The largest gun ever built was pointed at a city that had buried itself alive.

The Siege That Starved 900,000: When the Wehrmacht Locked Sevastopol's Gate

Inside the Final Hours Before Axis Guns Began the Longest Urban Battle of World War II

On June 11, 1942, Germany launched the ground assault on Sevastopol, beginning a brutal 19-day battle against an underground Soviet fortress city.

At 3:00 a.m. on June 7, 1942, the earth itself seemed to convulse around Sevastopol. German and Romanian artillery—over 1,300 guns, including the monstrous 800mm railway gun 'Schwerer Gustav'—unleashed a bombardment so intense that Soviet defenders later described it as 'a continuous earthquake.' But it was four days later, on June 11, that Erich von Manstein launched the ground assault that would become the longest and bloodiest siege of the Eastern Front's southern sector.

The morning of June 11 broke over a landscape already cratered beyond recognition. German infantry of the 11th Army advanced through choking dust and cordite smoke toward the northern defensive ring, where Soviet marines and civilians had spent eight months carving tunnels, pillboxes, and underground hospitals into the limestone cliffs. Inside the besieged fortress, Rear Admiral Filipp Oktyabrsky commanded a garrison of approximately 106,000 Soviet troops and an estimated 40,000 civilians who had refused—or been unable—to evacuate.

What made Sevastopol's defense extraordinary was its underground dimension. The city's famous Inkerman limestone had been hollowed into vast champagne cellars and ammunition dumps.…

💡 The Germans deployed 'Schwerer Gustav,' the largest artillery piece ever used in combat, which required a 4,000-man crew and fired shells so massive they could penetrate 30 feet of reinforced concrete.