My Tank Is Fight!

[Susano]

I ordered this recently and have only skimmed it. However, that said, the number of crazy WWII inventions and/or ideas listed are amazing. 1000 to 1500-ton armored land "kruisers," an aircraft carrier made out of ice and sawdust, jet aircraft, a super-sonic bomber, personal helicopters, space stations... all you need to do is remove the word "Nazi" and replace it with mad scientist/criminal mastermind/world conqueror and you're all set.

[sinanju]

Re: My Tank Is Fight!

 

The Mythbusters tested the "ice and sawdust" ship idea on one episode. They built a small boat that way. It worked, actually, but in the real world, the effort involved in producing a carrier that way would have been impractical, even if you lacked the metals needed to build one the traditional way.

[st barbara]

Re: My Tank Is Fight!

 

The Mythbusters tested the "ice and sawdust" ship idea on one episode. They built a small boat that way. It worked' date=' actually, but in the real world, the effort involved in producing a carrier that way would have been impractical, even if you lacked the metals needed to build one the traditional way.[/quote']

 

I have problems with the way that was done on "Mythbusters". Did they actually produce "Pykrete" or simply a "best guess" approximation ? I saw something on "The Sea Hunters" once where they went to the place where the Canadians were experimenting with building a ship out of Pykrete. Most of what I read about the subject suggested that it was going to take too long and be too expensive to ever be practical.

[Vulcan]

Re: My Tank Is Fight!

 

The initial versions were pykrete to the best public specs (sawdust and ice). To the best of anything I have been able to find, that is all pykrete was.

 

The boat they did, however, was frozen newspaper. Worked fine until it started melting.

[Lucius]

Re: My Tank Is Fight!

 

The initial versions were pykrete to the best public specs (sawdust and ice). To the best of anything I have been able to find, that is all pykrete was.

 

Specifically, sea water ice if I recall correctly. I'm not a chemist or materiels scientist so I don't know how much difference it makes.

 

General "Hap" Arnold's biography, Global Mission, briefly mentions the project. It was discussed at a top secret Allied meeting in Canada, and the project's backer had a slab of the materiel brought in, covered up of course - it's a secret after all - and demonstrated its properties by discharging his pistol into it. The slab was covered with a sheet again and carried back out - past several junior officers who hadn't been standing there when it was brought in, but had heard the pistol shot.

 

Instant rumor! "My God, someone on the Combined Chiefs of Staff must have killed someone else on the Combined Chiefs of Staff!"

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary saw dust, and eyes.

[Old Man]

Re: My Tank Is Fight!

 

I have problems with the way that was done on "Mythbusters". Did they actually produce "Pykrete" or simply a "best guess" approximation ? I saw something on "The Sea Hunters" once where they went to the place where the Canadians were experimenting with building a ship out of Pykrete. Most of what I read about the subject suggested that it was going to take too long and be too expensive to ever be practical.

 

I have my doubts, if only because the fastest method I know for melting ice is to put it in flowing water.

[Yansuf]

Re: My Tank Is Fight!

 

I have my doubts' date=' if only because the fastest method I know for melting ice is to put it in flowing water.[/quote']

 

So icebergs melt quickly in the sea?

[Vulcan]

Re: My Tank Is Fight!

 

In addition, the Pykrete ship was intended to have big refrigeration coils built in to help keep it from melting.

 

And it was intended to operate in the rather cold waters of the north Atlantic.

[baronspam]

Re: My Tank Is Fight!

 

I have seen the pykrete mythbusters as well. The stuff does have seriously neat material properites, but he problem is that is does contain a significant amount of ice, and ice melts. Yes, icebergs take a long time to melt, but it is loosing mass and volume the entire time. A ship is mostly hollow space, not a solid chunk, The hull breaches somewhere, anywhere, and your are done. Keeping the hull cold and the living and working areas warm would probably be a logistical impossibility. The mythbusters boat did work great, and they got it up to fairly high speed, but it was coming appart and taking water in less than an hour. And building a ship you can't redeploy to somehwere warm, even if some elaborate system could keep it from melting in cold water, is just not practical.

