Big Bertha

Big Bertha is the nickname given to a type of German 42-centimeter siege howitzer built by Krupp and first used in 1914 to destroy the ring of modern Belgian and French fortresses that had been believed capable of withstanding any contemporary artillery, most notably during the German siege of Liege at the start of the First World War. Its massive shells, weighing roughly 800 kilograms, could penetrate the reinforced concrete of forts considered state of the art, and the gun's rapid demolition of supposedly impregnable Belgian strongpoints shocked military observers and demonstrated that fixed fortifications had been outpaced by heavy siege artillery. The nickname is popularly linked to Bertha Krupp, of the Krupp arms-manufacturing family, though the gun is sometimes confused in popular memory with the separate, much longer-ranged Paris Gun, a distinct weapon fielded later in the war.