Giant wheeled armoured cars from any country and any war, I want to show some armoured cars and Landships I found in webs like Tank enyclopedia and Military Review
Some of these are Russian, American, French and British but if you know other from other country, feel free to post it here
The armament of the “monitor” consisted of two 152-mm naval guns, which were usually armed with cruisers and 10 batteries of Colt machineguns of the 1895 model of the year, of which four were located in two towers, and the other six were to shoot through the loopholes in the hull.
The crew of the car had to consist of a 20 man, i.e. was even more than the famous German tank A7V. At the same time, the thickness of his armor was relatively small - only 6-18 mm, so she could not withstand hitting the shells of the German 77-mm field gun, and therefore there was no point in it! The weight was too big - 150 tons. Therefore, it is not surprising that this development has not left the drawing board.
By the way, in April, the 1917 of the year was already our compatriot mechanical engineer S. Navrotsky proposed another tank weighing 192 tons. The dimensions were assumed to be corresponding, but the armament was especially impressive: two 203-mm howitzers, two 152-mm guns, four 102-mm and eight 7,62-mm machine guns. The armor of the car was supposed to be 20-30 mm, the crew was 60 people. And so, what do you think, what did our military think about when they received this “project”?
At the end of 1916, Second Lieutenant Drizhenko, who worked at the Admiralty Plant in Petrograd, offered “a self-propelled armored turret for an 8-inch howitzer” as another analogue of the “Mendeleev tank”. It was the same armored car on a tracked chassis and with weapons in the front. Two petrol engines for 180 HP each worked for each of its tracks. On the roof were two machine-gun turrets. Since the length of the supporting surface of the undercarriage was large (6 m), she had to make the two extreme wheeled carts of the caterpillars rising, which, according to the author, would improve the turning ability of his car. Inside was provided with electric lighting and ventilation. The estimated weight of the "tower" was 46 tons. Armor - 10 mm. The crew is six people, and the speed of planning is at the level of 10-15 km / h.
The project got into the Main Artillery Directorate, where its “tower” was compared with the allied tanks. As a result, the author was told that her armament for the tank is clearly redundant, and for heavy artillery, tractor thrust is also sufficient.
A whole series of completely delusional projects came in those years from Ukraine as well, so that the “fun-figures from the mind” did not appear there yesterday. So, in April, 1916-th resident of Lugansk, S. I. Shevchenko wrote to the State Agrarian University, that he “invented a method by which he could withstand enemy strikes with the greatest success. It is necessary to weave a reservation from the choice of twine. ” To do this, he offered to weave a fabric of twisted rope with a diameter of about one inch, and then “thicken so strongly that a fossil would turn out. The thickness of this armor must be at least 28 inches ... Then you will get a wall-fortress, and you can put it anywhere. ” The basis for it was to serve steel with a thickness of at least 4 inches, so that his fellow countrymen can be proud: after all, he essentially offered nothing more than "combined armor." That's just the weight of the "armor" and the thickness, he clearly did not think through. The technical committee responded to the unfortunate inventor that the military department does not meet the need for its invention.
16 May 1915, the GVTU also received the “Project for a car before breaking trenches and military forts”. Its author, a resident of Lviv, I.F. Semchishin, decided not to waste time on trifles, but wrote directly to Nicholas II, and in his dialect of the Russian language: “Whenever we had some large, armored, inside a reversible barrel or roller, which would turn in the marked namas straightforward, - we could ride them over the enemies. This is what my project understands before destroying fortified areas and constituting a mobile fortress, which I will call the machine “Oboy” here. It was about an armored ellipsoid of cyclopean sizes (approximately 605 m high and 960 m wide - where, science fiction writers with novels about the distant future, where people live in such tanks here and face them head-on!), With cruising speed 300 versts per hour. The Technical Committee expectedly considered the Semchishin project unfeasible, and “Oboy” remained on paper as the project of the largest in stories armored car.
Australia entered the Second World War with very few tanks and an urgent need for armored fighting vehicles. Although the primary opponent for Australian forces was Japan and their its small and thinly armored vehicle in the Far East, Australian forces would also serve throughout North Africa and later in Europe. By 1944, Australia had its own indigenous tank production capability in addition to British and American supplied armour to use. Together, this provided all the armor that Australia needed, and yet, despite this, there were inventors who sought to get their own designs into the hands of the Australian Army. Some of these inventions were reasonable, some not so reasonable, and many – the majority in fact – were totally unsuitable for modern warfare. The Puckeridge Land Battleship assuredly falls into this latter category.
