Source: http://world-of-kwg.livejournal.com/186553.html
This was the initial design of what would enter history as Panzerkampfwagen Maus.
This is the drawing designated KV3881, displaying the VK100.01(P) from 4.6.1942. The tank is still in the 100 ton category, its weight inflation has not yet started. The armor equals roughly to VK7001(K), the gun mounted is the 149mm 15cm KwK L/40. It is generally the German analogue of the KV-5.
At that point however, the process of inflating it has already begun. On 15th of May that year, Hitler has aleady decided that the weight should be increased to 120 tons.
*_* Beautiful *_*
ReplyDeleteThis needs to be implemented in to the game...
Would be a nice tier 9 heavy :)
DeleteTier 9!? With a gun the same cal. and even longer barrel then the E-100? o.O
DeleteYou do realize that it could be balanced by different ammo, right?
DeleteImho it's an excellent tier VIII, just use the SFH L/30 ammo and it's balanced.
I wonder how tank design/development would have gone if the person they were trying to please didn't have an inferiority complex... They seem to be defensive in character rather than offensive. Mobile strong points.
ReplyDeleteRoguemale
Well... it did have its logic. The 70 ton Lowe was first and it was deemed satisfactory, but then they inflated the weight as a reaction to KV-2 and other heavier tanks the German army ran into in late 1941. The reason was fear and fear was not a thing exclusive to Hitler. Still, yes, his megalomania and affinity to Porsche designs did contribute a lot.
DeleteThey didn't try to please anyone. They were simply following orders - if you got an order to up-armor certain tank, despite the facts that it might not be most prudent thing to do (for various technical and production reasons), you would simply do it. Otherwise, you would loose your post (at best) or your head (at worst). And it stands as a testament of German engineering, that despite sometimes impossible requests from the top, they still managed to produce tanks that had impressive combat records.
DeleteThis is one very, very long story. Hitler was known to love to micromanage things, and usually those things he didn't have a slightest clue about. This, of course, alienated many knowledgeable people who despised him for his constant meddling in their professions. Just as an example, when German army captured Russian T-34s during operation Barbarossa in 1941., Heinz Guderian immediately proposed to, basically, make a direct copy of it (incorporating German guns, optics, radios and engines, of course). Hitler refused (on grounds that it would look too Russian) and spent next two years prototyping future Panther tank (and it was another year before bugs were ironed out). Now imagine what would happen if he listened to Guderian's advice, and Germany started producing tank combining the best of German and Russian tank engineering, about three years earlier?
--
ActionMan
I guess the "OMG!" factor of something 100 Ton plus heading your way is an influence too. And the availability of materials. If my memory is up to standard I think the Sturmtiger came about because they needed something to knock out defensive positions and they had a ton of depth-charges left from the then defunct navy.
DeleteAs a "what if" exercise the development of German AFV interests me if Mr Megalomaniac and Porsche were left out of the picture. I'm kinda surprised that a more mobile version of the Stalinorgal wasn't in production...
Roguemale
overall Hitler was a complete IDIOT.
Delete@up
Deletenot really
he made a lot of quite briliant decisions at the early stages of the war and before
Guderian and Speer begs to differ.
Delete@Finear
DeleteWell if you now consider "reckless gambling" and "others not believing you're crazy enough to *actually* try this shit" to add up to "quite brilliant decisions"...
Also most would not consider starting another Great War at a grossly insufficient resource base and no plan for winning it to qualify.
Hitler was an idiot, or should I say - a mad man. But he did have a plan for the war. His plan was to cooperate with Poland (and yes, the alliance was real, until our [=Polish] Foreign Affairs Minister went to London to sign declaration of independence for Britain, which was SO foolish of him btw), capture France and Norway, make Britain sign the peace and then crush the USSR, together with polish army. That plan could've went out, at least to the point where the US joined in - Hitler would start falling back (as he planned to attack India etc, he would need too many units in east despite destroying USSR), and in the end of the war Poland would change sides and attack Hitler together with Western Allies. Nowadays Europe would look so much different, as the Communism would fall in the '40s...
DeleteHaren: Žáby v mlíku?
Delete.__.
Deletewhat.
Frank, I can understand the meaning of your Czech question, but I do not know what did you want to ask... Is that a title of a book? Or what? Anyway, if you're asking me for a source of such predictions, they are more or less my thoughts, crystallized during my reading of "Pakt Ribbentrop-Beck" by Piotr Zychowicz.
DeleteHere you have the page of the book: http://www.paktrb.pl/
My Revisionist Bullshit Sense is tingling.
DeleteHaren: Sorry, I thought you were Czech. There is a Czech book series about an alternative WW2, called Žáby v mlíku (Frogs in milk) and Žába a škorpion (A frog and a scorpion) about what would happen if Hitler was eliminated in 1939 and the Soviet Union attacked instead. Very detailed too, even though some parts are a bit... optimistic (Czechoslovak army holding off the Germans on the borders, crushing them in Austria and capturing Vienna etc.)
DeleteHaren I really don't think Europe would have looked that different as people's cultures would eventually overpower artificial borders and they would regain their independence from Germany no different than they did from USSR. Hitler really was a nut, who made as many bad decisions as he did "good" ones in his conquest for glory. Personally I feel that if he attacked the USSR earlier or later, he would have been more successful. Attacking other countries first put Stalin in preparation mode and gave him time to do so. So perhaps attacking the newly formed soviet armies FIRST and as soon as possible would have worked better. Conversely waiting until he had perfected nuclear weapons and rocket delivery would have been a fairly big ace in the hole as well.
