Q&A

A selection of historical conundrums answered by experts

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How did the German gun 'Big Bertha' get its name?

The Germans possessed two monstrous M-Gerät howitzer guns nicknamed 'Big Bertha' - but they wer barely finished and had undergone no testing when the First World War brok out. Even so, on 2 August 1914 they were taken from the Krupp factory at Essen and brought by railway to Liège, in order to hammer the forts defendin that Belgian city.

With 42cm-calibre shells, Big Berth was one of the biggest artillery pieces ever used in battle. Once fired on a high-arc trajectory, a gargantuan shell took a full minute to hit its target up to almost 6 miles away.

One Belgian soldier watching from outside Fort de Loncin described a strike by a shell fired by Big Bertha: "Suddenly, we hear a howl, as if an express train passed through the air." The shells "were coming at such speed that it was difficult to follow them with your eyes".

The first one fired at Loncin "struck like a thunder-clap in a summer sky, making the whole atmosphere vibrate", but landed long, merely shaking houses in a nearby village. Then the Germans began correcting their aim, until: "[A shell] fell on the massif, raising a thick cloud of earth and rubble which rose very high in the sky, the central mound disappearing in a greyish plume filtered by dusted light." That strike hit the magazine, and the fort was destroyed.

The gun's nickname - which came to be used as general slang for all manner of German artillery - was derived from Bertha Krupp, who had inherited the industrial works from her father. (In person, she was actually quite slim.)

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