Giant Wheeled Armoured cars and Giant Landships

[sferrin]

Hell yes, the Russians wanted to make Space Marines and Psykers.

The late 19th and early 20th centuries had a lot of whacko obsessiosn with spiritualism and telepathy and related nonsense. One wonders if there might be some relationshio between crazy beliefs in the paranormal and crazy designs for bloated, impossible land weapons.

Probably had more to do with people not knowing what wasn't possible. When you don't know anything anything seems possible.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Probably had more to do with people not knowing what wasn't possible. When you don't know anything anything seems possible.

Possibly. They were coming after a few decades of the Steam Revolution, and then all of a sudden the internal combustion engine was making the world look even more amazing. Throw in a little nonsense about radium, and there ya go... "anything is possible." An egg-shaped rolling fortress the size of a politicians ego? Sure, why not. A wheeled battleship the size of Godzillas bicycle? Sure, why not.

 

[SleeperService2]

Hell yes, the Russians wanted to make Space Marines and Psykers.

The late 19th and early 20th centuries had a lot of whacko obsessiosn with spiritualism and telepathy and related nonsense. One wonders if there might be some relationshio between crazy beliefs in the paranormal and crazy designs for bloated, impossible land weapons.

Probably had more to do with people not knowing what wasn't possible. When you don't know anything anything seems possible. (Green New Deal, UBI, getting rid of police, crystal therapy, etc.)

As I tell anybody who'll listen 'If people believe trickle down economics is real they'll believe anything.' The obvious problem with the 300 foot wheeled beast is that no thought has been given to the variation caused by tides or waves. However in the interests of National Defense and sunrise industries I suggest going to 400 foot wheels which would make this an eminently useful and practical vehicle. There should also be a flag pole so the Union Jack may be flown to clearly show others the provenance of this awesome creation.
Toodle Pip for now, it's time for a snifter before tiffin.

 

[uk 75]

being cheeky there was a big wheel Ferret

WarWheels.Net-Ferret Mk 4 "Big Wheel" Scout Car Index

Ferret Mk 4 "Big Wheel" Scout Car Index

www.warwheels.net

well not that big...

 

[Rhinocrates]

Avro's Big Wheel Minuteman launcher, already mentioned in other threads.

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/avro-canada-wheeled-projects.25901/

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/big-wheel-avro-mobile-minuteman-launcher.27792/

Not sure if a missile launcher can be grouped with vehicles meant for more direct styles of combat, but it's definitely a thing with wheels. Looks like it could have room for Spaceball One levels of amenities, or at least a gift shop.

 

[Rhinocrates]

Not a military vehicle, but perhaps a little more relevant than a mining truck, the Snow Cruiser:

There's a Massive Antarctic Exploration Vehicle Lost Somewhere at the Bottom of the World

Last seen in 1958, it was designed to travel 5000 miles and self-sustain for an entire year.

www.thedrive.com

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR0M7KjnJTE&t=2s&ab_channel=Calum


It did inspire the tracked Kharkovchankas, which were based on military chassis.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6R-h06IsJw&t=1822s&ab_channel=Calum

 

[Rhinocrates]

Not meant to go on land, but it's a ship, and it's got wheels.

Roller ship - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Dilandu]

To be precise; military committee discussed "Oboy" only once, and

Not meant to go on land, but it's a ship, and it's got wheels.

Hm, interesting question: was those rollers able to sustain the weight of the ship on land?

 

[Brickmuppet]

The wheels probably CAN sustain its weight on land. But the land can't.

 

[Grey Havoc]

Early Paper British Amphibious Tanks

Artist’s impression of the colossal WLT Type 1, drawn from the plans submitted by Mr Cargin. The unique pads on the tracks are extended on the leading edge of the tracks, and are changing their asp…

weaponsandwarfare.com

The government itself was alive to the idea of amphibious tanks. Throughout 1940 there was some thought going into the concept of amphibious tanks, their design and operation. Although some experiments had been carried out on submersible tanks, including a cruiser Mk I being modified to drive along under water and managing to operate in water ten-feet deep. Initially thoughts were of infantry tanks being submersible for river crossings and the like, and cruiser tanks being supported by flotation devices. For landings from the sea, submersible designs were less favoured, and the development moved away from submersion. One idea put forward was the concept of building ‘the battle landships of the Army’. These were seen more as boats with tracks and were in the 800-850-ton range. Lord William Douglas Weir, the man behind these ideas, pointed out that tracked machines of 1,200 tons already existed. With a warship’s level of armour they would be able to ignore field artillery and would crush any known obstacle.

