Rittmester
02-11-2007, 01:34 PM
Monsters on Earth..
First, US T-28. 95 tonnes, 300mm armour. 105mm gun, 12,7mm:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/T-28-1.jpg
http://johnsmilitaryhistory.com/t28a.jpg
http://johnsmilitaryhistory.com/t28b.jpg
http://johnsmilitaryhistory.com/t28c.jpg
http://www.missing-lynx.com/gallery/modern/dmt28-1.jpg
German Panzer VIII Maus. 188 tonnes, 240mm armour. 1x128mm, 1x75mm, 1x7,92mm mg:
http://www.achtungpanzer.com/images/cmaus.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2b/Maus_destroyed_rear_side_view.jpg
http://www.achtungpanzer.com/images/dmaus.jpg
http://armor.kiev.ua/Tanks/WWII/Mouse/mouse7.jpg
http://armor.kiev.ua/Tanks/WWII/Mouse/mouse5.jpg
http://wilk.wpk.p.lodz.pl/~whatfor/panzer/maus0002.jpg
Soviet Obyekt 279 (1957) 60 tonnes, 305mm armour. 1x130mm, 1x12,7mm.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/30/279-7.jpg/800px-279-7.jpg (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/30/279-7.jpg)
..And then the (planned) madness: Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte
http://www.panzerschreck.de/panzer/pzkpfw/bilder/p1000.jpg
Category: Ultra Heavy Land Cruiser
Phase Of Development: Pre-Prototype
Development Start: June Of 1942
Development Team: Krupp
Crew: 20+
Weight: 1000 Metric Tons (Minimum), 2000+ Tons Estimated
Propulsion: 8 X Daimler-Benz Mb501 20-Cylinder Marine Diesel Engines Producing A Total Of 16,000 Horsepower Or 2 X Man V12z32/44 24-Cylinder Marine Diesel Engines Producing A Total Of 17,000 Horsepower
Speed: 40 Kp/H (Supposed)
Range: Unknown
Length: 35.00m
Width: 14.00m
Height: 11.00m
Armament: 2 X 280 Mm 54.5 Sk C/34
1 X 128 Mm Kwk 44 L/55
8 X 20 Mm Flak38
2 X 15 Mm Mg 151/15
Ammunition: 100 Rounds Of 280mm For Each Gun (Estimated) Other Values Unknown
Armor (Mm): (Values Estimated)
Turret Roof: 150
Turret Sides: 220
Turret Front: 360
Additional Armor Values Unknown
Overview
The world will probably never see an armored land vehicle on the scale of the Ratte. Tellingly, Germans didn’t even refer to it as a tank: they called it a “land cruiser.” The Ratte was so large its dimensions had more in common with a naval vessel than a tank. It had the crew compliment of at least four heavy tanks, armament usually seen mounted on heavy cruisers like the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and enough anti-aircraft weaponry to ward off waves of attacking fighter-bombers. It was 35 meters long, as tall as some church steeples, and so wide that maneuvering in an urban area would have been either impossible or apocalyptic. The Ratte was so heavy it would have shattered and churned pavement like a plow through sod and collapsed all but a handful of bridges in Germany.
The Ratte’s much smaller cousin, the Maus, turned out to be a ruinous waste of resources for very limited applications in combat. Had the Ratte’s development progressed even a fraction as far as the Maus it would have devastated Germany. The Ratte was so large that it would have required naval-scale manufacturing with months of skilled laborers’ time involved in the construction of each individual tank. Just building and assembling its components would have required transportation and handling equipment usually relegated to a shipyard.
It is probably to the detriment of the world that the Ratte project was cancelled. It would have been cool just to see one of these hideous machines built and, more importantly, it would have taken the place of perhaps fifty or a hundred more useful tanks like the Panther or Panzer IV. The Ratte would have meant an earlier end to hostilities in Europe and it would have provided a damn hot ticket at a museum in the United States or the Soviet Union.
Development
The development history of the Ratte originates with a 1941 strategic study of Soviet heavy tanks conducted by Krupp. This study also gave birth to the Ratte’s smaller and more practical relative: the Maus. From the start the Maus was envisioned as an even larger and more formidable version of a heavy tank, while the Ratte was to be a class of vehicle unto itself.
This 1941 study produced a suggestion from director of engineering Grote who worked for the U-boat arm of the Ministry of Armaments. In June of 1942, Grote proposed a 1000-ton tank that he termed a “Landkreuzer” equipped with naval armament and armored so heavily that only similar naval armaments could hope to touch it. To compensate for the immense weight of the vehicle the Ratte would have sported three 1.2 meter wide tread-assemblies on each side totaling a tread width of 7.2 meters. This helped with the stability and weight distribution of the Ratte but its sheer mass would have destroyed pavement and prevented bridge travel. Fortunately, the height of the Ratte and its nearly 2 meters of ground clearance would have allowed it to ford many rivers with ease.
