Polaris SLBM and Schwerer Gustav Shell, Several variants of…

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Last updated 06 abril 2025

Polaris SLBM and Schwerer Gustav Shell, Several variants of…

Several variants of the submarine-launched Polaris ballistic missile saw service with the Royal Navy between 1969 and 1996. Sixteen were carried by each of the four Resolution-class SSBNs which were based at Faslane on the west coast of Scotland. Later missile variants each carried three 200 kT warheads and decoys. They were used as a deterrent to any possible Soviet/Warsaw Pact aggression during the Cold War - and luckily for all of us they never had to be used! Alongside the missile is an 80cm Schwerer Gustav ("heavy Gustav") shell, intended for use in the largest gun ever built. The Germans originally intended it for use against the French Maginot Line fortifications but the gun was not completed until 1942, well after Germany had already defeated and occupied France. In the end, it was only used once, in the siege of Sevastopol in the Crimea, in June 1942, when it fired 48 seven-tonne anti-fortification rounds against a variety of forts and other targets in and around that city. The 1,349-tonne gun had to be transported to the intended firing site in sections for subsequent assembly which would take up to six weeks. It was operated by 1,420 men on a four-track railway. Nazi German gigantism run amok. Seen in the Imperial War Museum, London prior to its redesign for the World War One anniversaries.