German 1500 ton tank

[Sayeret]

The "Midgard-Schlange" (Midgard-Snake)
Thinking of german tanks and armor projects during the last two years of the war, it seems, that the germans get megalomaniac. They encounter the first problems concerning weight and mobility with development of the Tiger II and Jagdtiger with a weight up to 75 tons. The "Maus" project as well as the E-100 with weights of 188 tons (140 tons E-100) made clear that such monster won't make win a war ... they're much too heavy. But nevertheless plans were made for a 1000 ton tank called "Ratte" and a successor, a 1500 ton tank. Both are reviewed on Michael Mc.Swiney's page about unusal german armor projects and one thing is clear ... these plans could never be realised ... too many problems would occur. But there was another plan made for one armor project which lets even the 1500 ton tank look like a Kübelwagen ... The Midgard Snake:
The Engineergroup Ritter designed this project ... the name derives from Teutonic Mythology, it was a demonic monster, which embraced with its giant length the whole earth. Thor, god of thunder, was its arch-enemy and tried many times to kill it. Finally in the twilight of the gods he slayed it with his hammer, but was also killed by its poisonous breath.
The first plans to this project were made in Summer 1934, it should be a vehicle that can drive like a tank on the ground, under the earth like a mole and under the sea up to 100m deep!! All in all the vehicle was made of 77 single cells of 6.8m width, 3.5m height and 6m length, put together to a snake of about 524m! On the front it should have a giant drill put together of 4 single drills, each 1.5m diameter. The drills were connected to 9 engines with 8800 PS altogether. For moving on the ground the tracks were driven by 14 engines, giving 19800 PS ... the snake should have a speed on the ground of about 30 km/h, 10 km/h under ground and about 30 km/h under water. For underwater driving there were additional 12 engines with 3000 PS altogether. It was planned to take 960 m3 of engine fuel in the vehicle. Also there was planned to put an electric kitchen, a bedroom with 20 beds, 3 workshops, some periscopes and 580 big compressed-air bottles as well as a smoke discharging equipment. For armamenent there were 1000 mine charges with 250kg explosives each, 100 smaller charges with 10kg each and 12 twin-MG's. The whole vehicle would have a weight of 60,000 tons (!) and a crew of 30. The "inventor" of this monster planned to build 20 of these vehicles to put explosive charges at and under fortresses of the Maginot-line and hostile harbors to get breakthroughs!!!
Well all this sounds unbelievable and this is one of the reasons why the project was cancelled. The main reason is the unresolvable technical problems which will occur when designing, building and driving such thing. (Remember what problems the germans had in the 1940's to build a suitable engine for the "Maus" with more than 1000 PS!!!). In any case ... on February 28th 1935 the plans were handed back to engineer Ritter and his application was declined.

[rob]

i think someone smoked themselves retarded. :cantbeli:

[MEGR]

Any pics?

[R935]

here are some images and specs
http://www.achtungpanzer.com/pz7.htm[/url]

[Flagg]

Well...I guess for every MP43/44, Me-262, or Porsche 911...there got to be at least one Uber-Turd of a design...and this smells like one.

[Operation Ivy]

damn u flagg was gonna say somethin just like that :D

[rob]

Well...I guess for every MP43/44, Me-262, or Porsche 911...there got to be at least one Uber-Turd of a design...and this smells like one.

buts it not often we get a turd that wieght 1500 tons. :lol:

[Flagg]

buts it not often we get a turd that wieght 1500 tons.

Now THAT's a mighty big turd

[Sir Zach of R.]

buts it not often we get a turd that wieght 1500 tons.

Now THAT's a mighty big turd

This has been a Maalox moment brought to you by Flagg and SZOR. :lol:

[Brzeczyszczykiewicz]

1500-ton Self-Propelled 80cm Gun
By Gary Zimmer

In a paperback titled Tanks of the Axis Powers published over 20 years ago there is a brief mention of some of Germany's armoured follies. It mentions a 1500 ton superheavy tank, cased in 250mm of armour, armed with an 80cm gun and two 15cm weapons, and powered by four U-boat diesels. Although there was no illustration I have always been curious as to what this 1500 tonner would look like.

However we do know something about the proposed main weapon, the 80cm. 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'.

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