Tank Oddities – Part 1

 

Tank Oddities – Part 1

By Chief Mac – 26 June 2023

These are some of the oddest tanks ever thought of and I have fun with them. There will be a few parts to this.

The Tsar Tank

The Tsar Tank (Russian: Царь-танк, transcription: Tsar'-tank), also known as the Netopyr' (Russian: Нетопырь, which stands for Pipistrellus a genus of bat) or Lebedenko Tank (Russian: танк Лебеденко), was a Russian armoured vehicle developed by Nikolai Lebedenko, Nikolay Yegorovich Zhukovsky, Boris Stechkin, and Alexander Mikulin from 1914 onwards. The project was cancelled in 1915 after initial tests deemed the vehicle to be underpowered and vulnerable to artillery fire.

The Tsar Tank differed from modern tanks in that it did not use caterpillar tracks—rather, it used a tricycle design. The two front spoked wheels were nearly 9 metres (30 ft) in diameter, and the rear-mounted third wheel was only 1.5 metres (5 ft) high. According to the memoirs of Lebedenko, the idea of this machine was prompted by Turkic povozki carts, which, thanks to large diameter wheels, were able to easily traverse bumps and ditches. The upper cannon turret reached a height of nearly 8 metres (26 ft). The hull was 12 metres (39 ft) wide with two more cannon in sponsons. Additional weapons were also planned under the belly. Each wheel was powered by a 240 hp Maybach engine. Each engine drove a car wheel which transferred power to a matching giant wheel by being pressed against its rim. The design had a top speed of 10 mph.

It does hold the record for the tallest tank ever built.

 

Hovercraft Tank

In the 1930s, when the first amphibious tanks and hovercrafts materialized, Soviet designers came up with the idea of creating the ideal combat vehicle, able to overcome desserts, ice, deep snow, rivers, and swamps.

The amphibious hovering tank was based on the world's first hovercraft L-1. It was planned to be 10-meters long, have two crew, and one machinegun.

However, the project was abandoned due to unknown reasons. At the same time, plans for the first Soviet hovering armored vehicle were also scrapped.

Obiekt 279, or Object 279

This Soviet heavy tank looks more like a UFO mounted on the two pairs of tracks. The unique “Object 279” was designed by the Soviets in the late 1950s to participate in nuclear warfare.

Its unusual ellipsoidal form prevented the tank from overturning following, for example, a strong shockwave from a nuclear blast.

However, due to numerous technical failures the project was frozen. Only one tank was built, which now sits in the Kubinka Tank Museum in the Moscow Region.

 

Praying Mantis Tank

The Praying Mantis tank was an attempted variant of the Universal Carrier, the British armored tracked vehicle introduced in 1940 for transporting support equipment and personnel. The Mantis was an attempt to produce an armored vehicle that could fire over obstacles. Initially, it was designed to carry just one person.

A two-man version appeared in 1943. An enclosed metal box structure replaced its hull. The box structure is pivoted at the rear of the vehicle and a driver and a gunner lay down in it. The structure could be elevated too and on top of it was a machine gun turret fitted with two Bren light machine guns.

The idea was to drive the Praying Mantis up to hedgerow or a wall, raise the gun and fire over the barrier from a safe position. After trials, it was rejected in 1944.

It was the second tallest tank.

Tricycle Tank, Mine Exploder T10

M4 Sherman medium tanks were the most numerous battle tanks used by the US and some western allies during WWII. Its productions continued from 1941 to 1945 and 49,234 units were produced. M4 Sherman tank had several variants and there were some M4 Sherman-based vehicles including the Mine Exploder T10. It was a remote controlled unit.

Its underside was thickened with 25mm steel and the sides were adapted to give room for the huge 96-inch wheels. The rear wheel had a diameter of 72 inches. It weighed 116,400 lbs and could attain a maximum speed of 3kmph while clearing mines and 10kmph on a clear road. The T10 was tested in 1944 but was rejected due to its heavy weight and related drawbacks.