[Susano]

Re: My Tank Is Fight!

 

In addition, the Pykrete ship was intended to have big refrigeration coils built in to help keep it from melting.

 

And it was intended to operate in the rather cold waters of the north Atlantic.

 

Pykrete was also supposed to melt really, really slowly.

[baronspam]

Re: My Tank Is Fight!

 

Pykrete was also supposed to melt really' date=' really slowly.[/quote']

 

There is some good information on this in Wikipedia. The british giant ice air craft carrier idea was called Project Habakkuk. Even building the ship out of ice, the designers still thought they would need a outside layer of insulation of some sort (they considered using cork) and also a referigeration system with a huge amount of pipe running all through the ice to keep it cold. It turns out that pykrete, although much stronger than normal ice, has an odd property that unless you keep it really, really cold it deforms under its own weight over time. Basically, the whole idea of using ice was to save on steel, which was in great demand, but once they figured in the insulation, the refigeration, the piping for the brine to keep the hull very cold, etc, it ended up using as much or more resources than just building a normal (if very big) ship.

 

There was also the fact that it was estimated that at best the huge ship would make 6 knotts under full steam. It would have been a bugger to maneuver and a bugger to defend. In the end, wiser heads declared the whole thing impractical.

[Clonus]

Re: My Tank Is Fight!

 

I have problems with the way that was done on "Mythbusters". Did they actually produce "Pykrete" or simply a "best guess" approximation ?

 

They did. It's not complicated stuff.

[Susano]

Re: My Tank Is Fight!

 

There is some good information on this in Wikipedia. The british giant ice air craft carrier idea was called Project Habakkuk. Even building the ship out of ice, the designers still thought they would need a outside layer of insulation of some sort (they considered using cork) and also a referigeration system with a huge amount of pipe running all through the ice to keep it cold. It turns out that pykrete, although much stronger than normal ice, has an odd property that unless you keep it really, really cold it deforms under its own weight over time. Basically, the whole idea of using ice was to save on steel, which was in great demand, but once they figured in the insulation, the refigeration, the piping for the brine to keep the hull very cold, etc, it ended up using as much or more resources than just building a normal (if very big) ship.

 

There was also the fact that it was estimated that at best the huge ship would make 6 knotts under full steam. It would have been a bugger to maneuver and a bugger to defend. In the end, wiser heads declared the whole thing impractical.

 

Impractical? In Pulp Hero? Perish the thought.

[baronspam]

Re: My Tank Is Fight!

 

I found a link http://modelshipworld.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?printertopic=1&t=5535&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&vote=viewresult&sid=043779172bdc04c36a7901a1d79a25b3

 

that has some sketches of the purposed bergship. The HMS Habbukkuk was designed at over 2 million tons displacement, a staggeringly huge vessle. That is roughly 20 times the size of modern aircraft carrier. It would have absolutly dwarfed the carriers of the day.

 

Interestingly enough, one of the solutions to the Atlantic air gap, other than getting Portugal to let us put an airbase in the Azores, was not a giant aircraft carrier, but a lot of really small ones. While the British were designing their floating island, the Americans came up with something called an Escort Carrier. It was built on the same hull as a Liberty Ship, a type of freighter, and carried only about one third the aircraft of the big capital aircraft carriers, but the Americans were able to build them in larger numbers. By the end of the war there were more than 100 carriers in the American navy, most of them these small Escort Carriers.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: My Tank Is Fight!

 

It's about 900 miles from Cape Farewell to the Azores. Anything that could be accomplished from bases on the Azores could have been accomplished by bases in southern Greenland, except, of course, for the weather. But that brings up the key point that Atlantic distances were not that daunting. The modified Wellesley that set the world record distance in 1938 could have practically circled a convoy while it crossed from Halifax to the Western Approaches, and the original version of the wartime Commonwealth basic trainer flew London--New York in 1933. The standard maritime patrol aircraft of 1939 were perfectly capable of patrolling what some historians call the "air gap."

