Landships II

Have just been looking at different Wikipedia versions, as they are not necessarily just translations of each other. The Dutch article is of interest (whether accurate or not I cannot comment).

According to Dutch wiki, the vehicle was initially termed GK-Wagen, but the "G" was dropped when one of the firms involved, Wegmann, pointed out that there was a railway wagon called K-Wagen; so they say it was changed quickly from GK-Wagen to K-Wagen as a subterfuge.

Re wooden mockups, I've heard that Hitler ordered one for comparison, but cannot remember where I read so. Dutch wiki reiterates this suggestion. I would point out that Maus was not the only German super-heavy tank project, so it is feasible that a mockup may have been ordered before the Maus mockup was presented. There was apparently a proper "land battleship" project circa 1942, for a 1000 tonne machine to have been propelled by marine diesels. English wiki says that Speer cancelled that project in '42, IIRC.

Incidentally, the Dutch wiki article (which is more wordy than the English and German equivalents) claims that there was a lot of propaganda in Germany against tanks during WW1, the reasoning being that Germany didn't really have the resources available to build them, but could see that they had a positive effect on British morale.

It says that a German tank would therefore have to be better (in armour, etc) than British tanks in order that propaganda could portray British tanks as ineffective, but German ones as good. So the suggestion made is that K-Wagen was more of a huge (literally!) propaganda stunt, and that there were protests against it, hoping that it would just be used for propaganda and never used in combat.

What the "K" stands for is, according to the article, unknown - it says suggestions such as "Kolossal" are just hypothetical.

Some figures are quoted, including that it would carry about 21000 rounds of MG ammo, carry 3000 litres of fuel, and that the later choice of engines (650hp) was to be Daimler units for submarines, but there are no references listed for the article.

Indeed there were numerous super-heavy tank projects (the E100 being the most notable apart from the Maus, for example) but Ratte (the 1000-tonner) was barely a 'project', having got no further than a few 'preliminary drawings' (even according to Wiki, which can be prone to exaggeration) by the end of 1942. Interestingly, Engineer Grote, the brains behind the Ratte, had been 'loaned' to the Soviets during the period of German-Russian cooperation, and had designed this sleek beastie for them:

http://forum.worldoftanks.eu/index.php?/topic/73148-grote-prototype-tank/

Grote also proposed this monster 1000-ton tank for the Soviets as well:

http://bronetehnika.narod.ru/tg/tg_10.jpg

It's suspiciously similar to the latter Ratte, suggesting that he never quite got the thousand-ton tank out of his system...

I'm sceptical about the 'wooden K-Wagen mockup built for Hitler' as all the references I've seen on the web are strikingly similar in wording to each other, suggesting that they're all parroting from one source, which is conveniently never cited. Consequently, until I see reputable evidence I don't believe a word of it.

It sounds plausible, but as you say there's no corroborative evidence, so as to its veracity, who can say at this moment in time?

TinCanTadpole wrote:

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I've just looked at "German Tanks and Armoured Vehicles 1914-1945" by BT White: no mention of a GK-Wagen, nor of what the "K" might stand for. It does, interestingly, say that locomotive springs were used between hull and track frames, and that the track rollers were attached to the track links rather than the hull. 

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That rings a bell, so after much arsing about searching through boxes of files, I've finally found a set of photocopies David Fletcher (bless that man!) did for me, ooh, around 20 years ago(!) of the Tank Museum's material (then, there might be more now) on the K-Wagen. There's a big drawing (a bit indistinct in places) of one of these roller-links, and another set of small schematic drawings showing how the vehicle was to be broken down into transportable sections and reassembled.

I finally worked up the energy to scan something...

Two versions of the sheet of schematic drawings of how it dismantles, the second with red arrows pointing at what I take to be the locomotive-type springs.

Regarding the Hitler bit:

Fritz Hahn has written a much-quoted book "weapons and secret weapons of the german military 1933-1945".

He writes that in October 1918 it was decided to complete only the two protoypes, at a grand total cost of 1,3 Mio Reichsmark. He also writes that Hitler "later" had a K-Wagen model demonstrated to him.

Hahn (b. 1922) claims having served with the Heereswaffenamt, gaining an excellent overview about Germany's WW2 weapons development and production. He further claims having saved many original documents from destruction in April 1945. Disturbingly I was unable to find any scientific evaluation of his writings.

Now for the name, and photos:

Spiegel magazine, not known as a prime source for historical information, shows this K-Wagen production line photo, saying the K was for Kolossal (as do all popular publications re: this tank I found):

http://einestages.spiegel.de/static/entry/angriff_der_kreiselpanzer/13902/der_150_tonnen_prototyp.html?o=position-ASCENDING&s=0&r=48&a=1970&of=21&c=1

Another image, courtesy of the Axis History Forum:

http://i44.tinypic.com/2ew1ul1.jpg