Our tank panopticon: IF tanks
German tank Pzkpfwg-III Ausf J 15Pz. God alone knows why the German designers did not put on it a straightened, like the T-34, frontal armor plate. This could theoretically give a weight gain and improved armor protection. As a last resort, they could put an additional armor plate on hinges on the existing armor to provide access to the transmission hatches. Could they do it? Could! But for some reason they didn't. Apparently, they had some quite reasonable, from their point of view, grounds for this!
And who knows whether he will be wise or stupid?
And he will manage all my work,
by whom I labored, and to whom I showed myself wise under the sun.
Book of Ecclesiastes 2:19
And he will manage all my work,
by whom I labored, and to whom I showed myself wise under the sun.
Book of Ecclesiastes 2:19
Our tank panopticon. For a long time we have not looked into our tank panopticon, but there is something to see there.
There are several sites where the so-called "alternative story”and where you can find many interesting projects (and often very well drawn!) Tanks, ships, aircraft. That is, people are persistently trying to improve history and create, in their opinion, more advanced models of military equipment.
Most often this is done like this: an existing sample is taken and something new is installed on it. For example, a new roller is added to the tank chassis, which implies the installation of a new engine. Which, in turn, allows you to put a new tower with a different, more powerful gun and thicker armor, or even create a whole family of new combat vehicles. That is, the bottom line is that the so-called alternatives find what errors and omissions, and then try to fix them retroactively. But for this it is necessary to correctly identify the problem that has taken place and understand why everything was done this way and not otherwise. Otherwise, by "solving" one problem, they themselves immediately created another.
German medium cannon tank Pz IV. Improved from model to model. The Krupp firm developed a model with a straightened frontal armor plate modeled on the T-34. A model was made, but the tank itself with such armor did not appear until the very end of the war! The tank received the designation 9/BW. But a new hull nose would lead to an increase in the weight of the tank by 880 kg. Reinforced armor on the sides and stern, as well as a redesigned undercarriage, brought the weight to 28,2 tons, which the chassis could not withstand. Therefore, this idea was abandoned. The second time sloping armor was offered on the Pz. Kpfw. III/IV, abandoned in favor of the Jagdpanzer 38 D
So, today we will once again consider the "IF" tanks, that is, the "If" tanks, which could appear, but for some reason did not appear. We will not talk about the reasons why this happened, but let's see how these cars could look like. Although, of course, it will not be possible to ignore the obvious - certain shortcomings that could appear in these completely new machines.
English cruiser tank "Cromwell". Looking at it, the question immediately arises, why did the designers put a tower with vertical armor plates on it? Could you make them slanted? But they put a cast tower on the Churchill tank. Why not put exactly the same on this tank?
It should be noted here how well (or rather, let's say, “at the level of those years”) the fantasy of many modern designers of alternative machines works. Here, for example, is the German tank "Ostgoth" of 1925. Let's leave aside the question of how the Germans could build it. Built! And what? What is shown in our drawing is quite consistent with the then level of tank design. Five towers, five different-caliber guns, seven machine guns, thick armor - everything is within the limits of what is possible and reasonable. Just a godsend for the writer of science fiction novels about those who got into a parallel world, where the Germans are fighting against France and the USSR just on such tanks.
Tank "Ostrogoth"
By the way, the Japanese subsequently (1939-1945) created just such a super-heavy tank - “Type 0-1” or “Mi-To”. So there is nothing new here. Traditional thinking, alas, is very strong in people.
Photocopy of projections of the Mi-To tank. Side view
"Mi-To". View from above
A really interesting project is a hypothetical German LK-III tank with a 57mm gun in the turret. The fact is that the LK-I and LK-II tanks at the end of the First World War in Germany were indeed created and prepared for mass production. But the tower with weapons was located in their rear part of the hull. But what if you flip this design 180 degrees? The tank in all respects would immediately become similar to the French FT-17. That's just bad or good - today, alas, it's impossible to say.
Tank "IF" LK-III
As you know, the German designer Edward Grote, who was invited to the USSR, did not succeed in the “Grote tank”. Moreover, due to illness, he had to return to Germany and ... Why shouldn't he create an analogue of the Soviet car there? After all, he had all the "cubes" for this ...
Alternative "tank Grote"
The simplest, however, is to take a turret from one tank and put it on another. This is what the Finns did when they got Soviet BT-7 tanks. True, they developed a new tower for them and armed with an English 114-mm lightweight howitzer. And a good self-propelled gun came out. But in the same way, they could put on the BT chassis and the tower from the Pz IVE. The only question is the installation of a new shoulder strap of the tower. There is a shoulder strap - there will be a new self-propelled guns.
