Continental Land Power vs Sea Power
A correspondent writes in,
Compare the Krupp K5 guns [1,2] to the Schwerer Gustav gun.
Railroads and these railway guns gave the mobility, power and range of battleship guns to land powers. This foreshadowed the end of domination of continental land power by sea power.
Geopolitics today concerns the unfolding social consequences of this technological evolution. Debt-based fiat currency, fractional-reserve banking and privately-owned national banks are closely identified with sea power. This puts them on the wrong side of history.
Also compare a Kalibr cruise missile (range 930 miles, payload several megatons) with a Krupp K5 gun (range 40 to 50 miles, payload 90 pounds of HE).
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3 comments:
The Schwerer Gustav was an unmitigated military failure. It could not traverse more than a few degrees, it required hundreds of men to operate, it required an obscene amount of resources to build, and the barrel wore out after only a couple hundred rounds.
A couple hundred rounds is pretty good service for our aging 155s and 8 inch howitzer tubes firing at full charge. With barrels locked and loaded full charge for tactical nuclear, the 8 inch barrel wears out on the first and only round. 13E20, C94th Artillery Berlin 1970.
Right, but the barrel of a 155 fits on a truck and doesn't require as much steel as several submarines.
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