What contributed to the emergence of tanks in World War I

48
Evolution and Perspectives tanks always arouse great interest among specialists and amateurs.

What contributed to the emergence of tanks in World War I




Hundred years ago


Tanks appeared a hundred years ago, during the First World War, confidently occupied their niche in the structure of many armies in the world and remain the main striking force of the ground forces. During this time, the tanks underwent a certain evolution - from bulky and slow-moving "monsters" to maneuverable, well-protected and effective weapons battlefield.

Several generations of tanks have changed. They acquired a certain form and purpose of military equipment. Today the tank is an armored tracked vehicle with a rotating turret, equipped with a cannon and machine guns. There is also a simplified version of the tank - a self-propelled artillery installation with a non-rotating or partially rotating turret.

The first tanks looked completely different, and the tasks assigned to them were somewhat different. In this connection, the evolution of tanks is interesting from the point of view of the development of engineering thought, the technical decisions taken in the process of their improvement, the dead-end and promising development directions. Also of interest story what prompted the creation of the tank, what tasks were put before the tanks and how they were transformed in the process of evolution.

Armored monster


Tanks as a type of weapon appeared during the First World War. This was facilitated by the development at the end of the 19th century of rifled small arms and artillery weapons, which possess a high destructive ability of enemy personnel.

The idea of ​​protecting a warrior on the battlefield has long been vital, and the knight’s armor is a confirmation of this. From the firearms no armor could not save. Instead of individual defense, they began to look for collective defense capable of maneuvering on the battlefield.

Technical progress has created the prerequisites for solving this problem. With the creation of a steam engine and a locomotive, such projects began to appear. One of the first was the draft of a tracked armored train proposed by the Frenchman Buyen in 1874. He proposed to put several wagons connected to each other not on rails, but on a common caterpillar, equip this monster with tools and equip it with a crew of two hundred people. Due to the questionable implementation of the project was rejected. There were a number of similarly dubious projects.


Tank Buyena


At the beginning of the 20th century, armored trains were created on the basis of a steam locomotive that ensured delivery of manpower to the battlefield with small arms and artillery, with good protection against enemy weapons.

But this type of weapon had a significant drawback. The armored train could only travel on rails and was limited in its maneuverability. The enemy could always foresee ways to neutralize this threat, and where there was no railway, there was no danger of the appearance of a formidable armored train.

Human Defense and the Hetherington Project


The issue of protecting manpower was particularly acute at the height of the First World War, which took on the character of a “trench warfare” (with positional battles, many kilometers of trenches and wire barriers). The living force of the opposing sides suffered colossal losses, it was necessary to protect the soldiers who were attacking the well-prepared defenses of the enemy. The army required a maneuverable vehicle for delivering and protecting manpower and weapons on the battlefield and breaking through enemy defenses.

The idea of ​​creating such a machine began to be implemented in specific projects. The British Army major Hetherington proposed a project to create a technical monster with a height of 14 meters, a mass of 1000 tons, on huge wheels, armed with ship cannons. But the project was abandoned due to the complexity of the technical implementation and vulnerability on the battlefield.


Hetherington Tank


Tank of the inventor Porokhovshchikov


Similar projects began to be offered in Russia. In May, the 1915 of the year in Russia began tests of a prototype of the first tank “Rover” of the inventor Porokhovshchikov. The tank was a 4 ton weight, 3,6 m long, 2,0 m wide and 1,5 m high (without a tower). The supporting structure of the tank was a welded frame with four hollow rotating drums around which one wide rubber track was rewound.


Tank Porokhovshchikova


In the stern of the tank housed a gasoline engine power 10 l. with. Through the drive shaft and the mechanical planetary gearbox torque was transmitted to the driving drum. The tension of the caterpillar was carried out with a special drum. On the sides in front of the tank were two wheels, due to which the tank was turning. The wheels were connected to the steering wheel with the help of the system. The tank developed speed along the highway to 25 km / h.

Chassis was wheel-tracked. On the roads, the tank was moving on wheels and the rear drum tracks. When friable soil and overcoming obstacles tank lay on the track and overcame the obstacle.

The hull of the tank was streamlined with significant angles of armor. The armor was a combined multi-layer and had a thickness of 8 mm. It consisted of two layers of elastic and hard metal and special viscous and elastic pads of sea grass and hair, which was not penetrated by machine gun bursts. Chassis defended by bulwarks.