Finnish self-propelled guns based on the BT-7 tank - BT-44 (AI - alternative history).
Similarly, some alternatives put the turret from the Rheinmetall tank on the T-34 chassis and, conversely, the turrets from the T-34 on the chassis of German tanks. Could this have been done? Quite, but it would be necessary to remove the old shoulder strap of the tower, and put a new one, and besides, it would have to correspond to the width of the tank hull.
Tank T-34 "IF" with a tower from the tank "Rheinmetall"
Pz-III-41 with T-34 turret
Pz-III-43 with "turret-nut" from T-34
Quite a German tank. Except for one - the rear location of the drive wheels. For German production cars, it was not typical.
A lot in the design of the tank depends on its engine - type, cooling system, and even on its location in the hull. It is known that during the Second World War, tank diesel engines were preferred in the USSR, water-cooled gasoline engines in Germany, and gasoline engines in the USA. aviation air cooled motors.
Due to the fact that the transmission on the tanks of the Germans and Americans was in front, a transmission shaft went to it from the engine above the hull floor, which increased the overall height of the tank. The T-34 did not have this shaft. Therefore, our car was lower than the tanks of the USA and Germany. Although ... not everything is so simple here. Tanks "Tiger" (P) and AMX 50 had stern transmissions and at the same time still quite high hulls. But the M18 Hellket self-propelled guns with a cardan shaft and a high radial motor turned out to be quite low - at the level of the T-34-85. So here a lot depended on the designers of the machine and their approach to its creation.
Tanks with engines in the cut. It is clearly visible how the shaft from the engine to the transmission increases the height of the tank
And this is how the same tanks could look like with a slightly different engine arrangement. The American M3 "Lee" would be lower, although not by much. The German Pz-III with an American air-cooled engine would not have changed its dimensions, but the new motor would have added power to it. Most of all, the placement of such an engine on the T-34 tank could promise benefits. True, they say that gasoline engines were more flammable. And again, power ... 340 liters. With. an American motor against ours at 500 hp. With. In addition, when an armor-piercing projectile hit a tank, both diesel and gasoline tanks burned the same way during the war!
During the war years, a lot of effort was spent at the Kirov Plant on the development and creation of the "medium-heavy", that is, the universal KV-13 tank. Several samples of this tank were proposed with a crew of three. It was supposed to equip it not only with a tank gun, but also with a 122-mm lightweight gun and use it as an assault tank. But ... the case with him did not end with anything.
With all options, however, the option with a transverse engine was not considered. And he promised considerable benefits, first of all, with the best weight distribution of the tank. With this arrangement, the turret moved back, the load on the front rollers was reduced, and the armor of the frontal projections could be strengthened. But such an idea did not occur to the designers at that time, although they already talked about the transverse arrangement of the engine on the tank.
The layout of various variants of the KV-13 tank. The last option at the bottom of the "alternative history"
I must say that during the war years, the GABTU received a really fantastic number of projects for a wide variety of tanks. But perhaps the most impressive was this Lenin-Stalin tank by engineer F.S. Seleznev, which had four tracks at once, so that they represented an almost continuous surface. Moreover, the upper contours of the tracks passed under the tank hull, and it was connected to the undercarriage by side sponsons! Tank five towers and five guns!
Tank "Lenin-Stalin"
However, there were real examples of armored vehicles, which sometimes looked like something ... from a sci-fi novel.
For example, such an unusual vehicle was a Swedish armored car of the late 20s - early 30s of the last century with a fully armored chassis M29. A machine gun in a rotating turret, a cannon and a machine gun forward, a machine gun back, two driver positions to move along the highway in any direction without turning around. And, of course, the original armor of all six wheels ... No one else produced such BAs, except for the Swedes.
Swedish futuristic armored car of the last century M29
But the most unusual project of a combat vehicle was created by M. M. Voenkov in 1944. He proposed a metal pipe with spikes on the outer surface, and inside this pipe, tanks were supposed to roll along the walls, like squirrels in a wheel. And thus roll this huge "pipe" at the enemy and crush him with its mass! And having broken through the front, they left the pipe to the sides and rushed to the operational space. The huge size guaranteed its combat stability and protection for the tanks inside. Well, as for the enemy weapon It was supposed to have an amazing psychological impact!
Tank M. M. Voenkov
Drawings by A. Sheps
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