Tank freak show. "Tanks-giraffes"
"Tank-giraffe" by engineer John Tapp "Praying Mantis" (Praying Mantis). The cockpit starts to rise ...
"An improvement in one parameter of the system leads to a deterioration in another parameter."
G.S. Altshuller
G.S. Altshuller
History armored vehicles. Today we will again visit our tank freak show, and our exhibition will not be large in size, but interesting. It will be about “tanks-giraffes ", that is, vehicles with rising warheads.
And it so happened that even in the distant Soviet times I had the opportunity to read a very interesting book by B.L. Zlotin and A.V. Zusman "A month under the stars of fantasy", from which I first learned about TRIZ - the theory of inventive problem solving, and ... I really liked it. It happened in 1988, just when I was working on my Ph.D. thesis in the graduate school of KSU, and I did not miss the opportunity to write in it that it would be nice for students to give it to read, that is, at least to acquaint them with TRIZ, and also to tell about it on Kuibyshev television in the program "School Country Workshop", which I then hosted there from 1985 to 1989. But it was necessary to show the solution of one of the TRIZ problems in a visual way. Because in each program of the "Country ..." it was told about some kind of homemade product. It was February 23rd, and I decided to make ... a tank! After all, a tank is a tangle of contradictions, and one of them is this: the tank must be low so that it is difficult for the enemy to notice it, and the tank must be high, because "everything is better seen from above." How could you try to resolve this contradiction? And here's how: create a tank with a rising turret!
Again the cover of the American magazine "Modern Mechanics", and on it a mobile observation post rising to a great height!
That is, the same car is both low and high at the same time. He raised the tower from behind the bushes, from the ravine, from behind the fence, looked out for the enemy, otherwise he shot at him and immediately lowered him, before he had time to answer you! The model turned out to be very effective. She not only went and turned, but also raised and lowered the tower, which was attached to the body on a "two-toothed" lever. The transfer to the Kuibyshev schoolchildren, and not only them, but also adults, then liked it. Here are just questions in letters about whether such tanks are being developed somewhere, I could not answer due to ignorance. The model itself has not survived either. Over the 40 programs carried out in Kuibyshev, there were so many of them that there was no way to bring them to Penza. So they remained for the future inhabitant of my graduate student apartment as a keepsake ...
However, time has passed, and today you can tell about the "tanks-giraffes" in much more detail ...
It all began with the fact that in 1937 the British engineer John Tupp received a patent for a low-profile machine, designed in such a way that it could fire over walls and from behind low cover. The beginning of the war with Germany spurred the work, because then everyone was only saying that the Germans were about to land on the British Isles, and any means were good to repulse them.
"Praying Mantis" Tappa with the cockpit raised to the maximum elevation angle
And in 1941, Tupp finally presented his car to the War Department. In fact, it was a Carden-Loyd tankette, on the chassis of which a special lifting mechanism was installed, armed with a machine-gun mount. The driver, who is also the shooter, was lying (!) In the rising part of the car and could observe through the viewing slot and the periscope. An interesting design feature was the presence of a kind of machine gun stabilizer in the vertical plane.
In what, and in the unusual appearance of the Tapp car, it was difficult to refuse ... Somehow his turret resembles a head Robot- peacemaker from the movie "Short Circuit" (1986)
The unusual-looking car was called "Praying Mantis", that is, "Praying Mantis", and - yes, indeed, in some way it really looked like him! During the tests, of course, some shortcomings were noted: the most significant - a crew of one person - but on the whole the machine worked! It is clear that the designer immediately made it double. And they decided to use the chassis from the Universal armored personnel carrier, since this armored vehicle was both technically reliable and well-developed in production.
For that time, it was more than an innovative development. So, the maximum height of the warhead of the "Praying Mantis" was 3,48 meters. At the same time, the driver (right) and machine gunner (left) were still placed in a prone position, so that his "normal" height was less than human height!
The modernized "Praying Mantis" began to be tested in 1943, when the threat of a German landing on the islands had already passed. In addition, one curious specific flaw of the machine became clear. The fact is that the cockpit on the move, when it was raised, swayed strongly, and the crew began to "seasick". In addition, there was the problem of remote guidance of the turret. Still, fiber optics and TV cables, and TV itself, were absent at that time, or rather, did not reach the level of today's perfection. Therefore, in 1944, the project was closed. Although the car turned out to be very good. Its height especially impressed: only 1200 mm in the "folded state". Armament: two 7,92-mm machine guns "Bren" were considered quite sufficient. Well, the speed: 48 km / h is also very good for such a small car. But ... she was no longer needed!
"Praying mantis" in camouflage. Side view. Above, the cockpit is lowered, below it is raised
The project of a tank with a rising turret was born in the USSR during the war. But, of course, it is enough just to look at it to understand all its unreality.
