Forgotten Weapons of History #1 - The "Ratte" Tank

thedevilape (45)in #war • 7 years ago (edited)

Welcome everybody! To one of my new series, where we discuss interesting military equipment, vehicles, and technology. We're going to start this series with the biggest tank ever made. So let's get started!

How it all started.

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During the 1940s, Hitler was obsessed with Super Weapons. From Super Sonic Rockets to Jet Aircrafts, Hitler wan't things to always be bigger. So June, 1942, A project was proposed by the director of Krupp, Edward Grotte. He submitted designs and drawings of a 1000 Ton Super Tank. He named it "LandKreuzer", Hitler was intrigued and approved the project, Later renaming it to "Ratte" which means Rat in german.

Dimensions, Weaponry, and Armor of the Ratte.

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This Tank was HUGE! Standing at 11 Meters (36ft) Tall and was 35 Meters (115ft) long. It was 5 times heavier than the previous model Panzer VII "Maus", weighting around 1000 Metric Tonnes. It was armed with two 240 MM Guns, One 120 MM Gun, Eight 20 MM Guns and Two 15 MM Guns. These Tanks were planned to hold a crew of 20 Men or as many as 40. It was also Armored with 360 mm(14.2 Inches) of Steel and had an Engine of 17,000 HP and had a maximum speed of 40 KM/h(25 mph).

So what happened to it?

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The Project was canceled in 1943 by the Minister of Armaments. It was deemed to Big and Useless and the Nazis didn't have the resources
available to go through with it. The Ratte also had problems crossing bridges, since it was heavy as hell and also was a easy target for artillery attacks. There were plans to make a prototype but they never made it.

** Thank you for reading guys! Please leave your thoughts on the comments down below and if you liked this post please Up-vote it! It would really help**

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Want to know more? Check out these Articles!

1.The Panzer 1000

2.Hitler's Super Tank: The Ratte

3.The History of Krupp

#history #weapons #whalepower #yunk

7 years ago in #war by thedevilape (45)

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paladin43 (36) 7 years ago

Hitler was obsessed with big projects. His army would of been better served making easy to manufacture equipment with simple designs. In many respects WWII was a war of attrition. The more equipment you could produce, the more you can replace equipment that has been knocked out. If a tank such as this were to be build, it would not have lasted long in battle. It would have likely be knocked out by aircraft or would have gotten stuck or experience mechanical breakdown. A great example of this was the German battleship the Bismark . One of the largest battleships of its day, this ship was sunk on its first combat voyage. This ship was never replaced. It took years to build and all the lives and material lost was irreplaceable. Another example was the 800mm Gustav Gun. This artillery piece had to be transported by rail and took months to assemble on site. This gun took thousands of personnel to operate and assemble. These beasts are only good for maybe one-time use applications, then they are out of commission. The allies benefited from Hitler's bad decision making as these ideas wasted Germany's resources. I think we often see images of the tiger tank ant think this represented German armor. But in reality, allies engaging tiger tanks was relatively rare. Because of the cost and complexity of building the tiger tank, only roughly 1500 were ever produced. compare that with roughly 60,000 Soviet t-34 tanks and over 40,000 US Sherman tanks.

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