How Did The World's Biggest Tank Work?

this is crazy man

Or possibly simply they would have been a monstrous waste of time, money and manpower by the third reich, knocked out roughly six or seven tanks and subsequently been carpet bombed into oblivion by the RAF.

The Germans should never have bothered with any tank heavier than the Panther. It was as effective as the Tiger, more mobile and considerably cheaper, though it was expensive and complex in it's own right.

It was also highly awesome.

but germany was pulling back and were on the defensive and a slow moving tank or tank destroyer (like the Jagdtiger or Tiger2) was just what they needed. the Pz.V was a great tank, but was outgunned later in the war by the heavier russian tanks (Is-2).
the germans came to their senses in the end and canceled the project before the end of the war, although it would have been quite a sight if they'd finished the thing

Yeah ,but it adds respect to the German war machine doesn it.

I bet a Landkreuzer P. 1500 Monster could knock out a whole division of Allied tanks, but I wonder what the effect would be if this monster-tank was attacked by experimental tanks like the T-28 Super Heavy Tank.

Too bad Hitler never succeeded in finishing that tank.
It would have been an awesome tankbattle.

We would have dropped an atom bomb on it, lol!

What about the Russian tricicle tank built in 1915? Designed by Lebedenko, it weighed some 40tonnes; the forward wheels were almost of 10m in diameter!

See http://wio.ru/tank/ww1tank.htm

Hitler should have waited to start the war in 1948 or 1950 since the Maus and Landkreuzer would have been ready or even better idea. Build mother******* jets!

I have to say that the rat is not the biggest tank in history
The biggest one is the german "Monster" wich was never finished
It was equipped with one the worlds largest cannons "Dora" or "Schwerer Gustav"
Google it if you want to know more.

What do u think the article is on. The monster duh. By the way Maus means mouse not rat.

From what little I know of the Ratte's design it could of held off quite a few RAF planes with its AA guns and the top armor would of been heavy enough to withstand quite a pounding, yes it probably would of been blown up by a carpet bombing after an HOUR OR SO. But think of the damage it could cause, it could probably crush a half-track and with those guns it could lay artillery fire, once it actually entered combat? Try manuvering around THAT terrain after a few shells hit the ground.

Think about why these tanks never reached the production lines or never got beyond the design phase. the cost of material and man power to produce one of these would equal to over a division of in service tanks which were already more than a match for opposition armoured vehicles. Other points are, supply lines for fuel and ammunittion, It may be a fortress but it would consume fuel by the drum load per minute, without proper supply it would become a sitting pile of metal. So all the opposition would have to do would be to to cut the supply lines . And the other major reason why they were scraped was movement, No roads or bridges would have been able to support them they would have sunk in winter months, Yes I know they planned to use snorkels and go under water to cross rivers, but what happens if you get bogged or break down under water, the tank then sits there until it is recovered.
To M. Cyrus who say's that Landkreuzer P. 1500 could knock out an entire division of allied tanks . Think about it would they really go up against it or use their speed advantage of 3 times its speed, to easily out manouver it and find a target of better oppurtunity.
Also large anti tank mines at the time would have worked a treat on its tracks as due to its size its path would have been easy to predict and mined, and due to its weight mine's could have been buried a lot deeper to avoid detection, and also set to go off at a greater weight so as not to goff on small escorting armoured vehicles.
That just my opinions having worked with armoured vehicles

A very speculative article at best. To be fair, all these designs were actually put onto paper at one stage or another. One of the only ones that actually made it even to prototype stage was the Panzer 8 Maus. And that was about as far as it got before the prototypes were captured by Russians anyway. The heaviest tanks to actually go into production and kill allies was the King Tiger.

The others were fanboy inventions of crazed engineers and Hitler who invisioned massive tanks crushing everything in their path. I'm afraid, just as TERRY said, the only thing they would have crushed were the roads that were needed to transport them. So thats already a stuff-up. Logistically they would have been horrific. Yes, perhaps they would have taken a few, even alot more shots than lighter tanks, but guess what? With that dreadful profile and size, not a thing on the battlefield would miss it.

And one last thing: Throughout WW2, allied tanks (excluding the russians at certain moments), were vastly inferior to the german ones anyway. And yet the allies won regardless, thanks to their co-operation, logistical tactics, and skill and moral of their soldiers. Having the biggest gun does not win you a war.

