22. The British Capital Was Fortunate That Hitler’s Supergun Project Failed
The Allied aerial raids in the Pas de Calais area seriously disrupted the construction of the structures needed to house the supergun project, and the Germans were eventually forced to abandon parts of the planned complex. The rest of the site was seriously damaged in July 1944, in a raid that used heavy ground-penetrating bombs, which burrowed deep beneath the surface before they detonated. The underground explosions wrecked and collapsed the tunnel system, and buried hundreds of workers and technicians. Simultaneously, development bugs had slowed the pace of the project. Even when all went well, the V-3’s shells failed to reach the intended muzzle velocity of over 4900 feet per second, and barely exceeded 3300 feet.
Trials in May 1944, fired shells to a range of 55 miles – impressive, but not enough to reach London from France. A July test failed catastrophically when a shell was fired 58 miles, only for the gun barrel to burst in the process. Construction was finally halted for good as the Allies made their way up the coast from Normandy to the Pas de Calais, and the abandoned V-3 compounds fell to Canadian troops in September of 1944. It was only then that the Allies discovered just how big a threat the complex had actually posed, and just how lucky London had been to dodge that menace.