 

[Pre_historyX]

Not a giant wheeled AC but it is very bizarre and have many wheels

The Renault SK

 

[Graham1973]

There is something about war which can tickle the dark recesses of the minds of even brilliant engineers and make them forgo all sense of reality or common sense. The Shuman ‘Superdreadnought’ is a particularly fine example of completely unrestrained thinking by any measure of cost, use, utility or reality, and really stands out as something approaching the acme of bad ideas for WW1. There were certainly plenty of terrible ideas at the time for equally or even bigger vehicles, but Shuman’s design stands out amongst them as the product not of some crazed madman, but of a well respected and distinguished engineer, someone who should have known better.

https://tanks-encyclopedia.com/schuman-superdreadnought/

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YDf91bZFSM

 

[dan_inbox]

Not a giant wheeled AC but it is very bizarre and have many wheels

The Renault SK was a 1928 concept for a "char sur roues", ie a tank on wheels

 

[robunos]

Looks to be similar to the Christie wheel/track tanks . . .

cheers,
Robin.

 

[fortrena]

The following may perhaps be of interest.

 

[kocovgoce]

Not meant to go on land, but it's a ship, and it's got wheels.

Roller ship - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

View attachment 642528

View attachment 642529

So this boat worked on the fact that the hull of the ship is those big wheels that rotate and cause a magnus effect and thus less friction

 

[Grey Havoc]

We used to have a thread on roller ships I think, not sure where the heck it has gone off to.

 

[kocovgoce]

We used to have a thread on roller ships I think, not sure where the heck it has gone off to.

Аn interesting concept of a ship that could still sail in shallow rivers, something like an amphibious vehicle.

 

[Bottleship]

Engineer Pavlov, 1943, amphibian "Universal war machine":


Lenght 25 m, height 3 m, wide 3 m, 100 ton. In the first drawing, only half of the "machine", cabs No. 1, 2, 3 and 4, cab No. 5 was the same as No. 3, cab No. 6 was the same as No. 2, cab No. 7 was similar to No. 1. Cab No. 4 was in the center and had four wheels, others cabs had two wheels. Two diesel generators were to be located in cab No. 4, with electric motors installed in each wheel. Armament of "full" car - four cannons, four large-caliber machine guns, two flamethrowers and several 7.62 mm machine guns. Range - 4000 km, speed - 100 kmph on road, 20 kmph on water.

Soldier Kuz'min, "Taran" ("Ram"), 1943, steam vehiche with 10-meter wheels with rubber tires, to 200 kmph:


Rybnikov, "Fast ram", 1943, 3-4 m "wheels", nothing is known about the armament, the author wrote that the task of the "tank" would be to ram the enemy's equipment, as well as the delivery of troops to the rear of the enemy:

 

[T. A. Gardner]

There was a version of the Le Tourneau tree crusher to armor and arm it for further use in Vietnam. This was a monstrous machine.

 

[T. A. Gardner]

There's also the Räumer S mine clearing vehicle the Germans prototyped:

 

[Bottleship]

From unknown Soviet magazine, landship (potential land battleship):

 

[World B4]

Redut apc, built on the MAZ-543 chassis, an armored command post that was prototyped by the USSR, can’t link it but check it out, it’s a really interesting concept. I found it when I googled “armed MAZ-543”

 

[Bottleship]

Two weird Russian patents - some kind of "wheeled-walking" tanks, one of them has an inflatable hull and Kevlar protection 40-80 mm thick:

Боевая машина

findpatent.ru

Транспортное средство

findpatent.ru

These should be quite large tanks, I think, up to 100 tons.

 

[publiusr]

Inflatable armor with chobham outer lining may have a place. Aniruddh Vashisth of the University of Washington found a new kind of carbon fiber that can be repeatedly healed with heat. But those inflates over hardened wood glued to ceramic, glued to metal. Light and fast.

 

[Bottleship]

Higgins 1955 transporter, full weight 118 t, load 30 t, 17.5 m lenght, 8.5 m wide, 1000 hp, speed: on wheels 14.5 kmph, on tracks 4.5 kmph, in water 11 kmph:

Once upon a time I saw a photo of a large wheeled chassis with a 155mm cannon that the Americans were testing. I can’t remember the name of the car, nor the company, nor the date, but it seemed to be the period of the Second World War. It seemed to be 4x4. Now I cannot find this car.

 

[Bottleship]

Naumov tank, 500 ton, lenght 12 m, wide 12 m, height 7.8 m, 55 kmph:

Naumov assumed that it would be possible to build such combat vehicles in the range from small ones with wheels 2-3 meters in diameter to giant land battleships, similar to an inverted icebreaker.