Evidence shows that even if Germany managed to prolong the war and capture back many resources, the secodn the P.1000 and P.1500 would have been targets for the entire allied airforce, these vehicles would never have been built or even attempted. The Maus would have maybe seena small string of them, no more than the total number of German built tanks during WWI, whish was like 7. It was estimated that the two tanks would require at least a company of infantry to escort it and the AA vehicles of an entire Panzer Division, which granted is SMALL in the later half of the war. All in all, its cool that other people know about these Paper Panzers. A good book to check out is My Tank Is Fight!

@Joseph:
Yes, if Hitler had been patient and waited 2-5 years longer, he'd surely have won WWII.
@Alexandersky:
I agree, the panther was more mobile, didn't suffer engine troubles as often, could be produced more efficiently, but (@Izolii) by the end of the war they should've started building defensive, non-mobile defense guns.

Roughly 1,500 Tigers,

Bigger tank. -> Easy target for bomber.

You could say bomber carpet 99% hit.

well the tiger was the greatest tank of ww2
1 tiger defeated 4o shermans
killing 20 and routing the to other 20
and yes i know the sherman was crap
the panther seires were good as a medium/heavy tank but was ineffective in many areas.
the australians were developing a tack that could take down any thing weaker then a panther, and could but up a fight against a panther. (any sherman, any english medium tank)
the germans failed because they started to rush there tanks the tiger2 often broke down before a battle because of rushed wiring, a bump could undo the so-called king tiger.

I disagree entirely about no army being able to withstand the firepower. It would be more accurate to say that any weapon that large and slow would have been lucky to ever be able to be in a postion where they could cause casulties. By the time the weapon was moved into a postion and set up and ready to fire, the activity would have been so obvious that intelligence would have figured out the target and moved the target one way or the other so that the weapon could not hit it until it again repositioned itself....and so it goes. While all this was going on the security for the gun could be infiltrated and the gun taken out in a raid.

that hitler he was one granddiose dude but they didnt have enough gas to turn it over would have been somthin to see though couldnt u imagine the shock from one of those shells i love that german military equip that tiger was bad * tank

The allies won by their numbers, and these monster german tanks would not change anything. They would just tie up resources for the germans. The coming of the e-series could maybe postpone the defeat a bit, but again; too late. German panther & tiger tanks: Too complicated for mass producing. 1000 panthers or tigers = awesome. 1 Sherman/t34 = crap. 80 000 Shermans/t34s = bye bye Reich...

Actually almost all tigers and every king tiger survived everything the allies could throw at them. They failed mechanically or ran out of fuel and then abandoned.

There's no way that a massively heaavy tank like this would ever take off. No armoured fighting vehicle goes into battle without two key elements, the first is air superiority and the second is infantry support. For something like this you would need at least a battalion just to protect one tank. No, the logistics behind such a weapon is too onerous. Just another one of Hitlers flights of fancy.....

constant pouding from aerial bombing will shred the tank... or the turret so it will become useless...

The monster was not a tank, it was a artellery plattform.

Totally disagree that no army could with stand their firepower. At that size and weight and very slow and unable to cross bridges they would have had very limited use. They would be far to big to conceal and armour piercing bombs or hand laid demolition could have taken them out. If nothing else, keep German supporting troops and resupply people at a distance and simply wait for the tank to run out of fuel, water, ammo, etc like a seige of a fort. For the amount of material and technology and amount of manpower burnt up just to build one. it would have been the grossest waste of the war (amongst all combatants) in terms of beneifts received for cost spent. That is why the Sherman was a great investment for the allied governments. It was simple, relatively easy to build, able to be produced in great numbers and easy to train on. Sure they werent the best tank but they were a decent tank and.....when one was destroyed another one had been already produced to replace it and was already in the supply chain somewhere on its way to combat. And another after that was already in production as well. Same with machine guns. The germans invented great machine guns that had a very high rate of fire and had many moving parts and had to kept well maintained. The allies had machine guns that were cheap and easy to build and had a reasonable rate of fire. The allies could make almost 4 machine guns for the cost of 1 of the Germans, even with slave labour factored in. In hindisght the Allies were fortunate the Germans, or at least Hitler and the weapons designers, seemed to have the concept that extravegant was better. If the Germans had gone for mass production of simpler but almost as effective devices, their supply problems throughout the war would have been reduced and their fighting man at the front ultimately more effective and better supplied.

ont need air cover when you can shell the airfield with you 800mm gun and if a bomber heavy enough gets by you can use your aa guns. I WANT ONE : )

how did that tank even move it must of have a good engine but its kind of weird to me but i like it very nice job))))))))))))