Gordon, are you kidding? The radical jihadists are praying for WWIII, and they're trying to get the nukes to do it.

As for the gun....

"Leopold" and "Robert". Each weighed around 480,000 lbs (240 tons) in working order, mounted on their turntables.

The barrels weighed 187,880 and 187,165 lbs, respectively. The barrels are 70' 8" long.

The projectile weighed 550 lbs, and had a range of 38.5 miles. There was also a shell with a built in rocket in the base that increased the range to 53 miles. The rocket is ignited 19 seconds into flight.

The powder chamber is 10' 5" long. That's a lot of powder.

It operates on a double recoil system. The barrel itself recoils 32". The railway car, seen in the photo above, in turn sits on a giant turntable, not unlike a locomotive turntable for a roundhouse. The gun's railway carriage then "recoils" back on the track on the turntable, and then is moved forward by hydraulics. The turntable allows the gun a 360 degree traverse.

Four of these guns were built. "Leopold" and "Robert" served in Italy. I don't know the names of the other two. Both of these guns were nicknamed "Anzio Annie" by Allied troops. They operated as a pair, which probably confused troops into thinking they were one gun.

Model kits are made of these gun in various scales, including a truly impressive one in 1/35th scale. The kit is about 38" long, and weighs nearly 9 lbs. And that's just the gun and it's carriage - the kit does not include the turntable assembly! If you want to know more, and see the kits, click the link.

This isn't those type of guns, but it's big and it's cool!

...And is that pronounced "Lee-a-pold" or Loo-pold"??? hehe

-Jollytrapshooter

What were the size in number of the crews it took to operate these behemoths? I heard they were so cumbersome to the point of inefficiency. Like having an multimillion dollar tank or a dozen two thousand dollar anti tank weapons. Four Shermans vs one Tiger. But these Bad Boys are cool to examine.

I ride by this gun every day to and from work. It is the Leopold. It sits on unused railroad tracks along side of the ordanance museum on Aberdeen Proving Ground in Aberdeen Maryland.

these are nothing compared to our standard 16 inch gun-- throws a projectile that weighs as much as a VW

2000 pounds with a kill radius of 800 meters -- that is a radius - figure it out for yourself

Gene