Hitler became enamored with the idea of a truly super tank and ordered Kruppto set to work developing the Ratte. While development of the Ratte does not seem to have progressed very far some sources believe that a turret was completed for the Ratte and then used as a fixed gun emplacement in Norway. Several such emplacements survived the war, many mounting turrets from broken-up vessels very similar to the turret intended for the Ratte. However, despite references to a Ratte turret being used as a fixed emplacement there is no evidence that it ever existed. The Gneisenau was broken up in 1944 and its turrets were used as emplacements near Rotterdam in Holland. Similar turrets were used near Trondheim in Norway which was the supposed location of the Ratte turret.
Development of the Ratte was completely cancelled in 1943 by the dangerously wise German Minister of Armaments, Albert Speer. Speer exhibited an uncanny ability to cancel the more moronic and wasteful of Hitler’s pet projects and focus German resources on proven weapon systems.
Technical Mumbo Jumbo
There were two proposed power plants (actually power plantses to coin a fake word) for the P. 1000 Ratte. One concept was powered by two MAN V12Z32/4424-cylinder diesel engines similar to those used on German submarines. This double engine design produced a Herculean 17,000 horsepower. These were the engines used to derive the 44kp/h maximum speed of the Ratte by the Germans. The more likely engine was the Daimler-Benz MB501. This 20-cylinder marine diesel engine was identical to that used on the German fast torpedo boats or S-boats. Linking eight of these engines would have theoretically produced 16,000 horsepower. Given that the MB501 was a more proven, inexpensive, and easier to manage engine it seems likely this eight-engine design would have appeared in the Ratte prototype.
The primary armament of the Ratte was two 280mm SK C/34 naval guns mounted in a modified naval heavy cruiser turret fitting two guns instead of three.
The SK C/34 was a devastating piece of artillery capable of penetrating more than 450mm of armor at its maximum effective direct-fire range of roughly five kilometers. The guns could also be elevated up to 40 degrees to achieve a range of 40kilometers. Armor-piercing shells and two types of high explosive shells were available for these naval guns. One difficulty facing the 280mm dual battery would have been the Ratte’s inability to sufficiently depress its weapons to fire at nearby targets. Accompanying vehicles would have likely accomplished this task.
Additional armament was a 128mm anti-tank gun like that mounted on the Jagdtiger or Maus, two 15mm heavy machineguns and eight 20mm anti-aircraft guns, probably with at least four of them as a quad mount. The 128mm anti-tank gun’s location on the Ratte is a point of contention among historians. Most believe it would have been mounted within the primary turret, though some think a smaller secondary turret would have been mounted at the rear of the Ratte near the engine decking. The rear turret makes more sense logistically, but the surface area of engine decking at the rear of the Ratte might have made this unrealistic. A third option would have been a hull-mounted version of the 128mm gun similar to that seen on the Jagdtiger. This would have at least been able to engage nearer targets than either of the other options.
Additional armament would have been spread on and throughout the Ratte. The heavy-machineguns and some of the 20mm guns would have probably been mounted inside ball mounts in the hull of the Ratte. A quad 20mm flak gun could have been mounted on the extremely large top surface of the turret and additional 20mm guns mounted on the top hull at the rear of the Ratte. If they were willing to put up with the exhaust fumes, an entire platoon of panzer grenadiers could have sat atop the rear hull of the Maus.
While the Ratte was supposedly a 1000-ton vehicle this number was an almost mystically optimistic figure, much like the 100-ton weight intended for the Maus. The turret alone for the Ratte would have weighed more than 600 metric tons. The actual combat-loaded weight of the Ratte would have been closer to 1,800tons. The speed, range, and longevity of the engines and transmission would have suffered accordingly.
Variants
The Ratte was a paper panzer and as such the only real variants were the two choices of engines.
Analysis
The Ratte was a very problematic vehicle and the size of the Ratte was responsible for most of the issues it would have encountered on a hypothetical battlefield. A Ratte on the move would have been relegated to fields and country side because of its road-destroying weight. Without bridges as a river-crossing option, the Ratte would have been unable to cross flooded or deep rivers and scouting parties might have wasted lengthy periods and squandered lives finding a crossing point.
Gunners on a Ratte would have found it awkward to engage targets from close or medium range with even a hull-mounted 128mm gun. Concealing the Ratte from aircraft would have required a blimp hangar or some sort of bizarre camouflage that would make it resemble a building. Such camouflage is feasible, if comical, but would have been useless the first time ground units spotted the Ratte. From that point on the Ratte would have been constantly harassed by fighter-bombers. Even if the Ratte’s 20mm AA guns had managed to drive these off, the Ratte was such an enormous target that high-altitude bombers could have been employed to attack it.
Not everything was bad about the Ratte. Infantry would have been less of a risk than with the Maus because of the number of point defense weapons and the space for infantry to ride on the vehicle’s hull. The Ratte would have likely served as the cornerstone of a unit of traditional military vehicles and these would have assisted in defending it from enemy tanks and aircraft. Enemy armor posed almost no conceivable threat to the Ratte. They might have destroyed things like the AA guns on the turret or damaged radio antennae or weapon optics, but beyond minor damage enemy tanks were toys next to this mammoth vehicle.
