which was at a latitude of 49.5 degrees north. Seven barrels were constructed. They used worn-out 38 cm SK L/45 "Max" 17,130 millimeter gun barrels that were fitted with an internal tube that reduced the caliber from to . The tube was long and projected out of the end of the gun, so an extension was bolted to the old gun-muzzle to cover and reinforce the lining tube. A further, 6-meter–long smooth-bore extension was attached to the end of this, giving a total barrel length of . This smooth section was intended to improve accuracy and reduce the dispersion of the shells, as it reduced the slight yaw a shell might have immediately after leaving the gun barrel produced by the gun's rifling. The barrel was braced to counteract barrel drop due to its length and weight, and vibrations while firing; it was mounted on a special rail-transportable carriage and fired from a prepared, concrete emplacement with a turntable. The original breech of the old 38 cm gun did not require modification or reinforcement. Since it was based on a naval weapon, the gun was manned by a crew of 80 Imperial Navy sailors under the command of Vice-Admiral Maximilian Rogge, chief of the Ordnance branch of the Admiralty. It was surrounded by several batteries of standard army artillery to create a "noise-screen" chorus around the big gun so that it could not be located by French and British spotters. The projectile flew significantly higher than projectiles from previous guns. Writer and journalist Adam Hochschild put it this way: "It took about three minutes for each giant shell to cover the distance to the city, climbing to an altitude of at the top of its trajectory. This was by far the highest point ever reached by a man-made object, so high that gunners, in calculating where the shells would land, had to take into account the rotation of the Earth. For the first time in warfare, deadly projectiles rained down on civilians from the stratosphere". This reduced drag from air resistance, allowing the shell to achieve a range of over . The unfinished V-3 cannon would have been able to fire larger projectiles to a longer range, and with a substantially higher rate of fire. The unfinished Iraqi super gun would also have been substantially bigger. Projectiles The Paris Gun shells weighed . The shells initially used had a diameter