Firefighting Tank, Hurricane T-55

The Soviet T-54 and T-55 tanks have been in service since 1946 until today. 86,000 to 100,000 tanks of the T-54/55 tank series have been produced, making it the most produced tank series in history. As many as 50 countries, official and un-official armed forces have been using T-55 tanks. Hurricane T-55 is a modified version of T-55 built to fight large-scale oil fire. T-55 chassis was used. But its turret was replaced with a MIG-21 jet engine mount and multiple water nozzles.

Fire extinguishing was done in ‘aerosol method’. It worked by finely atomizing water with the help of jet engine. Water was delivered in the exhaust plume of the jet engine. Water became atomized by the exhaust gas stream and it was launched to a long distance. Cooling effect could be achieved in a range of around 100m.

Bridge Tank, Boirault machine

The French experimental landship to drive over the trenches of Western Front during WWI was named after its designer Boirault. It is considered as one of several interesting ancestors of the tank. It was in fact, described as the rhomboid shaped skeleton tank that had a single overhead tank and no armor.

The objective of the Boirault machine was to flatten barbed wired defenses and to ride over trenches and gaps in a battlefield. It was made of huge parallel tracks formed by metallic frames with transverse beams. It was a single track covering the entire width of the machine, rotating around a single triangular center with an 80 hp petrol engine, chains and rods.

Only one unit was built and it had a speed of 3 kph. The project was officially abandoned due to the bridge tank being too fragile and slow. It also couldn’t change direction easily and was nicknamed Diplodocus Militaris after the Diplodocus dinosaur. Within six months of production of this vehicle, the Little Willie prototype of British Mark I tank was developed.

DD tank

How about a tank that floats? DD or Duplex Drive tanks, nicknamed "Donald Duck tanks", were a type of amphibious swimming tank developed by the British during the Second World War. The phrase is mostly used for the Duplex Drive variant of the M4 Sherman medium tank, that was used by the Western Allies during and after the Normandy Landings in June 1944.

DD tanks worked by erecting a canvas 'flotation screen' around the tank, which enabled it to float in water. DD tanks would use propellers to move forward through water, then lower the flotation screens once they had reached land and fight as an ordinary tank.

The DD tanks were one of the many specialized assault vehicles, collectively known as Hobart's Funnies, devised to support the planned invasion of Europe.

Tauchpanzer (Submersible Tank)

And when you can’t swim you drive on the bottom of the ocean. Conversion to submersible tanks was done to both Pz Kpfw III and Pz Kpfw IV tanks.

The submersible tanks had all the external openings sealed with a waterproof compound and the space between the turret and the hull was made tight using an inflatable rubber loop. Rubber caps covered the commander's cupola, the gun mantlet and the hull machine-gun of hull. These could be removed from inside using an electric detonator. The driver's visor was made watertight using a special metal cover with a vision block.

Air was provided to the engine by a flexible 18m long 20cm diameter "snorchel" pipe with an attached buoy, which held it on the surface of the water, allowing a maximum operating depth of 15m. The buoy also mounted the wireless antenna. The exhaust fumes exited the tank through by a large vertical pipe with a non-return valve. To pump out water that could enter the tank, an additional evacuation pump was installed. The crew members had individual breathing aids borrowed from the submariners.

 

The tank could operate under water for 20 minutes and had a maximum submerged speed of 6km/h.

 

Ball Tank, Kugelpanzer

Kugelpanzer literally means ‘spherical tank’. Built by the Nazis during the WWII, it was a one-man reconnaissance tank prototype with an armored shell and viewpoint. It was one of the most bizarre armored fighting vehicles ever built. One unit could be found today at Kubinka Tank Museum in Russia as part of their collection of German armored vehicles.

The driving mechanism had been removed from the vehicle by the authorities. It is assumed that an engine was mounted behind or under the operator. A small directional wheel was installed at the rear to steer two circular tracks fitted to the sides of the sphere. The Ball Tank might not have been intended to be a platform for offensive weapons.

It could have been possibly used for laying cables during the war. Another rolling armored vehicle prototype was built by Germany earlier during the WWI called ‘Hansa-Lloyd Bremen Treffaswagen’ which reportedly had two guns or a cannon fitted to it.

This is the smallest tank ever built

This page was compiled and posted by Chief Mac, 06/26/23