Enemy artillery was slightly more threatening and became downright dangerous if the Ratte made the mistake of straying within range of naval bombardment.
The greatest strength of the Ratte would have been its ability to single-handedly halt a major enemy offensive. It would have been slow and poor on the attack but the sight of a Ratte looming out of fog on a battlefield would have almost immediately scattered enemy ground forces. If they didn’t flee right away they would have once they realized their weapons were nearly useless against it. Make no mistake, the astronomical cost of building a Ratte would not have been offset by its strengths. Once deployed and used in combat, it was just a matter of time before enemy aircraft destroyed it. With such poor speed and the limitations of the terrain the Ratte would not have enjoyed the same advantages of a wide open sea as its naval counterparts. The Ratte could have turned the tide of a single battle at the cost of a campaign.
http://www.panzerbaer.de/workshop/pix/diebl_87_p1000-002.jpg
http://www.panzerbaer.de/workshop/pix/diebl_87_p1000-004.jpg
http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/9890/p1000001am5.jpg
http://img131.imageshack.us/img131/2461/p1000aufstellungcq9.jpg
http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/6615/1141209216455wj0.jpg (http://imageshack.us/)
http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/6223/034vq0.jpg (http://imageshack.us/)
Still not dizzy?
Well, here's:
The Landkreuzer P. 1500 Monster was a preprototype ultraheavy tank meant as a mobile platform for the Krupp 800mm Schwerer Gustav artillery piece. Though development was begun in December 1942 after approval by Adolf Hitler, it was cancelled by Albert Speer soon after and never made it past the drawing board.
Crew: 100+
Length: 42.00 m
Width: 18.00 m
Height: 7.00 m
Weight: 2500 tonnes
Armour: 250 mm (hull front)
Main armament: 800 mm Dora/Schwerer Gustav K (E) railway gun (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav)
Secondary armament: 2x150 mm sFH 18/1 L/30 howitzers
Multiple 15 mm MG 151/15
http://i.somethingawful.com/booklist/images/monster02.gif
http://i.somethingawful.com/booklist/images/monster03.gif
Although not the largest calibre gun ever made, or the longest ranged, the 80cm railway gun 'Dora' was the biggest. As far as we know it was used only sparingly, to shell Sevastopol in the Crimea, and later Warsaw. Too large to be transported whole, Dora required several trains to transport it. Before assembly could begin, and this took several weeks to acomplish, a second track had to be laid at the chosen firing site. Movable straddle cranes also had to be assembled, these were on their own additional rails. The two 20 axle halves of the chassis were shunted onto the double tracks side by side, and coupled together. Only then could the cranes start putting the really big bits on. Once assembled Dora must have been an awesome sight, all one thousand three hundred and fifty tons of it. The barrel alone weighed 100 tons, the breech was also another 100 tons. It could fling a 7 ton shell about 45 km. As a piece of static siege artillery there was no question of its effect, but even its creators, Krupp, admitted while it was a valuable research tool, as a practical weapon of war it was useless.
Which brings us to the 1500 tonner, aptly named 'Monster' by armaments minister Albert Speer. It may have been an attempt to make some use of Dora, or simply an extension of a policy to self-propell all heavy artillery, but someone got the idea of putting Dora on tracks. The wartime sketch (provided courtesy Karl Horvat, an Australian researcher) is all we have, but it allows us to deduce a few things.
One reason why you can't simply scale up an existing tank design is ground pressure. If you know the mass and dimensions (i.e. area of track in contact with the ground) of a vehicle, it is quite easy to work out ground pressure. Put simply, weight will be roughly proportional to the volume or the cube of the dimensions, while the area of track in contact with the ground will be proportional to the square of dimensions. If we double the size of a tank, we get eight times the weight but only four times the track area, thus twice the ground pressure. (There's also twice the stress in suspensions, axles and everything else, it's why elephants have thicker legs than flamingos.) A very light tracked vehicle, such as a Bren carrier, will have what appears to be rediculously narrow tracks. As a vehicle gets heavier, the proportion of its width covered by track increases. A Centurion has about 40% of its width as track, while for the 188 ton Maus tank, the figure was about 66% or two thirds. In fact the most striking thing about Maus is this proportion of track width to overall width.
Assuming a pressure of 1.2 kg per sq cm for this 1500 tonner, that's about midway between that of a Centurion and a Maus, and seems a realistic place to start. Working backwards, we can use ground pressure and weight (1500 tons, or thereabouts) to find how much contact area it needs. Track width appears to be around 80% of the width, giving tracks of 2.4m width (each) for an overall width of 6m. The illustration appears to be about 6m wide, as is the gun on its rail mount. If we stick to an assumed six metre width, close to an upper limit if we ever consider movement by road, this behemoth thus requires 27m of track on the ground. There's only one problem with this, it won't turn.