The Land Battleship was projected to be big. Very big. The whole vehicle was to move on rollers 40 feet (12.192m) in diameter and 20 feet (6.096m) wide. Three rollers arranged two at the front and one at the back. The rear one was used for steering, and all three were attached to the large body of the vehicle completing it at about 190 feet (57.9m) long and 70 feet (21.3m) wide.
The armour was no less grandiose, consisting of 8-inch (203mm) thick plate at the front mounted on “heavy steel girder frame” and 4-inch (101.6mm) thick at the sides. Two gun turrets surmounted this machine with an 8 inch (203mm) and a 6 inch (152mm) gun as the main armament and two 7.5-inch or 8-inch howitzers in the fore turret. The rear turret was to be much less heavily armed, with just a battery of “AA pom-poms” for anti-aircraft use. Additionally, 75mm guns and automatic weapons were to be mounted along the sides of the hull.
The engines were not to be mounted in the body, but were instead to be mounted inside the rollers and fixed permanently to the axles, which in turn were secured to the framework for the body of the vehicle. Using three engines (one for each roller) ensured that the loss of even two engines in combat would not cripple the machine.
Communications and vehicle control traveled through these hollow axles to the engines with the exhausts being vented out of one side.
Puckeridge felt that his design could be very effective in the jungle, for the clearance of jungle, constructing roads, and even as an amphibious fighter when the adequate modifications were carried out.
The first two elements of this design are connected. Williams was clear that whilst military tanks were well designed using caterpillar tracks, too much reliance had been placed on defeating them with tanks. As those tanks have roughly the same limitations imposed on them by using caterpillar tracks and extreme weight, the solution was to go light and to go mobile. As most tanks are unable to operate in water, an agile vehicle able to operate both on- and off-road and also just as capably in water would allow it to flank enemy tanks. Add in an anti-tank gun on such a platform and suddenly you have an extremely capable tank destroyer which can go where tanks cannot.
Rear view of the amphibian vehicle providing a good view of the tyre tread and overall height of the vehicle. Source: US Patent US2432107
Given that the design was drawn up in 1942, after the USA had started fighting the Japanese in the Far East, the abundance of soft, marshy or marginal ground etc. would have made the deployment of such a machine very desirable. An obvious additional advantage is that the vehicle would not be reliant on landing craft or bridging equipment to cross rivers or lakes.
Although the caliber of the main armament is not given, Williams is clear that a single anti-tank gun should be carried and although he doesn’t specify which sort of standard anti-tank gun in military service was likely envisaged. Additionally, a plurality of other armaments could also be carried in addition to, or instead of, this anti-tank gun. This armament is carried within a large fully rotating turret atop the main body of the vehicle, with rotation driven from below via a system of gearing. The turret provides for an elevation range on the main gun of -10 to +15 degrees. The turret itself is very tall, more than half of the height of the overall vehicle, and connects to the very low flat hull. As such, the hull provides a very small target from both front and side. Inside the turret, the main gun is mounted not on trunnions, as in a conventional turret, but on a turret floor mounted pintle allowing for completely independent slewing of the gun, which is partly independent of turret rotation. In this manner, the gun could be moved 30 degrees (15 degrees left and right). A smaller gun coaxial to the main gun is also drawn and presumably was a machine-gun.
Giant land vehicles thread? That means one thing, it's Ratte time.
Landkreuzer P.1000 Ratte:
Origin: Nazi Germany circa 1942
Size: 35m long (115ft) by 14m (46ft) wide and 11m (36ft) high
Nominal weight: 1000 tons
Primary armament: two 28cm SK C/34 naval guns (in more common artillery parlance, 283mm/11" 54-calibre) as used on the Scharnhorst-class battleship fitted to a fully-rotating turret
Secondary armament: one 128mm KwK/PaK 44 L/55 antitank gun (nobody quite knows where it would have been mounted), eight 20mm FlaK 38 AA guns probably in at least one Flakvierling quad mount, and two Mauser MG151 heavy machine guns/autocannons. Most concepts put the 15mm and 20mm guns in a nest on the engine deck not unlike U-Boat AA placement.