The design of the tank Porokhovshchikov


A rotating cylindrical turret with one or two 7,62-mm machine guns was located above the hull. In the middle part of the tank on two adjacent seats were placed two crew members - the driver and the commander-machine-gunner.

According to the test results of the prototype, the Vzadkhod tank showed good acceleration characteristics, high speed, satisfactory maneuverability through obstacles. Due to the wide track, the tank did not sink the bottom and overcame obstacles.

The Military Technical Directorate pointed out a number of project flaws (unreliability, vulnerability and slippage of the tape on the drum, extreme difficulty in turning, low permeability on loose soil, the impossibility of simultaneous firing from a machine gun) and rejected the project.

At the beginning of the 1917, Porokhovshchikov improved the design of the tank, giving it the name "All-Terrain Vehicle-2" and increasing the number of machine guns to four with the possibility of independent targeting and fire on targets. But the fundamental flaws of the project were not eliminated, and it was closed.

The tank "All-terrain vehicle" was tested several months before the tests of the English "Little Willie", which since January 1916, under the brand name MK-1, has been adopted and became the world's first production tank. There is a version that the drawings of the tank "All-terrain vehicle" were offered to the owner of the French automaker Louis Renault. He refused to acquire them, but then he was able to restore them from memory and based on the French tank Renault-17, the most massive tank of the First World War.

"Tsar-tank" by Captain Lebedenko


In January, 1915, the Military Technical Directorate approved Captain Lebedenko’s well-founded project for the development of the Tsar-Tank and allocated funds for the manufacture of a prototype. The tank was like a gunfly magnified several times with two huge 9-meter drive wheels with knitting needles and the height of a man with a steering wheel at the end of the gun carriage. At the top of the gun carriage there were three armored felling, one in the center at a height of 8 meters and two slightly lower on the sides in which the weapons were installed, two guns and machine guns.


Tank Lebedenko


The tank should have been serviced by a 15 man. The length of the tank reached 17 m, and the width 12 m, the weight of the order of 60 t. The design speed should have been at the level of 17 km / h. Each wheel was set in motion by its own Maybach gasoline engine with a power of 240 l. with. The main disadvantages of this tank were low permeability due to the high ground pressure and the slight vulnerability of the spokes to the enemy’s artillery.

The made sample of the tank in August 1915 was demonstrated to representatives of the army and the military ministry. The tank began to move steadily, but after passing a few tens of meters, it was stuck in the shallow hole with its rear wheel, and, despite all the efforts, could not move on. After such "tests" the interest in the tank disappeared, it lay in this place for several years and was dismantled for scrap.

In Russia, a number of other tank projects were also proposed that were not brought to production and testing of prototypes.

Colonel Swinton's Project


More successful was the project of Colonel Swinton of the English Army, who regularly prepared reports from the war on the Western Front from the beginning of the war and saw the murderous power of machine-gun fire. He proposed to use for the "breach" of the enemy's defense used in the British army as tractors tracked tractors, protecting them with armor.

His proposal was to create an armored vehicle, which was supposed to be self-propelled, have armor that protects against enemy bullets, and weapons that could suppress enemy machine guns. The machine was supposed to move around the battlefield, overcome trenches and escarpments, and tear off wire barriers.

Swinton presented his idea to the Minister of the Navy in February 1915 fleet Churchill, who supported the idea and created a special Committee on land ships, which urgently began the development of a "land battleship." The committee formulated the requirements for the future machine. It should have bulletproof armor, it must overcome and force obstacles and funnels up to 2 m deep and up to 3,7 m in diameter, 1,2 m wide ditches, break through wire fences, have a speed of at least 4 km / h, a reserve fuel for 6 hours and have a gun and two machine guns as weapons.

The emergence of the internal combustion engine and the creation of "self-propelled carts", the first cars contributed to the creation of a new type of weapon. But the use of existing wheeled armored vehicles as the base of the future tank did not ensure the fulfillment of the task due to their poor maneuverability and the impossibility of overcoming obstacles on the battlefield.

The tank began to be designed by naval officers as a naval cruiser, using the American caterpillar Caterpillar tracked tractor as a basis and using waste nodes and systems of English steam tractors in the design.

For the tank was chosen tracked version of the chassis. It turned out to be so successful that it has survived until today, and attempts to switch to other types of propulsion, for example, to a wheel, have not yet found wide application.