Project of a Soviet tank with a rising turret
But in the USA in the fifties of the last century, an attempt was made to create a Falcon (Falcon) tank with ... a "flying tower". In theory, it was supposed to combine the advantages of a helicopter and a tank with a rising turret.
Its approximate appearance
Inside the cylindrical tower with an aerodynamic profile of the inner walls was an engine with coaxial propellers and a cockpit with a machine gun. True, the pilot from it had to look at the horizon at an angle, which limited his angle of view. But he could increase it by rising to a great height. Rockets - its main armament, were in tube containers on both sides of the cylinder. In general, the idea seems to be not bad, but ... worthy not so much of the army as of the circus in the fresh air. Filigree piloting technique was required to control the "flying tower", and the costs of operating such a tank would have exceeded all reasonable limits. Another thing is a tank with a launch pad drones, moreover, drones powered by cable from a tank generator.
Such a machine was described in the book "Tanks are unique and paradoxical" as one of the possible ways of development of the BTT in the future. But ... this "foresight" did not come true. Drones are already being installed on tanks, but so far those that have autonomous power are being used.
In general, as it always happens, reality turned out to be much more prosaic and more rational than any forecasts.
For example, this is how the American M113 armored personnel carrier looks like with a station for detecting enemy artillery batteries. It is equipped with a rising mast, and quite high, with a radar at the top, but nothing more ... No weapons installed there!
М113А2 "Tou-2" - self-propelled unit for launching guided anti-tank missiles. For firing, the container with missiles rises somewhat above the body of the armored personnel carrier, but not very high
Nevertheless, the idea of tanks with rising warheads did not die. On the contrary, in the 70s of the last century, in addition to hunting for tanks for "giraffes", they came up with a new task: now they had to fight with Soviet combat helicopters. Of course, there were both ZSU and SAM, but they very often lack a direct line of sight. But the "Giraffe" could hit the Soviet Mi-24, hiding behind the forest, from behind the houses - but you never know where he could stick out his long "neck".
As one of the options in the same Germany, for example, the use of the Swiss-American universal missile ADATS (Air Defense Anti Tank System) mounted on a tank chassis was considered
England and France soon became interested in the German idea. After that, in the second half of the 80s, the project "Panther-2" was launched - it was already a full-fledged rocket "tank-giraffe". Such a machine was supposed to operate from an ambush, performing the function of an anti-tank mobile complex, but at the same time it could well participate directly in a tank battle. That is, the degree of its versatility would have increased!
Already in 1988, the Wegman company was declared the winner, since it managed to offer the cheapest version of the hoisting unit with HOT-3 missiles.
Their competitor was the Euromissile Dynamics company, which built the TRIGAT (Third Generation Anti Tank) universal complex on the chassis of the Leopard 1A2 tank
The idea came up to make a rising and automatic cannon for self-defense, and instead of an ATGM, equip such a machine with a rising laser installation - to shoot down helicopters and blind the crews of enemy tanks.
The Germans considered that such installations were "just that", but then 1991 came, the "threat from the East" dissipated like smoke, and they decided not to spend money on this new "superweapon", but to spend it on the long-awaited integration with East Germany.
Tank with a rising turret: project under the "Panzerkampfvagen 2000" program
Later, in the XNUMXs, as part of the work on the Puma BMP, the option of creating an ATGM with a raised combat module was again considered, but the matter, as before, did not go beyond the drawings.
In the United States, an attempt was made on the basis of the Sheridan airborne tank to create a light tank HSTV-L with a 75-mm automatic gun with a high rate of fire and an initial projectile velocity of up to 3000 m / s. It was planned to make its artillery mount rising so that it could fire at targets from behind cover, but although this tank was built and tested, it was never accepted for service!
Light tank HSTV-L in action
A hypothetical tank with a lifting turret on the chassis of a Sheridan light tank with a Shillela guided missile launcher. The project seems to be much more realistic than the HSTV-L tank. In any case, at a military parade on Red Square, and even with a tower rising during movement, a tank of this type would look exceptionally good (and making it operational, by the way, is not difficult!), And he would have forced foreign military attachés to smash their heads! And no matter what shocking reports they would send to their MO ...
Launching a Shillela rocket from a Sheridan tank launcher
Work on such machines was carried out, for example, in Poland, where they were very much afraid and fearful of Russian tanks. The Czechs and Serbs also had projects. But no money was found for their implementation. Finally, an ATGM with a lifting module was also developed in China, but it did not come to serial production there either. However, one of the reasons, perhaps, is that anti-tank missiles today have already learned to bend around obstacles - you just have to raise the guidance system higher. Therefore, there is no particular need for "giraffes". Well, the military still doesn't like the complexity of such installations, with their low versatility.
A hypothetical "city tank" with a low-impulse large-caliber cannon and a powerful recoil damping system. In the rear of the tank, in an armored box with loopholes, infantrymen are located, providing its protection from enemy fighters with anti-tank hand grenade launchers
PS Color illustrations by A. Sheps.
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