DeleteBasically Hitler's biggest mistake was attacking what would be his most difficult enemy after giving that enemy time to prepare.
"Perfected nuclear weapons" my foot, the German nuclear program wasn't going anywhere any time soon. And Hitlar only ever developed an interest in "wonder weapons" after about mid-'42 when it had become clear conventional ones just weren't going to cut it anyway.
DeleteAs far as the timing of Barbarossa goes, not like he had much of a choice. The accountants were making worried noises about the German *grain supply* running out in like a year or so unless something was done, and that meant the Ukraine. Plus the Reich had pretty much exhausted its barter credit with the Soviets anyway, and that meant he had to start looking for other ways to procure direly needed raw materials for the war industry.
IMHO, Hitler probably picked the single best possible time to hit the Red Army: just after the Purges and while it was in the middle of reequipping. Any later than that, and he would have been facing a modernised Red Army, and if he had attacked earlier, the Red Army would have not been in such a bad situation.
DeleteNot like he was in any real shape to attack earlier anyway, taking down France had seriously depleted materiél stockpiles (as usual for the period the consumption had vastly exceeded predictions) which had to be refilled before such an ambitious undertaking could be realistically considered.
DeleteThe major thinning-out of the Luftwaffe's fleet over France and England likely wasn't helping any; the full production cycle of a warplane was around a year so it took a while to make good of the losses.
Consider size and weight of 149mm cartridges.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet we don't consider the 100mm size ones that those poor Russian soldiers had to reload in cramped crew compartments.
DeleteVolume ergo weight increases in the THIRD power of the linear diameter, all other things being equal. AFAIK 100mm is still very much manageable, and present-day loaders do not to my knowledge particularly struggle with the current generation of ~120mm shells.
DeleteGoing over that you either have to add an autoloader or accept a RoF of "poor and dropping" due to weight and fatigue issues, I gather.
That aside I find it vaguely curious that the early-draft Maus looks a fair bit like the Löwe we all know and love and, you know, *almost* still sane...
"Volume ergo weight increases in the THIRD power of the linear diameter"
DeleteWell, assuming all the proportions are the same i.e. the bigger shell is just an upscaling of the other. But from comparing the Brit 40mm 2-Pounder and 57mm 6 Pounder, it seems to be a really good estimate (gives a ratio of 2.89, roughly 3 to 1).
-Platypusbill
69 kilograms
DeleteI'm under the impression shell proportions weren't altered unless there was a really pressing need to - some kind of ballistics thing presumably. And ofc at these sizes the propellant charges are going to be separated for a number of practical reasons which helps split the load around a bit.
DeleteAnyways, the (comparatively) small calibers probably aren't a very good yardstick here as the exponential increase in volume and mass isn't nearly as apparent as it is between, say, 100mm and 150mm - bit like comparing a cat and a dog on one hand and a bull and an elephant at the other if you see what I mean.
Though it's somewhat indicative that a roughly 50% increase in diameter -from 40 to 57mm- already *triples* the weight of the shell alone...
So Pasholok finally found the VK 100.01.
ReplyDeleteThis is the "100 ton tank to be developed instead of the 70 ton class", not the VK72.01.
He didn't find the drawing, he copied it from a new German book on Maus (however, he stated in comments that the book brings relatively nothing new)
DeleteNow if only Yuri could post some Tiger Maus pictures, then WG would have no excuses to not create a Krupp heavy tank line!
ReplyDeleteAlso, wouldn't this Maus (Panzer Tracts No.6-3) also count as the VK100.01(P)?
Deletehttp://s1163.photobucket.com/user/Slakrrrrrr/media/VK10001P_zps062900e4.png.html
Tiger Maus would be a slower E-100 with a Maus-style turret (center or rear) and Tiger I/II suspensions, nothing exactly extactic.
DeleteI see, the hull design wasn't any different? Adler built the E-100, while Krupp designed the Tiger Maus, meaning there must be differences somewhere other than just the suspension.
DeleteE-100 was the very same project with a changes suspension.
DeleteMore details here: http://zxhistory.blogspot.it/2013/04/from-vk-7001-and-tiger-maus-to-e-100.html
With only 120mm frontal armor and 80mm side armor it is doubtful this would fit at tier 9...
ReplyDeleteBut excellent for tier VIII.
DeleteDidn't the VK70.01(K) have 140/100/100mm hull armor?
DeleteA ton of projects were made for the Lowe, including several versions of VK 70.01 and 72.01 ranging from to 140mm front and 80 to 100mm side.
Deletethere is no armor specification yet.. or?
Delete120-140mm estimated front, 8-100mm estimated side, Pasholok describes it as similar to Lowe
Deleteordered the book, we will see ... :)
DeleteI can't wait for people to mistake this with E-79/90 and claim it was real...
DeleteLike that will stop people from claiming those are real anyway...
DeleteWell, look at that turret Serb. That looks like a coventional turret that could go on the E100.
ReplyDeleteActually one could even use Lowe or VK 72.01 turrets as they are all related.
DeleteCant stand those turrets. Theres a reason they never went into production.
ReplyDeleteNice to meet you Zarax, great work and keep it up. Im jon, add me on WOT if you like, we can plt.
ReplyDeletejontheblack,
We'll loose, but you'll have fun doing it, lol.