'Big Bertha' - UK, WW2

[Brewins girl]

I have been told that 'Big Bertha' guns were stored pre D-Day at a place in Wales, but I know that 'Big Bertha' was the nickname given to German Howitzers in WW2. Had the name been adopted by the Allied forces and/or UK civilians during WW2? I have so far found an account of one person on the BBC WW2 The People's War referring to seeing the Big Berthas. Can anyone enlighten me please 

[KGarrad]

Could the reference be to a train, used by Midland Railways?

It was designed for banking duties on the Lickey Incline in Worcestershire (south of Birmingham), England. It became known as "Big Bertha" or "Big Emma" by railwaymen and railway enthusiasts.

Designated as a 0-10-0.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MR_0-10-0_Lickey_Banker

[Mabel Bagshawe]

Big Bertha was actually a WWI howitzer produced by Krupps. German soldiers christened the guns "Dicke Berta" in reference to Bertha Krupp, head of the Krupp family.  The name seems to have entered popular culture, hence the railway engine etc.

[majm]

 

Oral history ... YES ... Big Bertha guns were Krupp manufactured, and named after Bertha Krupp,  BUT named  Big Bertha from earlier than WWI.... There was that war of 1905 where Japan defeated Russia.

Several  of my elderly living relatives born abt 100 years ago in New South Wales,  learnt about Big Bertha when at school in late 1920s... the significance taught at school at that time was that because Japan was able to defeat Russia in 1905 using Big Bertha Guns  ,  Japan had proven worthy to serve along side with France, Great Britain and Russia against 'the enemy' in the First World War.

JM

[tonepad]

An earlier use of "Big Bertha" -
Bertha Heyman (born c. 1851) was a 19th-century American criminal, also known as "Big Bertha" or the "Confidence Queen."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_Heyman


Tony

[ShaunJ]

I think perhaps in WW2 "Big Bertha" may have been a term used colloquially for any large artillery piece.

This People's War reminiscence clearly refers to British heavy anti-aircraft guns:

 "As the war went on, the big guns, known as Big Berthas, were brought onto Greasbrough Tops. The search-lights from there used to meet up with Thrybergh’s lights, and some planes were shot down."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/23/a8859423.shtml

[MaxD]

It is as ShaunJ suggests and as you suspected.  The name has been tacked onto any number of large calibre guns and as he says, in the story these are clearly anti-aircraft guns.  The Japanese gun was a 41 cm calibre siege gun and it seems that the name was tacked on in Australia, makes sense as the Great War was not long over and the memory of the actual Big Berthas (there were 2) as still fresh.

One similar railway gun, of 14 inch calibre, nick named Boche-Buster, was deployed by the British in the Great War, operated by 471 Siege Battery RGA.  The mounting was retained after the war and fitted with an 18 inch calibre barrel in 1940 and stationed in Dover.  Developments in air power meant there was no reason to have such guns so nothing like them was used thereafter,  The gun was stored for a long time at the (then) Proof and Experimental Establishment at Shoeburyness (unnecessary info - outside my office window in the late 70s).  It is now at Fort Nelson at Portsmouth.

MaxD

Apocryphal tales - it is said that Big Bertha was popular with the German artillerymen as every time it fired the recoil took the crew back on leave for two weeks.  It became less popular though when a levelling bubble burst and drowned 6 men.  I might have made that up.

[Brewins girl]

Thank you all for your responses. Somehow ‘Big Bertha’ has a better ring to it than the literal translation from the German which would have been ‘Thick Bertha’! It’s fascinating how nicknames for inanimate objects perpetuate and become attached to things far removed from the original (eg the Lickey Incline railway engine).