During World War II, they saw action in the Battle of France, Operation Barbarossa and the siege of Leningrad.

The Austro-Hungarian Army was very pleased with its large siege howitzers like the 42 cm Haubitze M. 14/16, but they were all short-ranged.

The Army asked Škoda to design a gun able to destroy important targets deep in the enemy's rear in 1916.

To save time and resources, it was designed in concert with the 38 cm Belagerungshaubitze M 16 and used the same carriage and firing platform as the larger weapon.

Each load was carried by an eight-wheeled electric-powered trailer with the electricity provided by an Austro-Daimler Artillery Generator truck (Artillerie-Generatorzugwagen) M. 16, designed by Ferdinand Porsche.

One additional truck towed the ammunition trailer, which carried 28 rounds with their cartridge case as well as the loading crane.

[4] It took eight to twenty hours in soft soil or gravel to excavate the large firing pit required to hold the halves of the base box.

[7] Photographic evidence shows one gun near Dornbirn, Austria on the Italian Front and the other was near Reifenberg, Germany.

[9] Nazi Germany bought all six of these weapons, the spare barrel and all their electric trucks, after the Munich Agreement in January 1939 for a price of over 55 million crowns.

[11] For the rest of 1940, and until May 1941, the battalion was emplaced on Cap-Gris-Nez in the Pas de Calais to interdict British coastal convoys in the English Channel and to protect German ones.

8 ruptured on 10 December 1942 and a number of roughly-machined barrel ingots in storage since 1918 proved to be substandard.