The shorter a tracked vehicle is, that is track length on the ground, the less resistance there is to turning. Also, the wider it is, the outside track is able to generate a greater turning moment, and overcome the resistance of both tracks to being pushed sideways. A governing aspect of tracked vehicle design is the ratio of the distance between track centres, and track contact length. Typically, this is about 2:1 for most vehicles. The 1500 tonner has a length/width ratio of about 7.5 to 1, and this is horrific. The way out of this is chassis articulation. By using four track units, each 14m long, and allowing each pair to be turned independently, it might just work.
Having four track units ties in nicely with the four U-boat diesels. All the Porsche heavy tanks were electric drive, and it seems hard to imagine anything else for a machine this size. In a U-boat, the diesels drove dual purpose electric motor-generators, but on the 1500 tonner these would function as generators only. It seems logical that each diesel would have its own generator. These four generators would each run an electric motor in each of the four track units. Of course the diesels and generators could be anywhere in the vehicle, as no mechanical drive to the tracks would be required. The other pieces of information are harder to fit into the picture. Just where the two turrets, each with a 15cm gun, would fit I have no idea. If the layout of Dora is preserved, as the illustration seems to indicate, there appears to be no place for them. Also, having these turrets side by side, as Axis suggests, implies a much greater width than 6m if these turrets are not to foul. More puzzling still is the 25cm of frontal armour. The illustration shows that the loading decks, and of course the crew doing the loading, had no protection at all, nor would they need any being many miles from whatever they were shooting at. Having this extent of armour is only required if the machine is going to be used as a direct fire weapon, in other words as a tank and not a piece of self-propelled artillery.
It also appears that the shell hoists are retained, as on the rail gun. While having no on-board stowage of 80cm rounds is not an issue for SP artillery, it would be an absolute must for a 'tank'. Dora was supplied with 80cm rounds from the rail lines it sat upon, but this would not be any use to an SP operating away from any railhead. I imagine that ammunition vehicles would be required to deliver one round at a time to the hoists, they could possibly be similar to the Panzer IV carriers used with the Karl morsers. Apart from these carriers there would probably be a whole retinue of vehicles accompanying this giant machine; fire control and signals vehicles, a flak unit, the cook's truck, and so on.
We can only speculate how this machine might be moved. As with Dora, it could conceivably be transported by rail in pieces, but once assembled and moving under its own power beyond the rail network the fun would really start. As with all oversize vehicles, the planned route would need to be carefully surveyed. It would occupy the entire width of a road on its own, and travelling through any town en route would no doubt lead to a fair bit of urban renewal. Rivers would be less of a problem, as the machine's great height would permit fairly deep fording. However the greatest problem would be the high centre of gravity due to the mass of barrel, breech, recoil system so high up, and sideslope of the ground would be the main restriction to travel, lest the vehicle keel over. As with other large land vehicles, there is a distinction between 'movable' and 'mobile'.
The gun..
http://www.aeronautics.ru/archive/wwii/books/germany_secret_weapons_wwii/80cm_kanone_schwere_gustav1.jpg
General characteristics (Schwerer Gustav)
Weight of gun and mounting: 1,350 t
Length of gun: 47.3 m
Height of gun: 11.6 m
Width of gun: 7.1 m
Barrel length: 32.48 m
Propulsion 2 x Oil Electric D311 691 kW locomotives (DRG class V188)
Maximum elevation: 48° (or 65°; sources differ, may refer to different mountings)
Weight of propellant charge: 2,500 lb (1134 kg) in 3 increments
Rate of fire: 1 round every 30 to 45 minutes or typically 14 rounds a day
Accuracy: 20% (10 out of 48) of shells fell within 60 m of target point. Worst error was 1 shell landing 740 m from the target point. Assuming normal distribution, this gives a CEP of 190 m.
Crew: 250 to assemble the gun in 3 days (54 hours), 2,500 to lay track and dig embankments, which would take 3 - 6 weeks depending on the geography of the land. 2 Flak battalions to protect the gun from air attack.Ammunition
High Explosive
Weight of projectile: 4.8 t (4,800 kg)
Muzzle velocity: 820 m/s
Maximum range: 48 km
Explosive mass: 700 kg
Crater size: 30 ft (10 m) wide 30 ft (10 m) deep.AP Shell
The main body was made of chrome-nickel steel (http://www.answers.com/topic/steel), fitted with an aluminium (http://www.answers.com/topic/aluminium) alloy ballistic (http://www.answers.com/topic/ballistics) nose cone.
