Talk:28 cm Haubitze L/12

Between the wars?

If this saw service in both WWI and WWII, where was it in the meantime? Surely a weapon like this would have been demilitarised and scrapped by the various treaties after Versailles? Andy Dingley (talk) 18:41, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure, but I suspect that it was so short ranged that it was only considered useful for port defense and not long-range coastal defense. And thus not subject to Versailles Treaty restrictions.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 19:24, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

It's seems odd to see it as any sort of coastal defence weapon, post the appearance of fast ships. However it has obvious potential for breaking French forts (if Stuka and parachute engineers didn't get there first). Andy Dingley (talk) 21:39, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

There was a fashion for using large mortars/short-barreled howitzers for port defense in the late 19th C. The theory was that they'd attack the much thinner deck armor and they would be concealed and out of reach of the attacking ships by using high-angle, indirect fire. Any accuracy problems resulting from the primitive indirect fire-control methods of the day would be countered by firing them in battery concentrations in the expectation that at least one would make a hit. And since the typical coast-defense mortar was around 11-12 inches in diameter, that hit would be devastating. The US had a lot of these, but I can't recall how popular they were in Europe. I'd be willing to bet that the Germans retained them for their possible use as siege artillery although I haven't found many examples of them actually using them in that role.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 22:56, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

I think the United States employed a very similar weapon. The 12-inch coast defense mortar which had a very similar vintage and performance to the German piece. They were used as coastal defence weapons on Corregidor, the gun pit at Battery Way is a good example of their employment. They also saw land use in Europe in World War One I believe. Irondome (talk) 23:07, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Aiming high-angle fire

The article states that the downside of using high-angle pieces such as howitzers or mortars against ships was that high-angle fire was more difficult to aim correctly. The problem isn't so much with the aiming itself as with the fact that the high-angle shell will land nearly perpendicularly, so it has to hit the target at exactly the right range. A low-angle shell -- at least at a shorter distance than the maximum -- will be flying at an angle as compared to the perpendicular, so it will have an extended area of effect parallel to its direction of flight. In other words, it may hit the target ship higher or lower on the side, depending on whether the target is closer or further than the exact range, but there will be a certain amount of play in the range that the high-angle guns do not enjoy. This is why high-angle pieces like coastal mortars or howitzers were usually installed in batteries of at least four to increase the possibility of a hit. The upside was that even one perpendicular hit could be fatal, since it could pierce the decks and ignite the magazine or destroy the machinery (as proven later by German Fritz X flying bombs sinking the Italian battleship Roma in 1943 and putting the British battleship Warspite out of action for 9 months the same year). As a comparison, most of the battleships on both sides of the battle of Jutland suffered numerous hits from heavy low-angle fire but none were sunk, the only large losses being three British and one German battlecruiser and one German pre-Dreadnaught, all of which had weaker side armour.--Death Bredon (talk) 17:44, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

It's even more complicated than you think. Flat-trajectory, higher-velocity weapons like ship's guns have a greater tendency to miss either over or under the target, what's called Probable _{error range}, despite their ability to use the target's vertical profile to their advantage. At long range, say over 15 km, even high-velocity shells have a descent angle of ±20 degrees vs the ±45 degrees of these mortars/howitzers.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 18:12, 13 March 2020 (UTC)