I agreed with you before I saw the footnotePOLAND_SPUD wrote:I guess that would make sense... since you're limited to low mixes it would make sense to make the barrel as large as possible...
bigger barrel = greater barrel volume = quieter gun
Plus it doesn't mean you're limited to big heavy and slow ammo only... With saboted ammo you could lob rounds 1.5 miles away
you see JSR I wrote sabots... that's right now you've got to agree with me : D
Also mentioned in the Paris Gun article:
I really don't know why the Germans didn't go this route with the Vergeltungswaffe 3 using existing big bore guns instead of pissing about with multi-chambered guns that ultimately didn't work.Finally, an intriguing detail emerges when reading Rausenberger’s own account of the early stages of the Paris Gun design process. Earlier, it was remarked that when Rausenberger was trying to decide how to achieve the requisite muzzle velocity, his assistant, Dr von Eberhard, had made a very radical proposal. Simply, von Eberhard speculated that if the unmodified L52.5 35.5cm gun, which fired a conventional shell of 535kgs, were to use a 90kg 21cm shell slotted into a 120kg 35.5cm calibre short cylindrical "carrier", the combination weighing 210kg, a muzzle velocity of 1500m/s was easily attainable. As the assembly left the muzzle of the barrel, aerodynamic drag on the flat-fronted cylinder would rapidly decelerate it, causing drag separation of the slender 21cm shell and allowing it to continue at the same velocity and reach 100km range.
Von Eberhard had essentially invented the sub-calibre discarding-sabot shell. Rausenberger’s objections to it appear odd, in retrospect. First, he decried the light weight of the shell, only 90kgs. Yet the Paris Gun as built fired shells weighing, on average, only around 100kgs. Further, because von Eberhard’s solution offered a gun firing the sabotted ammunition at normal barrel pressures, his 90kg shell could have relatively thin walls and contain around 18kgs of explosive, as opposed to the Paris Guns’ projectiles with their thick walls (to resist the enormous barrel pressures) and consequent light explosive payload of only around 7kgs. Even better, with the guns operating at normal pressures, barrel lives of 800 rounds could have been confidently expected, as opposed to the Paris Guns’ ephemeral barrel lives of around 65 rounds. More justifiably, perhaps, Rausenberger was also unsure about testing such a novel system in the short time available, and criticised the possibility of the discarded sabots falling on German troops.
They were on the right track with the pfeilgeschoss but it was too late by then.