Land battleship


In the “Little Willie” tank under development, the undercarriage and power unit were used from the tractor, to turn the steering wheels on the rear of the truck, like a steering wheel on a ship. The armored hull was boxed with vertical armor. It housed a rotating round turret with an 40-mm cannon, the control compartment was in front, the combat compartment in the center, and the power one with a gasoline engine of 105 power. with. aft. The tower was then removed and replaced with sponsons along the sides of the tank, since it was designed by naval officers and saw in it a “land armadillo”.


Tank "Little Willy"


Tests of the prototype tank showed that with the length of the tank 8 m and weight 14 t he has poor maneuverability and had to completely redo it. The military demanded that the tank be able to force a ditch with a width of 2,44 m and a wall with a height of 1,37 m, which the chassis did not suit the tractor for such requirements. A new original caterpillar was developed for the tank, covering the entire hull of the tank, and from that time began the history of the “diamond-shaped” British tanks, the first of which was the Big Willie, or Mk1. The tanks of this series were divided into "males" and "females". "Males" had two 57-mm guns and three machine guns, "females" only five machine guns.


Tank Mk.I


"Big Willy"


With the advent of the tank Mk.I connected and the name of this machine - "tank". In English, the word means "tank capacity". The incident is that one of the first batches of tanks was sent to the front in Russia, and for reasons of secrecy they wrote "tank" and in Russian "tank", referring to the self-propelled tank, tank, for water. So the word stuck, but the Germans basically call the tank “ranzerkampfwagen” - an armored fighting car.

The tank was a huge hulking structure on diamond-shaped tracks, covering the entire hull of the tank, so that guns and machine guns could shoot forward and to the side. Guns and machine guns mounted in side ledges - sponsons stuck out of the tank in all directions. The tank was weighing 28 t, a long 8 m and a height of 2,5 m, could move over rough terrain at a speed of 4,5 km / h and along the 6,4 highway km / h. So in England began the development of a line of "heavy" according to the criteria of that time and hulking tanks to ensure the infantry to break through the well-prepared defenses of the enemy.

There was no turret on the tank, as it was believed that it would make the tank too noticeable.

Structurally, armor plates up to 10 mm thick were fastened to the frame from the corners and flat steel with rivets, providing anti-bullet protection. On the case were mounted leading and supporting wheels and side gearboxes. Each caterpillar was 520 mm wide and consisted of flat tracks 90. The specific pressure of the tank on the ground reached 2 kg / cm, which restricted permeability, especially on damp and swampy soil, and the tanks often buried in the ground and sat on the bottom of the bottom.

Inside the tank resembled the engine room of a small ship. Most of it was occupied by the Daimler gasoline engine with 105l.s power, transmission and fuel tanks. Behind the tank through the hinge was mounted trolley with swivel wheels.

The crew consisted of eight people: the commander, the driver, two mechanics and four gunners or machine gunners.


The design of the tank Mk.I


There was no depreciation of the undercarriage of the tank and it shook violently when moving. Inside the hull, the temperature sometimes reached 60 °, powder fumes, gasoline vapors and exhaust fumes accumulated, which greatly poisoned the crew and brought it to fainting.

Tank control also required considerable effort. The driver and the tank commander, who was responsible for the brakes of the caterpillars of the right and left sides, as well as two transmissions working on the onboard gearboxes took part in the movement control. The driver gave them commands by voice or gestures. The rotation was carried out by braking one of the tracks and shifting the gearbox. To turn with a large radius, the cart with the wheels at the back of the tank was turned using a special cable, which was wound by hand on the drum inside the tank.

The observation slits were covered with glass, which were often broken, and wounded the tankmen’s eyes. Special glasses did not help much either - steel plates with many holes and chain mail masks.

The problem of communication was solved in a very original way; in each tank there was a cage with postal pigeons.

Improvement path


During the war, the tank improved. There were models Mk.II and Mk.III, and then more powerful Mk.IV and Mk.V. The latest model, produced from the 1918 of the year, was seriously improved, it was equipped with a special tank engine “Ricardo” with a capacity of 150 l. with., a planetary gearbox, removed the side gearboxes and a trolley with swivel wheels, which made it possible to control the movement of the tank by one person. They also improved the cabin of the commander and installed one machine gun in the back.