Length of shell: 3.6 m
Weight of projectile: 7.1 t (7,100 kg)
Muzzle velocity: 720 m/s
Maximum range: 38 km
Explosive mass: 250 kg
Penetration: 264 ft (80 m) of reinforced concrete (http://www.answers.com/topic/reinforced-concrete) was claimed, but this seems extremely unlikely. In testing it was demonstrated to penetrate 7 metres of concrete at maximum elevation (beyond that available during combat) with a special chargehttp://palpatine.chez-alice.fr/Page13/g1.jpg
And then there's this silly ting:
MG mayhem?
http://mailer.fsu.edu/~akirk/tanks/UnitedStates/selfpropelledguns/usspg-M24-50cal.jpg
First, US T-28. 95 tonnes, 300mm armour. 105mm gun, 12,7mm:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/T-28-1.jpg
http://johnsmilitaryhistory.com/t28a.jpg
http://johnsmilitaryhistory.com/t28b.jpg
http://johnsmilitaryhistory.com/t28c.jpg
http://www.missing-lynx.com/gallery/modern/dmt28-1.jpg
German Panzer VIII Maus. 188 tonnes, 240mm armour. 1x128mm, 1x75mm, 1x7,92mm mg:
http://www.achtungpanzer.com/images/cmaus.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2b/Maus_destroyed_rear_side_view.jpg
http://www.achtungpanzer.com/images/dmaus.jpg
http://armor.kiev.ua/Tanks/WWII/Mouse/mouse7.jpg
http://armor.kiev.ua/Tanks/WWII/Mouse/mouse5.jpg
http://wilk.wpk.p.lodz.pl/~whatfor/panzer/maus0002.jpg
Soviet Obyekt 279 (1957) 60 tonnes, 305mm armour. 1x130mm, 1x12,7mm.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/30/279-7.jpg/800px-279-7.jpg (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/30/279-7.jpg)
..And then the (planned) madness: Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte
http://www.panzerschreck.de/panzer/pzkpfw/bilder/p1000.jpg
Category: Ultra Heavy Land Cruiser
Phase Of Development: Pre-Prototype
Development Start: June Of 1942
Development Team: Krupp
Crew: 20+
Weight: 1000 Metric Tons (Minimum), 2000+ Tons Estimated
Propulsion: 8 X Daimler-Benz Mb501 20-Cylinder Marine Diesel Engines Producing A Total Of 16,000 Horsepower Or 2 X Man V12z32/44 24-Cylinder Marine Diesel Engines Producing A Total Of 17,000 Horsepower
Speed: 40 Kp/H (Supposed)
Range: Unknown
Length: 35.00m
Width: 14.00m
Height: 11.00m
Armament: 2 X 280 Mm 54.5 Sk C/34
1 X 128 Mm Kwk 44 L/55
8 X 20 Mm Flak38
2 X 15 Mm Mg 151/15
Ammunition: 100 Rounds Of 280mm For Each Gun (Estimated) Other Values Unknown
Armor (Mm): (Values Estimated)
Turret Roof: 150
Turret Sides: 220
Turret Front: 360
Additional Armor Values Unknown
Overview
The world will probably never see an armored land vehicle on the scale of the Ratte. Tellingly, Germans didn’t even refer to it as a tank: they called it a “land cruiser.” The Ratte was so large its dimensions had more in common with a naval vessel than a tank. It had the crew compliment of at least four heavy tanks, armament usually seen mounted on heavy cruisers like the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and enough anti-aircraft weaponry to ward off waves of attacking fighter-bombers. It was 35 meters long, as tall as some church steeples, and so wide that maneuvering in an urban area would have been either impossible or apocalyptic. The Ratte was so heavy it would have shattered and churned pavement like a plow through sod and collapsed all but a handful of bridges in Germany.
The Ratte’s much smaller cousin, the Maus, turned out to be a ruinous waste of resources for very limited applications in combat. Had the Ratte’s development progressed even a fraction as far as the Maus it would have devastated Germany. The Ratte was so large that it would have required naval-scale manufacturing with months of skilled laborers’ time involved in the construction of each individual tank. Just building and assembling its components would have required transportation and handling equipment usually relegated to a shipyard.
It is probably to the detriment of the world that the Ratte project was cancelled. It would have been cool just to see one of these hideous machines built and, more importantly, it would have taken the place of perhaps fifty or a hundred more useful tanks like the Panther or Panzer IV. The Ratte would have meant an earlier end to hostilities in Europe and it would have provided a damn hot ticket at a museum in the United States or the Soviet Union.
Development
The development history of the Ratte originates with a 1941 strategic study of Soviet heavy tanks conducted by Krupp. This study also gave birth to the Ratte’s smaller and more practical relative: the Maus. From the start the Maus was envisioned as an even larger and more formidable version of a heavy tank, while the Ratte was to be a class of vehicle unto itself.
This 1941 study produced a suggestion from director of engineering Grote who worked for the U-boat arm of the Ministry of Armaments. In June of 1942, Grote proposed a 1000-ton tank that he termed a “Landkreuzer” equipped with naval armament and armored so heavily that only similar naval armaments could hope to touch it. To compensate for the immense weight of the vehicle the Ratte would have sported three 1.2 meter wide tread-assemblies on each side totaling a tread width of 7.2 meters. This helped with the stability and weight distribution of the Ratte but its sheer mass would have destroyed pavement and prevented bridge travel. Fortunately, the height of the Ratte and its nearly 2 meters of ground clearance would have allowed it to ford many rivers with ease.
