Okay, the Landkreuzer P.1000 “Ratte”—infamous 1000-ton [sic] supertank, proposed by Krupp for Germany during the Second World War…
And cancelled before construction by Albert Speer in 1943 as, as some might guess, it would have been completely impractical, a waste of resources, and overall crazy.
Something I’ve mused about, though, in my idle moments: are there any circumstances, no matter how exotic, where a “Ratte” would have been a notably effective war machine, even a halfway practical one?
The only thing I can personally think of is, perhaps, attacking a large, solidly fortified strongpoint, that has the ability to fire back, but somehow no effective air power that could threaten the Ratte. And also the side fielding the Ratte doesn’t have an effective bomber force, either.
So, maybe attacking the Cannon City from Otomo’s Memories, if it shows up. That’s one I guess.
Anyone else? Military scenarios that actually have, or could (even if barely), exist on this world would be super, if at all possible, but I’m willing to fudge it.
If you are willing to fudge it, then I would say the super tank could be effective in North Africa. So long as you kept a squadron of fighters above it for air cover. It might be able to move about and not get bogged down in the desert. The guns would destroy any approaching land forces pretty effectively since it could take advantage of their long range. I’m thinking of 1941 and 1942 which is also fudging the timeline too. Could be pretty useful in taking Tobruk.
Still, I don’t think it would be worth the resources and logistics. Even in this scenario I can think up counter strategies the British might use to neutralize it.
What could be the most valuable purpose of this super tank is psychological in instilling fear in the enemy and confidence in the German forces. Have it drive down the center of Berlin in a military parade and the crowds would love it. Then leak to the press that you have a hundred more like it ready to fight.
The thing would have been as wide as a modern 4-lane interstate, with no ability to cross bridges or be moved by anything other than its own power. That certainly limits its usefulness. But, maybe if it could be disassembled and reassembled on site, you could use it in the siege of a large city. Not that those really happen anymore, but if they did, you could plunk down the equivalent of a small battleship on the interstate outside a city and blast away, moving the massive thing occasionally as you needed to get positioned for different targets. I’m woefully ignorant of many of the details of WW2, but maybe it wouldn’t have been entirely useless in the Siege of Leningrad?
“The desert” might be all sand as far as the eye can see, but all sand is not created equal. The Sahara is infamous for its mess of fesh-fesh - unpredictable areas of very very fine sand that behaves almost like water and can’t be ID’d visually until you’re suddenly axle-deep in it.
Those patches move about with the wind. That’s why there have been marked trails and roads even the camel-driving locals follow, and have followed for thousands of years. You move away from those, you’re taking your life in your own hands. It’s a already a half-a-day pain in the nuts to get a truck out from a sandpit with shovels and planks ; I shudder to think the mess a kiloton tank would be in.
Also, the Sahara desert isn’t *really *all sand as far as the eye can see - there’s also lots of broken, rocky ground to be found. Joy on the suspensions and treads, that.
But, to answer the OP : no, there wasn’t. It was a really, really dumb project. Much like Schwerer Gustav, it’s only purpose was to exist as a giant dick-shaped metallic object waved in the world’s face.
I’ve read that Tiger tanks wound up basically becoming more mobile pill boxes than actual offensive vehicles in terms of just moving from preset position to preset position in a defensive line. There were also plans of putting disguised Tiger tanks along shore lines so they could engage light naval vessels and then scurry away and hide before any return fire. I can kind of see them being slightly effective during D-Day if you had one disguised and engaging the destroyers and landing craft at close range before a battleship could get coordinates on it.
In open warfare I don’t think it would have been useful in any realistic scenario since even given almost complete air supremacy, it is still such an important target that you’d have dedicated airplanes detailed just to take them out no matter what the cost (for instance, the night witches).
However, given this, for the Germans I only see it being useful in the Battle of Kursk, where you could have one or two of them in any given wedge, supporting the infantry in taking out bypassed strongpoints.
I think it would have been more useful (given the fanciful hypothetical of no air attacks) to the Soviets with their more flexible deep battle doctrine. Again, have one or two of them with every Army and attack along the entire front. They’d be flexible enough that you could hold them in back as a bulwark against counterattacks because you probably wouldn’t want that thing in your rear, or used to reduce strongpoints that you needed to take, or to plow forward to threaten the rear.