 

There are two problems here. First, there certainly was a weather gap in the calendar. Planes had trouble flying over the mid-Atlantic in November--March, particularly east---west due to prevailing winds, and weren't much use when they could due to visibility issues. The second is that in the early 1950s, the Royal Navy launched one last publicity offensive for control of British maritime air patrol resources. Stephen Roskill, a brilliant staff officer never overly troubled by the whole concept of historical accuracy when an argument stood to be won, received a commission to publish a "history of the Royal Navy in the war" as part of the British official history project. (To put this in perspective, other series in the official history integrate naval, air, and land operations into the same narrative. So there is a comprehensive treatment of the war at sea in the Mediterranean scattered through the 7 volumes of Mediterranean and the Middle East that is, understandably, far more comprehensive than what Roskill accomplishes in 2.) There was also a draft history of the Battle of the Atlantic by the Admiralty Historical Branch that was finally published a few years ago. Roskill ignored all of this in order to provide his own treatment, one of the themes of which was, "oh noes, teh air force ruined everything." He was brusquely called out on his facts in the Journal of the Royal United Services Institute in the 1950s, but ignored the corrections, because "what actually happened" wasn't high on his agenda. Unfortunately, far too many military historians are barely deserving of the title, and all of this has been ignored.

 

Now, on the subject of escort carriers, I certainly don't want to denigrate their value in ASW operations. But the thing that lifted the escort carrier concept (far from a new idea in 1939) into reality was German air attacks on the Gibraltar convoys. The pioneering voyage of HMS Audacity demonstrated that aircraft were good at keeping submarines down, and thus breaking convoy contacts. This led to the commissioning of many American escort carriers and British Merchant Aircraft Carriers, which appeared on the convoy routes in 1943--45 and were a holy terror to U-Boat captains. But that wasn't the "solution to the U-boat problem." A case can be made that the real solution of a crisis that blew up in the winter of 1942/3 was the spring of 1943. That being said, between the decryption of Naval Enigma and the general deployment of HF/DF, German Atlantic Command's whole warfighting formula was destroyed. Without centralised information sharing, Type 7 "wolf packs" couldn't intercept convoys, and without that, the German submarine force was reduced to an attritional weapon.

 

As for the very large force of American-built escort carriers, they were mostly used in the Pacific as ferry carriers. Some did find frontline deployment as "assault carriers," operating fighters and lightly laden bombers, but this was because, between short decks and lack of catapults and speed, they really weren't suitable for fleet carrier operations. You get what you pay for.

[baronspam]

Re: My Tank Is Fight!

 

Lawnmower Boy-

 

Please note I said one of the solutions, not "the solution". Clearly there were many facets to the allied victory in the atlantic, including improving ASW technology, improving tactics, and the increasing ability to at least some of the time read the german communications as the war progressed.

 

But my point was the whole "artifical island" idea was moot, they had a real island they could put an airbase on, and instead of one or a very few massive aircraft carriers it actually turned out to be much more praictical to build large numbers of small ones. Most people think of carriers at the ultimate capital ship, and that in WWII we had a handfull of them. Like I said, the American navy alone had over 100 by the end of the war, most of them these small "Escort Carriers". I was trying to provide some context to the giant ice aricraft carrier issue, not a systematic understand of the battle of the atlantic.

[megaplayboy]

Re: My Tank Is Fight!