Hitler became enamored with the idea of a truly super tank and ordered Kruppto set to work developing the Ratte. While development of the Ratte does not seem to have progressed very far some sources believe that a turret was completed for the Ratte and then used as a fixed gun emplacement in Norway. Several such emplacements survived the war, many mounting turrets from broken-up vessels very similar to the turret intended for the Ratte. However, despite references to a Ratte turret being used as a fixed emplacement there is no evidence that it ever existed. The Gneisenau was broken up in 1944 and its turrets were used as emplacements near Rotterdam in Holland. Similar turrets were used near Trondheim in Norway which was the supposed location of the Ratte turret.
Development of the Ratte was completely cancelled in 1943 by the dangerously wise German Minister of Armaments, Albert Speer. Speer exhibited an uncanny ability to cancel the more moronic and wasteful of Hitler’s pet projects and focus German resources on proven weapon systems.
Technical Mumbo Jumbo
There were two proposed power plants (actually power plantses to coin a fake word) for the P. 1000 Ratte. One concept was powered by two MAN V12Z32/4424-cylinder diesel engines similar to those used on German submarines. This double engine design produced a Herculean 17,000 horsepower. These were the engines used to derive the 44kp/h maximum speed of the Ratte by the Germans. The more likely engine was the Daimler-Benz MB501. This 20-cylinder marine diesel engine was identical to that used on the German fast torpedo boats or S-boats. Linking eight of these engines would have theoretically produced 16,000 horsepower. Given that the MB501 was a more proven, inexpensive, and easier to manage engine it seems likely this eight-engine design would have appeared in the Ratte prototype.
The primary armament of the Ratte was two 280mm SK C/34 naval guns mounted in a modified naval heavy cruiser turret fitting two guns instead of three.
The SK C/34 was a devastating piece of artillery capable of penetrating more than 450mm of armor at its maximum effective direct-fire range of roughly five kilometers. The guns could also be elevated up to 40 degrees to achieve a range of 40kilometers. Armor-piercing shells and two types of high explosive shells were available for these naval guns. One difficulty facing the 280mm dual battery would have been the Ratte’s inability to sufficiently depress its weapons to fire at nearby targets. Accompanying vehicles would have likely accomplished this task.
Additional armament was a 128mm anti-tank gun like that mounted on the Jagdtiger or Maus, two 15mm heavy machineguns and eight 20mm anti-aircraft guns, probably with at least four of them as a quad mount. The 128mm anti-tank gun’s location on the Ratte is a point of contention among historians. Most believe it would have been mounted within the primary turret, though some think a smaller secondary turret would have been mounted at the rear of the Ratte near the engine decking. The rear turret makes more sense logistically, but the surface area of engine decking at the rear of the Ratte might have made this unrealistic. A third option would have been a hull-mounted version of the 128mm gun similar to that seen on the Jagdtiger. This would have at least been able to engage nearer targets than either of the other options.
Additional armament would have been spread on and throughout the Ratte. The heavy-machineguns and some of the 20mm guns would have probably been mounted inside ball mounts in the hull of the Ratte. A quad 20mm flak gun could have been mounted on the extremely large top surface of the turret and additional 20mm guns mounted on the top hull at the rear of the Ratte. If they were willing to put up with the exhaust fumes, an entire platoon of panzer grenadiers could have sat atop the rear hull of the Maus.
While the Ratte was supposedly a 1000-ton vehicle this number was an almost mystically optimistic figure, much like the 100-ton weight intended for the Maus. The turret alone for the Ratte would have weighed more than 600 metric tons. The actual combat-loaded weight of the Ratte would have been closer to 1,800tons. The speed, range, and longevity of the engines and transmission would have suffered accordingly.
Variants
The Ratte was a paper panzer and as such the only real variants were the two choices of engines.
Analysis
The Ratte was a very problematic vehicle and the size of the Ratte was responsible for most of the issues it would have encountered on a hypothetical battlefield. A Ratte on the move would have been relegated to fields and country side because of its road-destroying weight. Without bridges as a river-crossing option, the Ratte would have been unable to cross flooded or deep rivers and scouting parties might have wasted lengthy periods and squandered lives finding a crossing point.
Gunners on a Ratte would have found it awkward to engage targets from close or medium range with even a hull-mounted 128mm gun. Concealing the Ratte from aircraft would have required a blimp hangar or some sort of bizarre camouflage that would make it resemble a building. Such camouflage is feasible, if comical, but would have been useless the first time ground units spotted the Ratte. From that point on the Ratte would have been constantly harassed by fighter-bombers. Even if the Ratte’s 20mm AA guns had managed to drive these off, the Ratte was such an enormous target that high-altitude bombers could have been employed to attack it.
Not everything was bad about the Ratte. Infantry would have been less of a risk than with the Maus because of the number of point defense weapons and the space for infantry to ride on the vehicle’s hull. The Ratte would have likely served as the cornerstone of a unit of traditional military vehicles and these would have assisted in defending it from enemy tanks and aircraft. Enemy armor posed almost no conceivable threat to the Ratte. They might have destroyed things like the AA guns on the turret or damaged radio antennae or weapon optics, but beyond minor damage enemy tanks were toys next to this mammoth vehicle.
