplacements (Betonbettung) used concrete and required a month or more to build. The Germans began construction of some during the winter of 1917–1918 in preparation for their Spring Offensive. From May 1918 they used a removable steel box (Bettung mit Eisenunterbau) in lieu of the concrete that shortened the construction time, although the exact amount is unknown. Miller quotes three weeks as the time necessary to build the steel version from captured German manuals. The emplacement consisted of a central rotating platform, the main approach track and two auxiliary tracks on each side for the gantry crane necessary to assemble the emplacement, and an outer circular track to handle the ammunition. The central platform had railroad track on one axis and the actual firing mount on the other. All that was necessary to emplace the E. u. B. mount was to center it on the platform, jack it up, remove the trucks, and rotate the platform 90° and lower the mount to be bolted to the platform.

• Illustration — 38 cm ammunition When used as a rolling mount, an extension of the carriage was fitted over the rear trucks to allow the ammunition car behind the mount to place ammunition on the shot truck which was then manually run up to the breech for loading. In an emplacement this extension was removed and ammunition hoisted up through a hatch on the floor of the mount, between the shot truck rails, from an ammunition car on the outer track and then lowered onto the shot truck. An estimated twelve men were required to ram the shell. It used the German naval system of ammunition where the base charge was held in a metallic cartridge case and supplemented by another charge in a silk bag which was rammed first. The existence of a shell with 55 km range must be regarded as unconfirmed, the longest engagement recorded for any of these guns was 44 km during the bombardment of Dunkerque by Batterie Pommern in Flanders in 1917–1918. Ammunition types • Shell name — Weight — Filling weight — Muzzle velocity — Range • Base-fused high-explosive shell (Sprenggranate L/4.1 m. Bdz.) — 750 kg — 67 kg (HE) — 800 m/s — 34,200 m • Base-fused HE shell with ballistic cap (Sprenggranate L/5.4 m. Bdz. [mit Haube]) — 743 kg — 62 kg (HE) — 800 – — 38700 m • Shrapnel shell (Stschr L/3.4) — 750 kg — 6.7 kg (HE) — — — 22600 m • Light base- and nose-fused HE shell with ballistic cap (leichte Sprgr m. Bdz. u. Kz. [mit Haube]) — 400 kg — 31 kg (HE) — 1040 m/s — 47500 m • HE shell with ballistic cap (Sprenggranate L/4.4 [mit Haube]) — — — — — — — 55000 m

The guns were used as heavy siege guns on the Western Front, and the first salvo from two of these guns commenced the first great German artillery bombardment beginning the Battle of Verdun. Only one gun was transferred to the Army where it equipped Saxon Battery (Sächsische Batterie) 1015. This unit fired 141 shots from Bézu-Saint-Germain beginning on 15 July 1918. The navy retained the rest of the guns and operated them in support of the army. Three "Max" guns participated in the 1918 German spring offensives and two bombarded the French during the Second Battle of the Marne. One gun was found abandoned in a railway station west of Brussels in November 1918 by the Belgian Army but the seven others were evacuated to Germany before the Armistice where they were to be emplaced on coast-defense duties. All seven were destroyed by the Military Inter-Allied Commission of Control during 1921–1922. The Belgians sold their gun to the French in 1924 for experimental purposes. It was captured by the Germans after the French surrender in 1940 but does not appear to have been used by them. One gun was captured by the Australians during the battle which began on 8 August 1918. This gun was later presented to the city of Amiens by General Sir John Monash. There was also a second, smaller, gun (a 28 cm SK L/40 "Bruno") captured by 31 Battalion AIF on 8 August 1918 along the Villers-Bretonneux front, the barrel of which now is mounted on display outside the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, Australia.

In October 2014 a new museum called Lange Max Museum dedicated to the "Long Max" in Koekelare opened. The main subject of the museum is Batterie Pommern, a German 38 cm SK L/45 gun. Besides the museum, one may still visit the remains of the artillery platform. • Illustration — 'Long Max' in Koekelare biggest gun of the world in 1917. • Illustration — Long Max (also known as Leugenboom gun) in Koekelare. • Illustration — Diagram of a E. u. B. mount • Illustration — Plan view of a Bettung mit Eisenunterbau emplacement • Illustration — The central platform with the firing mount running from top to bottom • Illustration — The gantry crane used to assemble the emplacement • Illustration — Remnants of the emplacement at Coucy • Illustration — Remnants of the concrete emplacement at Semide