The tanks received their first baptism of fire in France at the Battle of the Somme in September 1915. 49 tanks went into an attack on the German positions, plunging the Germans into a panic, but because of the imperfection of the tanks, they returned from the battle of all 18 vehicles. The rest are out of order due to breakdowns or stuck on the battlefield.

The use of tanks on the battlefield has shown that they are not only reliable protection of crew members, but also an effective means of attacking the enemy. The Germans appreciated this and soon prepared their response to the British.

To be continued ...
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48 comments
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  1. +2
    20 May 2019 12: 17
    With Leonardo da Vinci you could start.
    1. +4
      20 May 2019 13: 26
      Quote: vvvjak
      With Leonardo da Vinci you could start.

      what ??? And why not from the Chinese carriages of the UL? After all ... they appeared first!
      or "Japanese" to take ... AKAMI GURUMI.

      GOSITOV ...
      Ali Persians ...
      1. +7
        20 May 2019 13: 44
        Well then, already with the Greek chariots. From the ancient Greek, of course. All this will not go, the ENGINE is not covered by the ARMOR. And everything is protected in the Leonardo project. So, colleague, thanks for the beautiful drawings, but alas, this is not the topic. And siege towers (see below) are from another opera. hi
        1. +3
          20 May 2019 14: 10
          Quote: Sea Cat
          Well then, already with the Greek chariots.

          Let’s start with the Neanderthal once such analogies have gone. The skin of a mammoth (around a mighty waist) is the first armor, so the Neanderthal is the first tank.
        2. +4
          20 May 2019 14: 23
          Quote: Sea Cat
          ENGINE is not covered by the ARRIVAL. And in Leonardo’s project everything is protected.

          Your remark is quite understandable to me ..., and you are largely right, considering the "aspect" you have noted - an unprotected Engine combined with a propeller ... wink ! And yet I dared to place these "ancient glorious" war chariots on page VO for the reason that some of the Internet articles say that in a number of cases ancient warriors protected the engines of their fighting "machines" with armor blankets, but protected the horses with blankets directly before the battle (battle), so as not to unnecessarily, unnecessarily tire the "propulsion engines" ... In one of the above drawings of Chinese chariots, horses are protected by "individual armor". As for the Hussite "two-story" carriage, I also saw a drawing where the horses were protected by a blanket-armor, hung on the carriage frame. In principle, the same could be done in the case of Agami Gurumi ... wink With respect, your ... hi
    2. +3
      20 May 2019 13: 29
      Quote: vvvjak
      With Leonardo da Vinci you could start.

      The description of the assault (siege) tower of 300 BC is known. during the siege of Rhodes. What is not a prototype? smile Or the Roman "turtle". winked
      1. 0
        20 May 2019 19: 38
        Yes, actually, and a mammoth - why not a tank ???
    3. 0
      21 May 2019 09: 01
      it’s impossible, the horse carries 350 kg - the Leonardo tank could not ride the battlefield)
  2. +5
    20 May 2019 12: 19
    if you answer the question "what contributed?" the answer will be one - a machine gun, why everything else
    1. 0
      20 May 2019 18: 10
      Machine gun and barbed wire.
      1. -1
        20 May 2019 19: 40
        yes they somehow learned how to overcome the wire, but the machine gun ...
        1. +1
          21 May 2019 04: 11
          The machine gun was especially deadly when breaking through wire fences.
          1. -1
            21 May 2019 07: 31
            perhaps agree hi
  3. +7
    20 May 2019 12: 25
    There is also a simplified version of the tank - a self-propelled artillery mount with a non-rotating or partially rotating turret.

    M-dya. There is a Mercedes - a tractor and a simplified version - class "E".

    Ext .:
    ... but the Germans basically called the tank "panzerkampfwagen" - an armored combat car.

