TIL that Hitler approved the construction of a supertank weighing 1,000 tons, over 100 feet long, with a main gun repurposed from the deck gun of a battleship.
TIL that Hitler approved the construction of a supertank weighing 1,000 tons, over 100 feet long, with a main gun repurposed from the deck gun of a battleship.
Its arguable that a significant part of the defeat of the Germans on the Eastern Front was due to the Germans loving to over-engineer things. Especially tanks. And had an obsession with having big guns on them. To the point they could only go 5-10 mph and if anything broke on it it would have to go back to Germany because the design was so weird/complex. Cant remember if it was the Rat or not, but there was even a tank where if you wanted to shoot the cannon somebody had to get out and unbolt it from the hull because it was so big it made it unwieldy to drive.
Meanwhile Soviets just said “Haha T-34 factory go brrrr”, and was easy enough to make and use that there are stories of workers completing the tanks and driving them straight to the front. Illiterate farmer Vasily from the Urals could help weld on parts and then go take part in the fight.
A video that I commonly direct people to for a good overview of tank production in WW2 is here.
While the mainstay German tanks like Panzer III and Panzer IVs were not strictly speaking overengineered, they did suffer from the German production pipeline not being properly industrialized or designed for scale.
The Soviets quickly adopted and adapted to copy the American production line concepts, with the modification that factories were centralized rather than relying on very much secondary production. For a nation without a large pre-existing automobile industry, the logistical achievement was impressive.
T-34s, especially wartime production T-34s were not great tanks. They did enough to blunt some of the fighting, but the undersung hero of tank combat in WW2 were old fashioned anti-tank guns, which while far less exciting than tanks battles, took out more tanks than enemy tanks did.
There is really no production choice the Germans could have made in the mid war that would have turned the tide. They simply hadn’t started the war with the appropriate factories and their ability to build those factories continually degraded. There were too many cooks in the kitchen regarding tank production, so even if an individual did come up with a great plan to restructure production, it would be mired in the factional infighting of the German military.
While there are stories of workers T-34s driving straight from sieged factories onto the battlefield, I’ll emphasize the fact that those are stories, and are apocryphal at best. The Soviet Union after WW2 was very eager to spread aggrandizing stories about the great fight.
T-34s, especially wartime production T-34s were not great tanks.
They were good enough that they completely outclassed the Panzer III and IV that were sent against them at the start.
"The Panzer IV was partially succeeded by the Panther medium tank, which was introduced to counter the Soviet T-34, " https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_IV
"a direct reaction to the encounters with the Soviet T-34 and KV-1 tanks and against the advice of Wa Prüf 6.[Notes 1][12] The T-34 outclassed the existing models of the Panzer III and IV.[13][14] At the insistence of General Heinz Guderian, a special tank commission was created to assess the T-34"
They sure loved their super weapons.
It was probably a factor, but I don’t think a significant one. You could make the argument that if they made more mass-producible armor that they could have put more on the front, but that would have likely further strained the serious supply line issues they were facing. They also were hurting for industrial materials and fuel, so just building more wasn’t really in the cards.
It was, especially by mid-war a no win scenario for German tank production. They could mass produce only Panzer IIIs and run out of material and importantly crews, or they could swing heavy into making super tanks and not have enough of them to do anything of value.
Both were bad choices that couldn’t be fixed by engineers.
Someone just now hearing about the ratte again?
checks link
Yep. Vehicle who's value was less than the paper they wasted writing it on.
The first time I heard about this thing was when one of the SomethingAwful crew obsessed over it. And I genuinely couldn't tell at the time if it was actual history or if he was just making shit up. Because I didn't hear anything about it for another 20 years. Until this moment.
I've heardthe rule about people just learning about things others consider everyday so it's not shocking to see it here jusat...idk odd that people who see it don't also see the mountain of "yeah but it's a design with zero practicality"
Such a creation is a fun thought experiment for how nightmarish logistics would be for it. From repairs and ammunition to protection and what its use-case would even be to justify the expense. Probably some Death Star level uselessness whose sole purpose isto exist and MAY threaten to cities. Makes me wonder why it has never appeared in a Wolfenstein game, as steeped in myth as the thing is.
Huge wonder weapons were a way for engineers or technically inclined people to get out of front line service while also largely not needing to actually deliver anything.
Meth. Not even once.
Metal gear?
Good start but needs more legs and more nukes tho
More like Sniper Elite 3. The last level has you collapsing a secret base to destroy the unfinished prototype of this beast.
Warhammer 40k has entered the chat…
The Nazis had a thing for gigantic stuff - just look at the ways Speer wanted to transform Berlin…
Speer was the one who actually vetoed the Ratte supertank. Also, check out this entertaining bit from the discussion of the Maus supertank, of which a couple prototypes actually did get built:
"It had the same design flaw that made the Elefant unsuitable for close combat. In the end, the tank will inevitably have to wage a close combat since it operates in cooperation with the infantry. An intense debate started, and except for me, all of the present found the 'Maus' magnificent." -Heinz Guderian
I liked Guderian and Speer both. They seemed sensible.
Now that's a landship! I wonder what kind of fuel economy you'd get in that thing. Not great in the city probably.
The smaller edition which weighed 188 tons and which they did actually build a couple prototypes of, had a for-real problem that it was difficult to find a motor powerful enough to drive the thing but small enough to fit inside it. It wound up going 8 mph.
They probably would have gone with jet engines in the end.
Accordingly, some historians believe the P.1000 Ratte diagram to be either a hoax, or alternatively a speculative engineer's sketch made for personal amusement.
I'd be inclined to believe this. There's no way the Ratte was ever a serious concept that they believed they could actually build.
Depends who you mean by "they" in "they believed they could actually build," I think.