By Robert B. Marcus

118^th SRIC - WW-II

Editor: Paul Walko's memories about the railway gun elicited a response from Bob Marcus and his experience with yet another railway gun. Of the Intercept Team involved in this story, Bob is the only member of the team still living. Their story follows:

The 118^th SRIC was also involved with locating and silencing a German railway gun. Before telling the story, I would like to relate the results of my research on the gun after the war.

The gun, which most likely was the same class as the one near Bamberg, was named "Leopold." It's characteristics are as follows:

28 cm Kanone 5 (EISENBAHN)

Designation K5(E)

Caliber 283 mm Length/76 calibers

Range 62,400 meters (38.8 miles)

Shell weight 255 kilograms

Development started in 1934

First completed in 1938

8 Were in service by 1942

25 Total completed in WW2

In October or November of 1944 the 118^th was set up in the hills above the French city of Nancy. One night the railway gun fired on the bridges over the Moselle but scored no hits. One shell fell very close to General Patton's Headquarters.

We picked up a radio net between the gun and the three forward observations posts that they had. The next day the 118^th took an intercept truck up to our own artillery and ran a telephone line to their "sound and flash range" section. One of our artillery officers told us that the gun was 280mm as determined from shell fragments.

Our team consisted of Lt. Frank Fischer, Cryptography Officer; Ben Gelerman, Cryptographer; Jack Lynn, Intercept Operator and myself, also an Intercept Operator.

We immediately picked up the German net after our initial setup. The first night the net control at the gun said that there would be no firing that night. On the second night net control alerted their observation posts that there would be a firing. Net control again alerted the gun observation posts before firing and then held their key down for five seconds at the instant of firing.

(It took 35 minutes between the first and second shot. After about four shots they were able to get a shot off every 15 minutes. The gun was so large that it could not be traversed on the mount. It had to be pulled along a semicircular track by the locomotive in order to be traversed. That's why it took so long between shots.)

When the key was being held down for that five seconds, I yelled "fire" over the phone line to the sound and flash range section. They did indeed locate the gun and the next day, when it had been run into a tunnel, the Air Corps sealed it up at both ends thus ending it's usefulness to the German war effort.