Schwerer Gustav Cannon Trajectory, II

by David Goldhagen

Submitted : Spring 2014

This project seeks to answer at what angle the Schwerer Gustav cannon used in World War II (the largest cannon ever made), be fired at in order to blow up the center of Fruktove, a town 9445 meters away from the cannons location in Sevastopol, Ukraine, during the battle of Sevastopol. Beginning by modeling the shell’s trajectory using Euler’s method with the help of a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet solver, and then systematically search for the angle corresponding to the center of the town. It was found that the Schwerer Gustav targeting a town 9445 meters away has to aim 0.00565 ° above the horizontal to obliterate the town.

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