Powerplant: either 2x MAN V12Z32/44 24-cylinder marine diesel engines supposedly developed for U-Boat use (though I can only find them in connection with the Ratte) or eight Daimler-Benz MB501 20-cylinder marine diesel engines as used on E-Boat fast attack ships.
Crew: who the hell knows, somewhere between 20 and 40 allegedly, as well as a convoy of support vehicles.
Ground clearance: 2m (6ft), or low enough that a midsized boulder would pose problems.
Top speed: 40km/h on paper, though I suspect that's even more wishful thinking than the rest of this monstrosity. Half that might be a more reasonable estimate, and even then on the high end.
The P.1000 Ratte was...look, we all know this thing already, there's not much to be said about it that hasn't been covered elsewhere. It's an utterly ridiculous idea that may well have just been the scribblings of a bored engineer for all we really know. The Nazis loved their superweapons projects, practicality be damned, and this thing was about as probable as Eugene Sänger's atmosphere-skipping suborbital bomber. Best case scenario for it on the battlefield is surviving as a mobile fortress until air support arrives and a couple P-47s nail it with GP 1000lb bombs (or Bomber Command has a jolly time hunting it Tirpitz-style with Tallboys). And the less said about the P.1500, the better, I refuse to believe that's anything but postwar "what-if".
I actually think the P.1500 makes more sense than the P.1000. Granted, that's a very low bar indeed, but I can see the logic in trying to make an existing railway gun able to move independently of railways. Remember, the 280mm M65 wasn't far off of a road-mobile version of the K5 railway gun. The P.1500 is that concept scaled up to an absurd extreme.
In practice the thing would have been so immobile that it would be quicker and easier to build tracks to wherever you want the gun, but it's the kind of question that it makes sense to ask, spend a couple of person-weeks on an engineering study, then decide it's a bad idea after all.
The P.1000, on the other had, is just patently ridiculous.
And all these monsters would hopelessly sink into the muddy mess that were WWI battlefields (sigh). At least they would make excellent props for Indiana Jones movies.
Imagine, "young Indy chronicles" spoofing "Last Crusade" fight on the tank, using one of these monstrosities...
What a fascinating thread.. I am always grateful to colleagues who share information here.
The vehicles look like something from the Warhammer games shop.
The balloon tyres remind me of the old Terrakruzer trucks and various lunar vehicles.
WHOOPS, misread that. Wheels don't get you very far with this kind of thing in combat, though, too easily damaged and not great at all-terrain compared to tracks. Unless some enterprising insurgency manages to commandeer a mining haul truck and make the world's most colossal technical...
WHOOPS, misread that. Wheels don't get you very far with this kind of thing in combat, though, too easily damaged and not great at all-terrain compared to tracks. Unless some enterprising insurgency manages to commandeer a mining haul truck and make the world's most colossal technical...
Well, that's why most of those machines remained only as proposals. With the exception of Tsar Tank (which was at least build and tested), the only battle rollers ever created were, if I recall correctly, the mine exploders.
And of course Tsar Tank (also Mammont; also Netopyr; also Tank Lyebedenko):
Still the largest armored machine ever build, in therms of size. And, probably, the most embarrassing failure ever; was not even able to complete its FIRST run, because rear roller got in a ditch, and engine wasn't powerful enough to move overweight machine (planned weight - 40 tons, actual weight - more than 60 tons) from it.
'The Land Ironclads' was a short story by HG Wells that supposedly started off the whole modern concept of the tank. The ironclads were actually 'wheeled', according to his description - a concept called the 'pedrail'.
I've added an illustration by Les Edwards of a development of the concept for the 1995 novel by Stephen Baxter, The Time Ships. It was approved by the Wells estate.
I can find next to nothing about this. It's British, it dates from WWI and it was to be made mainly of concrete, with steel wheels. 90' long, 50' wide.
British drugs:
+ British tank on four 300-foot wheels. I have image of this machine on my old computer, but, I can't found this image in Internet.
+ Russian projects:
- Marchenko 1916 articulated car, 4x4, two engines, 6x75 mm guns, 4x machine guns, 2x AA guns in turret.
- Kazanskiy 1915 armoured tractor on big wheels, 3x3, shellproof armour, 15-20 versta per hour (16-21.3 kmph).