    Then "Volkswagen" is translated as "people's wagon".
    This translates as "crew", "car".
  4. +6
    20 May 2019 12: 54
    In fact, in the Anglo-Boer War, the forerunners of tanks - trackless (!) Armored trains were "tested" ... The maneuverable, partisan nature of hostilities and the undeveloped railway network in southern Africa insistently demanded the creation of armored vehicles capable of moving along ordinary roads ( !), and not tied to the rails, like armored trains.
    They consisted of a armored vehicle-tractor, three armored vehicles and two 150-mm artillery pieces. The tractor was driven by a horsepower 60 steam engine. It had a supply of fuel - about 800 a kilogram of coal and 150 buckets of water. Top speed did not exceed 8 miles per hour.
    The machine was protected on all sides by six-millimeter sheets of chromium-nickel steel (armor weight - 4,5 tons), while the total weight of the armored tractor reached 22 tons. The width of the drive wheels, for better maneuverability, was 61 cm. Additional removable teeth or cutters could also be mounted on them. A steam winch could be used for self-pulling.
    Armored carriages, which had a length of 4,5 m and about 2 m in width, could carry up to six tons of cargo. An artillery gun was installed inside the wagon, the barrel of which was pushed into a special loophole of the end wall.
    For rifle shooting and observation, there were holes in the upper part of all walls, closed with blind flaps. For loading an artillery piece onto a wagon, there were removable supports that had a groove shape for the wheels and were mounted obliquely at the rear end, and a steam winch with a steel cable.
    The tractor and the wagons grappled with each other with special drawbars, but were equipped with autonomous brakes, which made it possible to ensure safety during steep descents.
    Such constructions were much more maneuverable than armored trains, since they were not tied to railway tracks, which, moreover, could be destroyed.
  5. +5
    20 May 2019 14: 58
    In May, the 1915 of the year in Russia began tests of a prototype of the first tank “Rover” of the inventor Porokhovshchikov. The tank was weighing 4 tons, long 3,6 m, In fact, there has been a debate lately: "Did Porokhovshchikov really offer a tank (or a prototype of a tank ...)?" Now there is such an opinion that Porokhovshchikov offered an all-terrain vehicle (an alternative to a car ...) without weapons and armor! The all-terrain vehicle turned out to be "not so hot", and therefore the military department refused it! It is stated that the armament (machine gun) was "in the project", but during the tests of the first sample, this was not noted in any documentation! The question also arises: how could one person cope with driving (controlling) a car and firing a machine gun? It is also not noted anywhere that the body of the "all-terrain vehicle" was armored! Yes, Porokhovshchikov offered the military department "his" multilayer armor ... but this was regardless of the "all-terrain vehicle" ... Porokhovshchikov's all-terrain vehicle was abandoned for objective reasons: tests of the machine showed the failure of its design. Subsequently (with the spread of "news" about the emergence of a new British weapon-tanks ...), Porokhovshchikov "raised a wave" with the intention of "proving his priority"! He continued to work on his "device" (already "All-terrain vehicle-2" ... quite altered ...), simultaneously declaring that he was the "discoverer of tanks" and accusing the department of inertia, stupidity, shortsightedness, etc.
  6. +3
    20 May 2019 15: 00
    The living force of the warring parties suffered enormous losses, it was necessary to protect the soldiers marching on the attack on a well-prepared defense of the enemy.
    The wording is not exactly wrong, but somehow "non-military" or something. The tank "protects" the crew. Poorly he copes with this, and for the protection of the soldiers, you can come up with something simpler.
    The main task of the tanks, and the reason for their appearance on the fields of the First World War - the suppression of machine-gun points of the enemy and the rapid destruction of wire fences. I must say that Hiram Maxim was one of the creators of those monstrous losses that no one had ever expected in World War I. The standard algorithm of the then meat grinder - the attacking orders get stuck in the barriers and mow down machine-gun fire. While this is happening, the defenders hastily restore the defenses destroyed by the artillery bombardment of the attackers, and in turn turn on heavy guns. The attack is choking ...
    So the tank was invented to overcome the machine-gun fire, while clearing the way for the infantry. Reducing the time of the first throw to values ​​when it was already possible to develop the attack effectively. At the same time, whether the tank was defended by its crew or not was of no interest to anyone, especially people who were laying one hundred to one hundred and fifty thousand people in one battle. But whether it was possible with the help of a tank, so to speak "with fire and wheels" to quickly crush the fire of a pair of machine-gun nests - this is very important! Well, so it went on ...
  7. +5
    20 May 2019 15: 07
    hi ... There was no depreciation of the undercarriage of the tank, and when it moved it shook violently. Inside the case, the temperature sometimes reached 60 °, powder burned up, gasoline vapors and exhaust gases accumulated crying
  8. +1
    20 May 2019 17: 02
    "Tank" Lebedenko is an example of cutting budget funds. According to A.A. Mikulin, who took part in the construction of this miracle, Lebedenko's main task was to impress the members of the commission.
    1. 0
      21 May 2019 00: 02
      The Maybach engine, whose power was 240 liters. with., did not have enough strength to pull the back of the unit from the ditch. In 1916, Mikulin and Stechkin began to perfect it. Within the walls of MVTU they managed to develop a two-stroke engine AMBS, but this car was also imperfect: after working for a minute and a half,
      Work on this machine gave a creative start to two outstanding scientists and designers: A. Mikulin and B. Stechkin.
      1. +1
        21 May 2019 02: 47
        Down and Out trouble started )
        As far as I remember from the book about Mikulin, Lebedenko tried to "suck" the blueprints of this engine to either the Americans or the British, although Mikulin and Stechkin warned him that the engine was "raw" and had to be refined.
        1. 0
          21 May 2019 05: 07
          Quote: Nitochkin
          As far as I remember from the book about Mikulin, Lebedenko tried to "suck" the drawings of this engine to either the Americans or the British.
          I do not exclude either one or the other.
          If you follow the logic, then most likely the Americans. At least Lebedenko’s tracks are lost in the United States.
  9. +1
    20 May 2019 17: 03
    Tanks of this series were divided into “males” and “females”. “Males” had two 57-mm guns and three machine guns, “females” only five machine guns.