 

I ordered this recently and have only skimmed it. However' date=' that said, the number of crazy WWII inventions and/or ideas listed are amazing. 1000 to 1500 armored land "kruisers," an aircraft carrier made out of ice and sawdust, jet aircraft, a super-sonic bomber, personal helicopters, space stations... all you need to do is remove the word "Nazi" and replace it with mad scientist/criminal mastermind/world conqueror and you're all set.[/quote']

 

The Ratte/aka P-1000 is an awesomely impractical concept--mounting twin 11 inch cannon, a 128mm "secondary" anti-tank gun, and multiple 20 mm anti-aircraft guns. It would have had ludicrous(front hull and turret up to 12 inches of sloped armor!) defenses, and been slow as molasses(they were shooting for 12mph, but in practice I'm betting it would be half that...if it didn't sink into the earth...and you pretty much couldn't dare drive through mud.) It also would have needed at least a company of anti-aircraft vehicles (and possibly a dozen fighters) to protect it from air attack, too. Plus it would have needed some mechanized infantry and tanks to keep it from being swarmed up close.

All that said, I think the average Allied soldier would soil themself if they saw one of them on the horizon.

[Susano]

Re: My Tank Is Fight!

 

Lawnmower Boy-

 

Please note I said one of the solutions, not "the solution". Clearly there were many facets to the allied victory in the atlantic, including improving ASW technology, improving tactics, and the increasing ability to at least some of the time read the german communications as the war progressed.

 

But my point was the whole "artifical island" idea was moot, they had a real island they could put an airbase on, and instead of one or a very few massive aircraft carriers it actually turned out to be much more praictical to build large numbers of small ones. Most people think of carriers at the ultimate capital ship, and that in WWII we had a handfull of them. Like I said, the American navy alone had over 100 by the end of the war, most of them these small "Escort Carriers". I was trying to provide some context to the giant ice aricraft carrier issue, not a systematic understand of the battle of the atlantic.

 

But... but... it's a giant aircraft carrier made out of ICE! That can launch B-17s! And... and... can't be sunk!

 

*sob*

[Tasha]

Re: My Tank Is Fight!

 

The Ratte/aka P-1000 is an awesomely impractical concept--mounting twin 11 inch cannon, a 128mm "secondary" anti-tank gun, and multiple 20 mm anti-aircraft guns. It would have had ludicrous(front hull and turret up to 12 inches of sloped armor!) defenses, and been slow as molasses(they were shooting for 12mph, but in practice I'm betting it would be half that...if it didn't sink into the earth...and you pretty much couldn't dare drive through mud.) It also would have needed at least a company of anti-aircraft vehicles (and possibly a dozen fighters) to protect it from air attack, too. Plus it would have needed some mechanized infantry and tanks to keep it from being swarmed up close.

All that said, I think the average Allied soldier would soil themself if they saw one of them on the horizon.

 

And some GEV's... It's basically an Ogre Mk 1 (the Maus being a mk .5). The smaller Maus could move at 8.1 MPH, but they never found an engine large enough to power the Ratte. There were 2 or 3 prototype Maus created. One survives in a Russian War Museum. What would have been cool if if they could have built a tank chassis that could mount those huge Railroad guns. THAT would have been a frightning tank.

[Susano]

Re: My Tank Is Fight!

 

I as understand it, two Maus were made. At least one saw a little combat, but fell into a cellar and was abandoned. It ended up in the Russian war museum.

 

I have a Maus here: http://surbrook.devermore.net/adaptationsvehicles/militaryground/ww2/germany/panzer8.html

[megaplayboy]

Re: My Tank Is Fight!

 

And some GEV's... It's basically an Ogre Mk 1 (the Maus being a mk .5). The smaller Maus could move at 8.1 MPH' date=' but they never found an engine large enough to power the Ratte. There were 2 or 3 prototype Maus created. One survives in a Russian War Museum. What would have been cool if if they could have built a tank chassis that could mount those huge Railroad guns. THAT would have been a frightning tank.[/quote']

 

The funny thing is, you could probably build something like that today...akin to the Mammoth tank in the Command and Conquer series. Much more powerful and compact engines available today. A couple big guns(155 or 175 or 203mm) with an autoloader, a couple large multi-purpose missile launchers(can be loaded with anti-air, anti-vehicular/structure or anti-personnel), massive composite and reactive armoring(and even some kind of active denial system to shoot down or otherwise defeat incoming projectiles), and a top speed in the 20-30mph range. It would weigh a few hundred tons(at least) and only transportable by rail or by sea, but it would certainly be a formidable presence on a battlefield.