- Bykovets 1915 armoured tractor, 8x8
- Kuzmin 1916 armoured car, 6x6
- Yakovlev 1916 armoured car, 12x12, 6x machine guns, 9 mm armour
The P-1000 was only armed with 2 x 280mm guns. This is the farthest it got. There was an idea to mount 128mm AA guns on its back but that never got through because they didn't fit on there.
(source: Uberschwere Panzerprojekte)
'The Land Ironclads' was a short story by HG Wells that supposedly started off the whole modern concept of the tank. The ironclads were actually 'wheeled', according to his description - a concept called the 'pedrail'.
I've added an illustration by Les Edwards of a development of the concept for the 1995 novel by Stephen Baxter, The Time Ships. It was approved by the Wells estate.
Well that's certainly a unique wheel. Though I'm seeing some ~1900 prototypes with similar setups, and the Tri-star (of Landmaster fame) isn't far off the basic idea.
And to actually contribute something interesting, I did just remember one gigantic wheeled oddity built for military purposes (though not armored or for combat use): the utterly colossal Letourneau Land Train briefly tested by the US Army in the '50s. A derivative of it was used for a year or two working on the DEW Line in northern Canada and Alaska - vehicle design for those conditions gets interesting - but I'm going right to the properly huge ones. First up, the LCC-1 Sno-Train, featuring wheels ten feet tall and a 600hp diesel engine, and able to tow up to 45 tons on three trailer-cars. This model was used for about six years in Greenland (presumably hauling cargo around Thule AFB and the DEW stations), somehow eventually ending up in a museum in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory by way of Fort Wainwright in Alaska.
But you wanted big, and you're getting big. Behold, the TC-497 Overland Train Mk II (not to be confused with the excellent song Road Train, by King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard). Take a look there in the middle for a sense of scale, one of those trailers is carrying what I suspect is an M59 APC (though it could be an M113 or an M75). Much like an actual train, this one was built with the capability to add an arbitrary number of trailers by putting extra "locomotives" at either end.
The P-1000 was only armed with 2 x 280mm guns. This is the farthest it got. There was an idea to mount 128mm AA guns on its back but that never got through because they didn't fit on there. View attachment 640610
(source: Uberschwere Panzerprojekte)
The P.1500 did not exist by this name, but it was indeed an armored howitzer armed with a 800 mm gun, with a weight of about 1.797 tons. The P.1000 was not meant to have only the 2 x 280 mm guns, but also 2 turrets with 2 x 128 mm anti air guns at the front. The naval turret was also rejected. This configuration was the last one designed by Grotte, as mentioned in the original Krupp documents. This blueprint above, although said to belong to the P.1000, is likely to be a fake.
The P-1000 was only armed with 2 x 280mm guns. This is the farthest it got. There was an idea to mount 128mm AA guns on its back but that never got through because they didn't fit on there. View attachment 640610
(source: Uberschwere Panzerprojekte)
The P.1500 did not exist by this name, but it was indeed an armored howitzer armed with a 800 mm gun, with a weight of about 1.797 tons. The P.1000 was not meant to have only the 2 x 280 mm guns, but also 2 turrets with 2 x 128 mm anti air guns at the front. The naval turret was also rejected. This configuration was the last one designed by Grotte, as mentioned in the original Krupp documents. This blueprint above, although said to belong to the P.1000, is likely to be a fake.
Ah, my bad. So the one with the 2 turrets in front was the final one designed? what about the one with 4 turrets around the central one? I don't have Frohlich's book but I might get it later.
The P-1000 was only armed with 2 x 280mm guns. This is the farthest it got. There was an idea to mount 128mm AA guns on its back but that never got through because they didn't fit on there. View attachment 640610
(source: Uberschwere Panzerprojekte)
The P.1500 did not exist by this name, but it was indeed an armored howitzer armed with a 800 mm gun, with a weight of about 1.797 tons. The P.1000 was not meant to have only the 2 x 280 mm guns, but also 2 turrets with 2 x 128 mm anti air guns at the front. The naval turret was also rejected. This configuration was the last one designed by Grotte, as mentioned in the original Krupp documents. This blueprint above, although said to belong to the P.1000, is likely to be a fake.
Ah, my bad. So the one with the 2 turrets in front was the final one designed? what about the one with 4 turrets around the central one? I don't have Frohlich's book but I might get it later.
Yes, the one with 2 turrets at the front was the final P.1000 design. The 5 turret design was the first, all turrets were naval. Grotte himself said that it was possible to put these guns in terms of size, but the weight was impratical. I highly recommend Frölich book, all informations on it are based on the real documents, not specullations.