Enemy artillery was slightly more threatening and became downright dangerous if the Ratte made the mistake of straying within range of naval bombardment.
The greatest strength of the Ratte would have been its ability to single-handedly halt a major enemy offensive. It would have been slow and poor on the attack but the sight of a Ratte looming out of fog on a battlefield would have almost immediately scattered enemy ground forces. If they didn’t flee right away they would have once they realized their weapons were nearly useless against it. Make no mistake, the astronomical cost of building a Ratte would not have been offset by its strengths. Once deployed and used in combat, it was just a matter of time before enemy aircraft destroyed it. With such poor speed and the limitations of the terrain the Ratte would not have enjoyed the same advantages of a wide open sea as its naval counterparts. The Ratte could have turned the tide of a single battle at the cost of a campaign.
http://www.panzerbaer.de/workshop/pix/diebl_87_p1000-002.jpg
http://www.panzerbaer.de/workshop/pix/diebl_87_p1000-004.jpg
http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/9890/p1000001am5.jpg
http://img131.imageshack.us/img131/2461/p1000aufstellungcq9.jpg
http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/6615/1141209216455wj0.jpg (http://imageshack.us/)
http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/6223/034vq0.jpg (http://imageshack.us/)
Still not dizzy?
Well, here's:
The Landkreuzer P. 1500 Monster was a preprototype ultraheavy tank meant as a mobile platform for the Krupp 800mm Schwerer Gustav artillery piece. Though development was begun in December 1942 after approval by Adolf Hitler, it was cancelled by Albert Speer soon after and never made it past the drawing board.
Crew: 100+
Length: 42.00 m
Width: 18.00 m
Height: 7.00 m
Weight: 2500 tonnes
Armour: 250 mm (hull front)
Main armament: 800 mm Dora/Schwerer Gustav K (E) railway gun (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav)
Secondary armament: 2x150 mm sFH 18/1 L/30 howitzers
Multiple 15 mm MG 151/15
http://i.somethingawful.com/booklist/images/monster02.gif
http://i.somethingawful.com/booklist/images/monster03.gif
Although not the largest calibre gun ever made, or the longest ranged, the 80cm railway gun 'Dora' was the biggest. As far as we know it was used only sparingly, to shell Sevastopol in the Crimea, and later Warsaw. Too large to be transported whole, Dora required several trains to transport it. Before assembly could begin, and this took several weeks to acomplish, a second track had to be laid at the chosen firing site. Movable straddle cranes also had to be assembled, these were on their own additional rails. The two 20 axle halves of the chassis were shunted onto the double tracks side by side, and coupled together. Only then could the cranes start putting the really big bits on. Once assembled Dora must have been an awesome sight, all one thousand three hundred and fifty tons of it. The barrel alone weighed 100 tons, the breech was also another 100 tons. It could fling a 7 ton shell about 45 km. As a piece of static siege artillery there was no question of its effect, but even its creators, Krupp, admitted while it was a valuable research tool, as a practical weapon of war it was useless.
Which brings us to the 1500 tonner, aptly named 'Monster' by armaments minister Albert Speer. It may have been an attempt to make some use of Dora, or simply an extension of a policy to self-propell all heavy artillery, but someone got the idea of putting Dora on tracks. The wartime sketch (provided courtesy Karl Horvat, an Australian researcher) is all we have, but it allows us to deduce a few things.
One reason why you can't simply scale up an existing tank design is ground pressure. If you know the mass and dimensions (i.e. area of track in contact with the ground) of a vehicle, it is quite easy to work out ground pressure. Put simply, weight will be roughly proportional to the volume or the cube of the dimensions, while the area of track in contact with the ground will be proportional to the square of dimensions. If we double the size of a tank, we get eight times the weight but only four times the track area, thus twice the ground pressure. (There's also twice the stress in suspensions, axles and everything else, it's why elephants have thicker legs than flamingos.) A very light tracked vehicle, such as a Bren carrier, will have what appears to be rediculously narrow tracks. As a vehicle gets heavier, the proportion of its width covered by track increases. A Centurion has about 40% of its width as track, while for the 188 ton Maus tank, the figure was about 66% or two thirds. In fact the most striking thing about Maus is this proportion of track width to overall width.
Assuming a pressure of 1.2 kg per sq cm for this 1500 tonner, that's about midway between that of a Centurion and a Maus, and seems a realistic place to start. Working backwards, we can use ground pressure and weight (1500 tons, or thereabouts) to find how much contact area it needs. Track width appears to be around 80% of the width, giving tracks of 2.4m width (each) for an overall width of 6m. The illustration appears to be about 6m wide, as is the gun on its rail mount. If we stick to an assumed six metre width, close to an upper limit if we ever consider movement by road, this behemoth thus requires 27m of track on the ground. There's only one problem with this, it won't turn.