[Susano]

Re: My Tank Is Fight!

 

The funny thing is' date=' you could probably build something like that today...akin to the Mammoth tank in the Command and Conquer series. Much more powerful and compact engines available today. A couple big guns(155 or 175 or 203mm) with an autoloader, a couple large multi-purpose missile launchers(can be loaded with anti-air, anti-vehicular/structure or anti-personnel), massive composite and reactive armoring(and even some kind of active denial system to shoot down or otherwise defeat incoming projectiles), and a top speed in the 20-30mph range. It would weigh a few hundred tons(at least) and only transportable by rail or by sea, but it would certainly be a formidable presence on a battlefield.[/quote']

 

Until attack copters or an A-10 showed up.

[megaplayboy]

Re: My Tank Is Fight!

 

Until attack copters or an A-10 showed up.

 

That's what the sophisticated passive radar/IR and SAM missile racks are for. Whoever shoots first, wins. Actually, if you made the top armor thick enough, it might even survive a hit from a Hellfire. Not a Maverick, obviously.

 

Heck, if the tank's big enough, you could even mount a Phalanx-style CIWS on there.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: My Tank Is Fight!

 

That's what the sophisticated passive radar/IR and SAM missile racks are for. Whoever shoots first, wins. Actually, if you made the top armor thick enough, it might even survive a hit from a Hellfire. Not a Maverick, obviously.

 

Heck, if the tank's big enough, you could even mount a Phalanx-style CIWS on there.

this is an example of a good application for the Metalstorm type weapons. Taking out most of the mechanical systems saves weight and space, I even a superheavy prolly won't need as much active defense as a ship.

[Tasha]

Re: My Tank Is Fight!

 

I as understand it, two Maus were made. At least one saw a little combat, but fell into a cellar and was abandoned. It ended up in the Russian war museum.

 

I have a Maus here: http://surbrook.devermore.net/adaptationsvehicles/militaryground/ww2/germany/panzer8.html

 

The Maus that is in the russian Museum is a chimera of both Maus prototypes. Also the production verison was to be a Diesel electric. With electic motors moving the tracks and the diesel engine driving an alternator.

 

From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maus_tank

The working Maus prototypes remained at Kummersdorf and at the proving grounds in Böblingen. In the last weeks of the war the V1 with the dummy turret was captured by the advancing Soviet forces in the vicinity of the western batteries of the Kummersdorf artillery firing grounds. It had been thought to be mechanically sabotaged by the Germans before abandoning it. Some sources state that the Panzerkampfwagen VIII saw combat while defending the facility at Kummersdorf, although the popular version is that it did not.[3]

The Soviet Commander of Armored and Mechanized troops ordered the hull of V1 to be mated with the turret of V2. The Soviets used six 18t German half-tracks to pull the 55 ton turret off the burnt-out hull. The combined V1 hull/V2 turret vehicle was completed in Germany and sent back to the USSR for further testing. It arrived there on May 4, 1946. When further testing was completed the vehicle was taken over by the Kubinka Tank Museum for storage where it is now on display.

It appears that the capture of this prototype had little impact on post-war Soviet tank development. Soviet tank design continued to concentrate on maneuverability by strictly limiting size and weight. The next-generation Soviet tanks had similar levels of protection and armament. The IS-3 heavy tank was armed with a 122 mm gun, but weighed under 50 tonnes. The T-54 main battle tank, which started production in 1947, provided 200 mm of frontal turret armor, 100 mm of frontal hull armor and a 100 mm main gun, while weighing in at slightly less than 40 tons.