THE "BIG BERTHAS" BOMBARD PARIS

Contemporary Press Report and That of General Rohne.

WHILE the Allies were being pushed back by the Germans, in their great 1918 attack called the Kaiserbattle, on March 23 the Teutons sprang a surprise by bombarding Paris from a distance of nearly seventy miles. The feat was performed, as here described in a press dispatch and in a supplementary statement by General Rohne, a leading German artillery authority, by three of the longest range guns devised during the war.

Their most damaging projectile, fired on Good Friday, March 29, plunged through the roof of the Church of St. Gervais during services and killed almost a hundred people, mostly women and children. Among the few men slain was the Secretary of the Swiss Legation, the only Legation in Paris that was on speaking terms with Germany.

The sole object of the bombardment was terrorism. The "Big Berthas" (named after Bertha Krupp) were presently silenced by French gunfire.

THIS date (Saturday, March 23) was marked by a new departure in warfare. Paris was startled by a heavy shell falling in the town at 7:30 a.m. It was followed by others at intervals of about 20 minutes for some few hours. The effects of the bombardment were entirely without military importance, the only results being some destruction of property and the killing and wounding of a number of harmless citizens, including many women and children. On the 24th, Palm Sunday, Paris was again shelled, and Good Friday was also singled out as an appropriate day for the work of destruction. On the latter date the churches of Paris would be filled with worshipers, and there would be a grand opportunity for repeating on land the brave deed achieved in sinking the "Lusitania" on the sea. A church was struck, part of the roof blown in, with the result that 76 persons were killed and 90 wounded, of whom a large proportion were women and children. On March 30 the victims numbered 8 dead and 90 wounded, but with these two exceptions the casualties were limited to quite small numbers, rarely over one, for each shell fired. At the beginning of May the bombardment ceased fora time.

It did not take long to discover where the guns were stationed, and within a few hours from the time the bombardment began it was located by French aviators behind the St. Gobain Forest, not far from La Fere. A few days later the positions of two others were ascertained. All three gun emplacements were on the reverse slope of a wooded hill known as the Mont de Joie, between the Laon-La Fere railway and the Laon-La Fere road, where they were hidden by the trees. It was an outlying spur of the hill-mass of St. Gobain. A line drawn from Fourdrain to Couvron and Aumencourt would run through the center of the position of the three gun-pits arranged approximately in the form of an equilateral triangle, the apex of which pointed towards Paris. They were all well under the crest line. Each installment consisted of a concrete pit in the shape of a long and deep trench to which a line of railway ran back to the Laon-La Fere railway line. At the front end of each a concrete platform was constructed on which the gun carriage rested. This was carefully covered by branches of trees which, combined with the neighboring wood, served to protect the position as much as was possible from view. When a big gun was fired a number of 17-cm. guns in its neighborhood were simultaneously let off so as to cover the sound of the larger explosion, and whenever the French aviators were seen approaching, the anti-aircraft guns were brought into action and volumes of smoke also discharged to render observation difficult. Except at the time of discharge the gun was not elevated, its long-chase being kept down to avoid detection. Accommodation for the gun crews was provided in a bomb-proof dugout, which was connected with the gun-pit by a deep trench.

The distance from the big guns to the French lines was about six miles ; the French heavy guns were some two miles farther back. A range of eight miles is long for accurate practice, but on the fourth day (i.e., March 26) a shell fell into one of the gun cuttings and rendered the gun useless. It must be remembered that unless a shell dropped actually in the trench or on the gun it could not do much harm. Artillery fire and bombs from the air were continuously directed on the position.

It was not till May 3 that a very clear atmosphere allowed continuous observation. It was then seen that only one gun was in action and the concentrated fire of the French heavy guns would appear to have silenced it. From that day forward no shell fell on Paris till May 27, by which time the gun had been repaired.

ACCLAIMED IN GERMANY BY GENERAL ROHNE

THE huge "super-guns" used by us in the bombardment of Paris were one of our chief triumphs of the war. Had they been completed at an earlier stage, they could have been directed against England equally with France, and might well have proved the decisive factor in forcing a peace upon our foes. As it was, their destructive fire caused widespread panic in the French capital. Many thousands of people fled from Paris, and the party which was seeking for an immediate honorable peace became much stronger. The damage done to the French fortifications was not large; but the damage to the city itself was considerable, and the damage to the enemy morale was extreme.

These guns had a range of over seventy miles, gaining this enormous advance over all earlier cannon by the tremendous initial velocity of their discharge. The highest velocity previously imparted to a shell at the moment of its leaving the cannon muzzle did not reach 3,000 feet per second; the velocity attained by the new guns was 4,800 feet per second, an increase of over 60 percent. The shell itself weighed 330 pounds, a light weight in comparison with some which have been used in shorter guns;but 330 pounds of concentrated explosives is quite sufficient to work untold destruction. To this velocity of flight, we added a high angle of fire, with the result that the projectile soared high above the lower levels of the atmosphere, and found at the top of the curve of its flight so little air-resistance that it was practically traveling in a vacuum. This explains the length of its flight; and when it fell, the increasing speed generated by the height of the fall, gave it a weight and power of destruction that made it as destructive as would have been a much larger, slower shell.