I’d imagine that the Allies would have just got a 8" naval gun and jury-rigged some kind of mounting (railroad gun?) and shot regular naval AP rounds at it. After all, it wouldn’t be that much different than a ship on land in terms of speed or armor.
Yes, that’s about it, because it couldn’t really be moved to any of the battlefields where it might have been useful.
There isn’t a bridge in Europe strong enough to support this behemoth crossing over. (And it couldn’t just cross a river – wouldn’t work underwater. Even assuming it didn’t get stuck in the river bottom mud.) Nor a dock strong enough to load it onto a ship to carry it somewhere that it might be useful. Even if they built special rail cars to carry it, it’s still far too wide to be carried on a railroad. And would probably damage the railbed more than any Allied bombing did.
They could have built it, and parked it out in front of the Ruhr factory. But couldn’t have even gotten it to Berlin to guard Hitler’s hideout.
Pretty much exactly like a ship, because the idea was to use battleship main gun turrets left over after planned refits.
I find it astonishing that its design speed is 40km/hr. It was supposed to have 16,000hp, but that doesn’t seem like it would be enough to propel 1000 tonnes at that speed. I’d also be rather surprised if it was possible to build a drivetrain to move something of that mass at that speed without breaking a lot. I mean, really big tracked vehicles are possible. This thing is actually puny compared to Bagger 288 (actually produced by Krupp, the same very same company that proposed the Landkreuzer), which tips the scales at 13,500t. However, its top speed is 0.6km/hr, which is going to result in somewhat lower loads on drivetrain components than 40km/hr.
Actually according to the wikipedia page, it was supposed to have snorkels for air intakes for the engines and enough clearance to ford any river it needed to cross. I’m not convinced this would actually work, but that was the stated plan.
Actually, the NASA crawler-transporter is roughly on the same scale as the “Ratte” in terms of size- a little longer, about twice as wide, and a lot heavier, but probably the closest thing overall.
So it’s doable, but I’d question whether it’s possible to make it 1/3 the weight and considerably faster, as well as lugging around all that armor, weaponry, ammo and crew.
It’s specifically the 40km/hr thing that I’m questioning, not whether a self-propelled tracked vehicle of that size is possible. The NASA transporter uses a lot less hp, too, but then it’s moving very slowly on a perfect concrete surface. The forces its drivetrain is subjected to are not even in the same ballpark as they’d be if it was bouncing over off-road terrain at 40km/hr.
That was included in the early designs for the US M! Abrams tank, also. As I recall, it didn’t work out well during testing. That’s also when they discovered that many river bottoms are covered by a thick layer of mud, which doesn’t provide much traction for their treads Especially when there is also a strong current running.
I believe current tank procedures is to not attempt to ford any rivers much over 1-1.5 meters deep.
I agree completely with your basic statement but I do have a nit I must pick. The crawler does not run on a smooth, concrete surface. Rather the roadbed is made of several feet of compressed gravel.
Engaging a destroyer with a tank would be a bad idea. No battleship needed. The destroyer has 4-6 guns, each larger than a tank gun, they reload faster, have more ammo, and more sophisticated fire control systems. The only advantage the tank has it’s size.
Beyond that, what would a, say… 88mm tank gun do to a destroyer exactly? I can’t help but think that it would mostly poke holes, but not necessarily deal a whole lot of damage.
Ah, but the Ratte’s gun is much larger than a destroyer’s gun. In fact, when I challenged my imagination to come up with use for the Ratte, this was it: a site that needed to be regularly defended against destroyers or even light cruisers and was subject to air attack or battleship bombardment, but not generally at the same time. In that situation, you could build a big protected bunker (like a submarine pen) that’s pretty resistant to even 1000lb bombs, next to an open flat firing platform. Park the Ratte inside (protected) until the destroyers show up, at which point open the door, drive the Ratte out and drop some 12inch shells on the poor destroyers. If a battleship or bomber shows up, park it back inside. I’m assuming that, since the Ratte is basically a battleship turret with treads, it could survive hits from the destroyers’ 5inch guns, and am very sure the Ratte’s gun would sink any destroyer it could hit.
I’m not necessarily saying the Ratte is the best solution for that circumstance, but it is a situation where if someone gave you a couple you might not immediately melt them down for scrap.