    In, how!

    And I was given a warning for a flood when I wrote that the Su-34, due to the rear of the fuselage, protruding far beyond the engine nozzles, is clearly a "boy", "male".

    laughing
    1. 0
      20 May 2019 21: 55
      Someone has something with orientation, I mean "nozzle". request
      1. +1
        20 May 2019 22: 52
        It was long before me that he came up with one very strange type, who was the first of the psychos to put on a white coat. But, after all, with psychos, how? The first to put on a white coat is the doctor.

        1. +1
          20 May 2019 22: 55
          This uncle’s name is not Sigmund, by any chance? Ah, Mr. Kavtorang? good
          1. 0
            20 May 2019 22: 57
            He is.

            Self-propelled great creator and teacher of psychoanalysis.

            drinks

            Judging by the formula for matching the length of the barrels and genitals he deduced for himself and how much he said about the weapon, his portrait must constantly hang (a bad word "hang" in this context) on the Military Review.

            laughing
            1. +2
              20 May 2019 23: 10
              I read once that he stole this whole theory from a certain madame named Sabina, I don’t remember his last name, she was ultimately killed along with her daughters in Babi Yar. Jewess, naturally.
              1. +1
                20 May 2019 23: 11
                And, behold, the epigraph motto for the "Military Review" ...

                Yes

                1. +1
                  20 May 2019 23: 14
                  It’s good for you there, in your own place in Estonia, but here try to say ... about someone’s mental development. belay
              2. +1
                23 May 2019 00: 29
                Excuse me, Sabina Spielrein was 29 years younger than Freud, by the time of her birth he had already published scientific papers. Yes, she was a student of Mr. Jung.
                The Germans really executed her, only in the Zmiev beam near Rostov-on-Don.
                1. 0
                  23 May 2019 07: 31
                  Hello to you, fellow countryman, if you really live in Ryazan. hi Not being a specialist in this matter I can not say anything. I was mistaken (most likely), you corrected - well, thank God. With these matters it is better to my friend Ludoved, he is not only special weapons. And about the age difference: one does not interfere with the other. wink
  10. +1
    20 May 2019 17: 10
    On the threshold of revolutionary discoveries and inventions, there is always some kind of reactivity in the thinking of the designer, because of which it is difficult to take the right, crucial step.

    So the inventors of the first cars made the same horse-drawn cart, but without horses. The inventors of some revolvers gravitated to the bed of muzzle pistols, and muzzle-loading pistols resembled a gun without a stock. The first self-loading pistols had the features and proportions of revolvers.

    So someone saw the first tanks either as a land battleship, or as a giant artillery carriage.
    1. +2
      20 May 2019 21: 54
      Man, you are absolutely right in these comparisons. hi However, one of the designers by the name of Lebedenko clearly had a prototype of a banal bicycle and it is not surprising that, with such a mass and an insignificant width of wheels, this monstrous structure instantly got stuck in the ground without driving a hundred meters. laughing
      1. +1
        20 May 2019 22: 01
        Lebedenko did not pass SoproMat.

        If you pass the material, you can marry. An old technical university "physiological" joke.
        1. +1
          20 May 2019 22: 04
          Here, the guys wrote above that he was just a market specialist. Perhaps, but the warriors looked somewhere, or was there a complete pipe with education in general?
          1. +2
            20 May 2019 23: 47
            Perhaps, but the warriors looked somewhere, or was there a complete pipe with education in general?