 

[Bottleship]

British drawings of one of wheeled tank projects:

 

[T. A. Gardner]

Higgins 1955 transporter, full weight 118 t, load 30 t, 17.5 m lenght, 8.5 m wide, 1000 hp, speed: on wheels 14.5 kmph, on tracks 4.5 kmph, in water 11 kmph:
View attachment 667678
Once upon a time I saw a photo of a large wheeled chassis with a 155mm cannon that the Americans were testing. I can’t remember the name of the car, nor the company, nor the date, but it seemed to be the period of the Second World War. It seemed to be 4x4. Now I cannot find this car.

The LARC-LX is in this category. A small number were built and in service from the early 50's to early 2000's. It's another LeTourneau product.

 

[Wavertree]

The Tank-tricycle Navrotsky

View attachment 640169

Information:

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.

Sources: https://en.topwar.ru/70007-bronevagony-v-trende.html

The Mendeleev "tank" was not a tank - it was a (sort-of, minimally) mobile armoured pillbox. I did some drawings prior to attempting a model of it, but all the perforations in the floor for the very large cylinder-based suspension meant that the floor would would collapse as the perforations basically made a tear-line around the edges of the floor!

 

[Grey Havoc]

https://en.topwar.ru/104798-proekty-sochlenennyh-tankov-boirault-train-blinde-franciya.html

 

[Bottleship]

Once upon a time I saw a photo of a large wheeled chassis with a 155mm cannon that the Americans were testing. I can’t remember the name of the car, nor the company, nor the date, but it seemed to be the period of the Second World War. It seemed to be 4x4. Now I cannot find this car.

LeTourneau 155 mm self-propelled gun, 1942:

 

[publiusr]

Higgins 1955 transporter, full weight 118 t, load 30 t, 17.5 m lenght, 8.5 m wide, 1000 hp, speed: on wheels 14.5 kmph, on tracks 4.5 kmph, in water 11 kmph:
View attachment 667678
Once upon a time I saw a photo of a large wheeled chassis with a 155mm cannon that the Americans were testing. I can’t remember the name of the car, nor the company, nor the date, but it seemed to be the period of the Second World War. It seemed to be 4x4. Now I cannot find this car.

The LARC-LX is in this category. A small number were built and in service from the early 50's to early 2000's. It's another LeTourneau product.

Soak up enemy fire…then when they reload…have the tank come out pristine

 

[dan_inbox]

The LARC-LX is in this category. A small number were built and in service from the early 50's to early 2000's. It's another LeTourneau product.

LARC-LX full designation was Lighter, Amphibious Resupply, Cargo, 60 ton. Originally named BARC: Barge, Amphibious Resupply, Cargo.
That is, it was a "lighter" in the Navy's sense, ie ship-to-shore vehicle. Not really a transporter meant to operate on land.

 

[Silencer1]

There was a version of the Le Tourneau tree crusher to armor and arm it for further use in Vietnam. This was a monstrous machine.

Reminds me "Indiana Jones Kingdom of The Crystal Skull Jungle Cutter" from the famous action movie
Here is the Hasbro' made toy:

 

[Nik]

FWIW, there are commercial add-ons for eg back-hoes specifically for bush-whacking...

 

[Orionblamblam]

FYI, I just made another financially unwise investment on ebay:



Anybody wants to help me recoup my costs and get a high-rez scan of this, send me a PM.

 

[lost_treasures]

Hell yes, the Russians wanted to make Space Marines and Psykers.

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.

I've always felt like those crazy tank designs relate to how novel the whole thing was. Tanks were new, they were efficient, and it looked like the most important characteristic for their use at the time were guns and armor, both of which improve as size goes up. So these proposals, while outlandish (no prototype has to account for the fact that they didn't deserve resources) actually followed a pretty straight forward logic. One can only wonder what would've happened if that logic had been vastly agreed upon...

 

[T. A. Gardner]

Seems no one has mentioned another of Churchill's follies, the land trenching tank "Nellie." These were intended for WW 1 use but none never saw actual combat. The idea was the vehicle would plow a deep, wide trench to the enemy position that would allow the infantry to follow and attack from. It's codename was "Cultivator Number 6."

Nellie the trench-digging tank revived for World War Two exhibit

The 100-tonne machine was admired by Winston Churchill, who watched them when they were tested.

www.bbc.com

Cultivator No. 6 - An Insane Trench-Digging Machine - Tank Historia

The Cultivator No. 6 was a mad, eccentric and undeniably British trench-digging machine invented in the early months of WWII. It went by many names, such

tankhistoria.com

Rear view

Front view

 

[T. A. Gardner]

And... while I was looking up that lunacy, I found this one...!

The Treffaswagen (Warel LW 3 version)

The Hansa-Lloyd version

Treffas-Wagen - Tank Encyclopedia

The Treffas-Wagen was a prototype wheeled armored vehicle developed by the Germans during World One, between 1916 and 1917.

tanks-encyclopedia.com