By the way, I assembled a team to recreate the final P.1000 design in 3D. The work is being made by a 3D artist under my guidance and with Frölich himself as an advisor. It will be a pleasure to share the renders when ready.
125,610. Atherton, P. W. Sept. 6, 1916. Armouring vehicles.-Consists in a self-propelled fort of very large dimensions, say of the order of 300 ft. in height, adapted for military operations on land, and provided with armour and an armament of heavy guns similar to that of a large battleship, the wheels being large enough to permit of the fort being propelled along the seabed without being completely immersed. In the form shown, the body A is supported by springs or hydraulic rams on wheels B, B<1> and carries eight guns mounted in four turrets D. A secondary battery of guns firing through ports in the ends and sides of the body, and an anti-aircraft gun on the roof, may be provided. The wheels have rims built up of plates carrying box-girders B<2>, the front wheels having bevelled treads and the rear wheels having flanges B<3> to enter trenches. The wheels on one side may be of less width than those on the other for the purpose of crushing trenches. The wheel spokes are in the form of steel cables, the tension in which is adjustable. Hydraulic rams between the body and axles may be used for levelling the fort on hills. The fort may be used for transporting a battalion of troops with guns, motor-vehicles, boats, or aeroplanes. Poison gas may be discharged from the fort. Two or more forts may be connected by cables for destroying wire entanglements.
That. That right there. That's hands-down the *dumbest* design for a land vehicles I've ever seen. One rock, one stump, one PO'ed Hessian with a good lever, and that ridiculous piece of garbage is falling right over.
Hell, one *broadside* and that thing is tipping over.
That. That right there. That's hands-down the *dumbest* design for a land vehicles I've ever seen. One rock, one stump, one PO'ed Hessian with a good lever, and that ridiculous piece of garbage is falling right over.
Hell, one *broadside* and that thing is tipping over.
It is relatively shallow, with an average depth of about 120 m (390 ft) at its widest part, reducing to a depth of about 45 m (148 ft) between Dover and Calais.
It is relatively shallow, with an average depth of about 120 m (390 ft) at its widest part, reducing to a depth of about 45 m (148 ft) between Dover and Calais.
Huh. Well, how about that. I retract my opposition to the idea. I fully support building these things in vast numbers (as a way to revive the British manufacturing/steel production industry) and using them to haul drunken soccer hoodlums to The Continent. A capital notion, eh wot?
Drunk hoodlums don't need guns to defend themselves. But, then why are these guns needed? Guns are needed to guard five hundred tons of tea, one thousand tons of oatmeal and one thousand tons of gin and beer.
Sent to rain down shirt-based Manchester Unified or Arsenal Foosball Club propaganda onto the unwitting heads of the French and Belgians and whereever else Her Majestories Imperial Wheelimobiles may roam.
Alternatively: it's Warhammer 40K cosplay taken to an impressive level of excess.
There are more crazy military hardware projects out there than this landship. In Russia in 1916, an anonymous inventor proposed an all-terrain "propulsion device" on the basis of which he wanted to build various equipment, a self-propelled mine, a self-propelled machine gun, a self-propelled artillery gun, a self-propelled hangar (?!), As well as land battleships, with a crew of 2,400 to 5,000 person. In addition, this inventor proposed using a "propulsion device" for old ironclads. All this technique had to not only ride, but also swim.
In general, there were a lot of strange ideas in Russia at that time. Between 1900 and 1930, Russians seriously discussed psychotronic weapons, raising ideal soldiers, etc. Researchers Bekhterev, Barchenko, Durov and others believed that the capabilities of the brain are almost unlimited. I read an essay by Bekhterev about his experiments with telepathy, with a dog sitting inside a Faraday cage, he gave her commands by the power of his mind, the dog sometimes obeyed him. It was believed that special equipment could be made that would multiply the power of thought.This was to increase telepathic and telekinetic abilities. Hell yes, the Russians wanted to make Space Marines and Psykers.
Nizhny Novgorod, 1910. Attention to the coat of arms
The late 19th and early 20th centuries had a lot of whacko obsessions with spiritualism and telepathy and related nonsense. One wonders if there might be some relationship between crazy beliefs in the paranormal and crazy designs for bloated, impossible land weapons.
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I have something for that... sort of 
