Little Bertha

Starting on Christmas Eve, Finland's gulf seaport of Viipuri, ten miles behind the Mannerheim Line, was treated to a demonstration more melodramatic than lethal: long-range shelling by a battery of Russian "Little Berthas" about 25 miles away. Duds proved the guns to be 8-inchers, firing presumably at a main railroad supply line to the Mannerheim positions, but hitting the city and its suburbs indiscriminately. One shell knocked a top corner off evacuated Viipuri's one hotel, the Knut Posse*, in which numerous foreign correspondents were huddled.

The projectiles came over in twos, threes and fours (indicating four to six guns) at intervals of ten minutes to half an hour. At first they blew craters three feet deep in the frozen ground. Later, the craters increased to six feet deep, 18 feet across, as heavier explosive charges were used. Their military effect was nil and Viipuri's small remaining population soon got over the psychological effect.

After three days the shelling ceased, and Finns believed their aircraft had found and destroyed the Little Berthas. More likely, the first guns had worn out, for after an interval long enough for new guns to have been put in position, the long-range bombardment began again.

Life span of guns charged to fire 25 miles or better is about three seconds, net. That is, they can fire perhaps 50 times before their rifled steel linings are so scored by hot, high-pressure gases in the split-second of explosion that they become inaccurate. Such guns must be cooled between shots or their barrels, superheated, will sag at the muzzle. Between shots, too, their gunners must calculate (from a pressure gauge communicating with the bore) how much to add to the charge to allow for progressive scoring and keep up the range.

Red Russia's Berthas are adolescent sisters of the Big Berthas which Germany turned on Paris in 1918 from the St. Gobain Forest 74.5 miles away. Big Bertha was a 15-inch gun, relined to 8.26 inches.

She was as high as a ten-story building, her barrel 120 feet long. Her shells weighed 264 lbs. and traveled nearly one mile a second. They rose at an angle of 50DEG, hit the stratosphere ten miles up, traveled through its rarefied atmosphere to a height of 24 miles before starting down. The earth's rotation had to be calculated in elevating (for range) and laying (for deflection) Big Bertha, for as the earth turned Paris toward the shells she lofted, it tended to make Bertha overshoot. At best her aim could not be relied on within a target area smaller than two miles long by three-quarters of a mile wide, and even the weather made a big difference. Nowadays, greater accuracy is attained over greater distances by airplanes carrying far greater projectiles and carrying them oftener. Big Bertha was all worn out after firing only 50-60 times.

*Knut Posse was a 15th-Century warrior of the pro-Sweden party. In 1495 he became master of Viipuri Castle, whence he led a historic battle against the Russians. In 1500, Russians slew him.

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