            The Tsar Tank July 12, 2014
            The paradox is that with all the unusualness, complexity and huge size of the machine, Lebedenko managed to break through his project. The car received approval in a number of instances, but finally the audience decided the case with the emperor, during which Lebedenko presented the sovereign with a groovy wooden model of the car with an engine based on a gramophone spring.
            According to the recollections of the courtiers, Nicholas II and Lebedenko half an hour "like small children" crawled across the floor, checking the model in the race around the room. The toy ran briskly around the carpet and easily overcame even piles of two or three puffy volumes of the “Code of Laws of the Russian Empire”.
            Delighted with the car, the emperor ordered to immediately open funding for the project.

            Who will argue with the SELF-ALL-RUSSIAN Himself!
            1. +1
              21 May 2019 00: 25
              Hi Aleksey! hi That’s for sure, you can’t argue with YOURSELF, even with the emperor, at least whatever you call him. wink
          2. +1
            21 May 2019 00: 34
            Quote: Sea Cat
            Perhaps, but the warriors looked somewhere, or was there a complete pipe with education in general?
            Unified State Exam named after the Imperial Moscow Technical School. Zhukovsky is a professor at this school. Mikulin and Stechkin are students of this school. Little is known about Lebedenko. “Unfortunately, little information was found about Lebedenko himself. It is known that he had his own private (that is, private) laboratory, which was located in Moscow, in a mansion on Sadovo-Kudrinskaya Street. In 1914, Lebedenko took up the design of a bomb release for aircraft "Ilya Muromets", he also fulfilled other orders of the military department. It is known that Lebedenko knew Professor N. Zhukovsky well ... "https://arsenal-info.ru/b/book/3151508101/30
      2. 0
        21 May 2019 15: 59
        The design of Lebedenko in the form of a model showed impressive results precisely in cross-country ability. In the course, HOW did he show her to the king? He scattered books on the floor, and the model got across the most intricate obstacles. And another fact. Most of the tanks with which people met the next war already had a pretty smooth track. The increase in patency was again underestimated.
        Lebedenko’s thought was moving in the right direction, the tool was only chosen unfit, as in engineering it happens all the time, if no one has the best practices. In those years, no one really invented anything truly passable on the entire planet. Steam locomotives running on rails, locomotives (with the patency of a road skating rink of the past) and a cart, sometimes with a motor.
        It's funny now, yes. And then it was a legitimate attempt, and no worse than others.
  11. +3
    20 May 2019 18: 40
    There is a version that the drawings of the ATV tank were proposed to the owner of the French automobile company Louis Renault. He refused to purchase them, but then was able to restore them from memory and laid the foundation of the French tank Renault-17, the most massive tank since the First World War.
    This is written by a person who has worked for more than two decades in a tank design bureau.
  12. +4
    20 May 2019 19: 17
    Complete nonsense about Porokhovshchikov and his supposedly "tank". Armor made of sea grass, a tower that never stood on a "self-propelled". Whose still Tsar-tank - Lebedev or Lebedenko, the author somehow decided.
  13. +2
    20 May 2019 21: 26
    "Male" "Big Willie" even got into the cartoon "Just you wait"! laughing
  14. 0
    20 May 2019 21: 48
    Thank you very much to Yuri for the article! hi A separate section for the schematic drawing of the stamp. For the first time I see this, very clearly. good
  15. +1
    20 May 2019 22: 01
    I read that Lebedenko’s tank, despite the obvious idiocy of the project, was put into construction because the author made a winding toy in the form of a tank and showed it to the king. On the table of Nicholas, she moved quite vigorously, and Nicholas ordered to allocate money for the sale.
  16. 0
    20 May 2019 23: 54
    A number of tank projects were also proposed in Russia, not brought to the manufacture and testing of prototypes.

    So dear author, do not you even consider 2 Gulkevich armored tractors as experienced?
  17. 0
    21 May 2019 05: 33
    1st photo not signed. What is this and where? It’s like they sorted it out for metal.
  18. 0
    18 August 2019 13: 01
    It has always been a mystery to me why it was the Russian authorities who allocated a lot of money for the monster tank Lebedenko? Then, as with conventional art weapons, there were few of them? Passion for gigantomania?

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