The shorter a tracked vehicle is, that is track length on the ground, the less resistance there is to turning. Also, the wider it is, the outside track is able to generate a greater turning moment, and overcome the resistance of both tracks to being pushed sideways. A governing aspect of tracked vehicle design is the ratio of the distance between track centres, and track contact length. Typically, this is about 2:1 for most vehicles. The 1500 tonner has a length/width ratio of about 7.5 to 1, and this is horrific. The way out of this is chassis articulation. By using four track units, each 14m long, and allowing each pair to be turned independently, it might just work.
Having four track units ties in nicely with the four U-boat diesels. All the Porsche heavy tanks were electric drive, and it seems hard to imagine anything else for a machine this size. In a U-boat, the diesels drove dual purpose electric motor-generators, but on the 1500 tonner these would function as generators only. It seems logical that each diesel would have its own generator. These four generators would each run an electric motor in each of the four track units. Of course the diesels and generators could be anywhere in the vehicle, as no mechanical drive to the tracks would be required. The other pieces of information are harder to fit into the picture. Just where the two turrets, each with a 15cm gun, would fit I have no idea. If the layout of Dora is preserved, as the illustration seems to indicate, there appears to be no place for them. Also, having these turrets side by side, as Axis suggests, implies a much greater width than 6m if these turrets are not to foul. More puzzling still is the 25cm of frontal armour. The illustration shows that the loading decks, and of course the crew doing the loading, had no protection at all, nor would they need any being many miles from whatever they were shooting at. Having this extent of armour is only required if the machine is going to be used as a direct fire weapon, in other words as a tank and not a piece of self-propelled artillery.
It also appears that the shell hoists are retained, as on the rail gun. While having no on-board stowage of 80cm rounds is not an issue for SP artillery, it would be an absolute must for a 'tank'. Dora was supplied with 80cm rounds from the rail lines it sat upon, but this would not be any use to an SP operating away from any railhead. I imagine that ammunition vehicles would be required to deliver one round at a time to the hoists, they could possibly be similar to the Panzer IV carriers used with the Karl morsers. Apart from these carriers there would probably be a whole retinue of vehicles accompanying this giant machine; fire control and signals vehicles, a flak unit, the cook's truck, and so on.
We can only speculate how this machine might be moved. As with Dora, it could conceivably be transported by rail in pieces, but once assembled and moving under its own power beyond the rail network the fun would really start. As with all oversize vehicles, the planned route would need to be carefully surveyed. It would occupy the entire width of a road on its own, and travelling through any town en route would no doubt lead to a fair bit of urban renewal. Rivers would be less of a problem, as the machine's great height would permit fairly deep fording. However the greatest problem would be the high centre of gravity due to the mass of barrel, breech, recoil system so high up, and sideslope of the ground would be the main restriction to travel, lest the vehicle keel over. As with other large land vehicles, there is a distinction between 'movable' and 'mobile'.
The gun..
http://www.aeronautics.ru/archive/wwii/books/germany_secret_weapons_wwii/80cm_kanone_schwere_gustav1.jpg
General characteristics (Schwerer Gustav)
Weight of gun and mounting: 1,350 t
Length of gun: 47.3 m
Height of gun: 11.6 m
Width of gun: 7.1 m
Barrel length: 32.48 m
Propulsion 2 x Oil Electric D311 691 kW locomotives (DRG class V188)
Maximum elevation: 48° (or 65°; sources differ, may refer to different mountings)
Weight of propellant charge: 2,500 lb (1134 kg) in 3 increments
Rate of fire: 1 round every 30 to 45 minutes or typically 14 rounds a day
Accuracy: 20% (10 out of 48) of shells fell within 60 m of target point. Worst error was 1 shell landing 740 m from the target point. Assuming normal distribution, this gives a CEP of 190 m.
Crew: 250 to assemble the gun in 3 days (54 hours), 2,500 to lay track and dig embankments, which would take 3 - 6 weeks depending on the geography of the land. 2 Flak battalions to protect the gun from air attack.Ammunition
High Explosive
Weight of projectile: 4.8 t (4,800 kg)
Muzzle velocity: 820 m/s
Maximum range: 48 km
Explosive mass: 700 kg
Crater size: 30 ft (10 m) wide 30 ft (10 m) deep.AP Shell
The main body was made of chrome-nickel steel (http://www.answers.com/topic/steel), fitted with an aluminium (http://www.answers.com/topic/aluminium) alloy ballistic (http://www.answers.com/topic/ballistics) nose cone.
Length of shell: 3.6 m
Weight of projectile: 7.1 t (7,100 kg)
Muzzle velocity: 720 m/s
Maximum range: 38 km
Explosive mass: 250 kg
Penetration: 264 ft (80 m) of reinforced concrete (http://www.answers.com/topic/reinforced-concrete) was claimed, but this seems extremely unlikely. In testing it was demonstrated to penetrate 7 metres of concrete at maximum elevation (beyond that available during combat) with a special chargehttp://palpatine.chez-alice.fr/Page13/g1.jpg
And then there's this silly ting:
MG mayhem?
http://mailer.fsu.edu/~akirk/tanks/UnitedStates/selfpropelledguns/usspg-M24-50cal.jpg