8 Awesome Military Inventions, Past and Present
- Thread starter Rhykker
- Start date
Surprised to see no mention of the Davy Crockett nuclear bazooka where the fun part was that the launcher was still within the blast radius making it effectively a suicide weapon. I'd think of more crazy stuff since it is an area I'm hugely interested in but I just got out of bed.
That's a myth, fortunately. The Davy Crockett's blast radius was fairly modest, in fact; the weapon was about as small as you can make a nuclear weapon, in terms of payload, and was only like 10-20 tons of TNT equivalent, nowhere near the 150-300 kiloton yields more typical for nuclear warheads today.
The radiation produced by the Crockett was significantly more dangerous than the actual blast, of course, but even that tended to be limited to about 1/4 to 1/3 of a mile in terms of short-term lethality. And while you could set the Crockett to arm close enough to put you in that radius, you'd have to be in pretty desperate straits to take that sort of risk.
Given that even the shorter-ranged variant of the Crockett fired out over a mile... Why wait?
The radiation produced by the Crockett was significantly more dangerous than the actual blast, of course, but even that tended to be limited to about 1/4 to 1/3 of a mile in terms of short-term lethality. And while you could set the Crockett to arm close enough to put you in that radius, you'd have to be in pretty desperate straits to take that sort of risk.
Given that even the shorter-ranged variant of the Crockett fired out over a mile... Why wait?
The Maus really was a mistake, I mean my god the thing couldn't even off pavement without sinking too deep to move if it didn't stay in motion.
The Schwerer Gustav was impressive for its time for sheer scale, though in terms of range we've had artillery with similar rage for some time now, and it's accuracy made it, well, there's a reason only 2 where ever made, and it wasn't because of the unwillingness to have such weapons built with resources (we are talking about a government which wasted a million cubic tons of concrete on a bunker that was never finished or that would ever serve a practical purpose if it had)
The Schwerer Gustav was impressive for its time for sheer scale, though in terms of range we've had artillery with similar rage for some time now, and it's accuracy made it, well, there's a reason only 2 where ever made, and it wasn't because of the unwillingness to have such weapons built with resources (we are talking about a government which wasted a million cubic tons of concrete on a bunker that was never finished or that would ever serve a practical purpose if it had)
Zontar said:
Speaking the Maus, there was it's planned followup tank, the Ratte.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1000_Ratte
Pretty sure this is the inspiration for that massive tank in Valkyria Chronicles. So heavy it wouldn't have been able to cross bridges or use railways....and most roads would probably be destroyed by driving on them.
So really, it would have been more of a bunker/turrent that could reposition....a little. Hitler loved the idea. The rest of the German High command put the kibosh on it pretty quick, realizing what a massive waste of time and resources it would be.
And even bigger, was the Monster, which was pretty much the Space Shuttle crawler with cannon built into it. Which was also canceled. I'm betting this is around the time that they changed the locks on the R&D department so Hitler couldn't get in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1500_Monster
German tank design was absolutely crippled by committees obsessed with gigantism and the idea of the "wonder weapon". Rather than listen to field commanders with excellent technical knowledge like Heinz Guderian, the Germans ended up with a million prototypes that barely worked and took resources away from stable workhorse vehicles. The Jagdpanzer IV was utterly superfluous in a world where the StuG III and IV were already doing the job just fine.
The Tiger and Panther were bad tanks from a lot of angles, and the Panzer IV was a prewar design that reached its potential halfway through the war and then started to lose pace.
The Tiger and Panther were bad tanks from a lot of angles, and the Panzer IV was a prewar design that reached its potential halfway through the war and then started to lose pace.
The Maus isnt the heaviest fully enclosed tank ever built if Type 2604 is actually real. If it was made to its design specifications it would be 200 tons vs the maus 170t.
When Tigers and Panthers worked properly, they were fantastic fighting machines (provided you didn't try to do a three point turn in a Panther and wrecked the transmission). But being good in a straight up fight means nothing if your poor construction means you are constantly waiting on repairs with a terrible logistics problem. Which was exacerbated by the second point about prototypes. The Germans had absolutely no need for machines like the Jagdpanzer IV when the StuGs did the job just as well and didn't take resources away.Marxie said:
If Guderian hadn't been disgraced at Moscow and people actually listened to him, a bunch of Germany's more boneheaded machines wouldn't have been fielded.