After their introduction in World War 1, tanks became an immediate game-changer in modern
warfare. The colossal, motorized contraptions were heavily armed and laboriously reinforced,
making them nearly unbeatable against anything the enemy would throw at them.
But despite all their might, innovation,
and achievements during World War 2, the tanks were eventually as vulnerable to
regular old mud as when they were first introduced to combat 30 years before.
After the war, engineers from all over the world raced to tackle the mud problem once and for all.
However, it would prove a complex task if they wanted to keep the impressive firepower and hefty
protection that had made tanks such a significant turning point in 20th-century battlefields.
In true Soviet fashion, Russia had a blunter approach. Their solution,
as captured in a recently uncovered video, was simple: attach massive rocket engines to the
back of their 40-ton main battle tanks, and pray for the best as the fiery spectacle unfolded…
General Mud
Mounting a massive gun on top of a vehicle and then covering the whole contraption with several
tons of reinforced metal armor was one of the last century's most extraordinary breakthroughs
in warfare technology. Nevertheless, the novel technology came at a cost.
Adding so many guns, munition, and armor to a combat car resulted in
weighty vehicles that swallowed unspeakable amounts of fuel and moved relatively slowly.
As such, the mighty metal behemoths that were invulnerable to most weapons
could easily be stopped by something as simple as too much mud in the ground.
Historically, mud has always represented a significant obstacle for marching armies,
so much so that the Russians dubbed their rasputitsa rain
season as General Mud for its transcendental effect during war.
Adolf Hitler learned the devastating power of the rasputitsa during Operation Barbarossa,
when his final thrust into Moscow was crippled by supply trucks buried in mud,
soldiers slowed down by rough terrain, and above all, tanks stuck in the murky Russian quagmires.
One of the most potent combat tools in the 20th century was almost entirely
negated by the combination of dust and rain. As such,
when World War 2 was over, the Soviets aimed to find innovative solutions to the mud problem.
The Soviet engineers carried out several experiments,
changing the shape of the tracks, lowering the ground pressure on the tanks, and improving
the engines so that they could provide a burst of power when a tank became stuck.
But of all possible solutions, one of the most fascinating, albeit ludicrous,
proposals was the attempt to attach rocket engines to the tanks. The idea was ambitious
and bold. It promised to go much further than mud, hinting at the possibility of
tanks traversing the murkiest marshes as if they were made from solid concrete…
Rocket Science
Soviet experimentation with rocket-propelled tanks was brief and highly secretive; as such,
most of the technical details remain unknown.
What is known is that during the 1950s,
rocket and jet propulsion technology took the military world by storm,
and engineers were eager to find new and creative ways to implement the powerful technology.
Using rockets to briefly push a tank out of a sticky situation was not hard to conceive.
American and German engineers had used small rockets to assist the take-off of large and
heavy aircraft since the early 1930s in a system called JATO or jet-assisted take-off.
Instead of using the rockets to help overloaded aircraft reach take-off speed,
they would abruptly push a 40-ton tank out of even the trickiest mud traps.
As such, Soviet engineers first experimented with adding a single
rocket to a T-55 main battle tank, the most used Soviet tank during the 1950s.
Years later, rare footage of the experiment gave the Russian public a glimpse of the spectacular
sci-fi-sounding project. In the images, a slow-moving tank suddenly dashes forward
as a scorching blast of fire is expelled by the rear of the vehicle, pushing it forward swiftly
as more and more burning fuel shoots backward, creating a dazzling trail of light and fire.
It was an incredible sight to behold, but the results were not the decisive
solution the Soviets were waiting for. The single-rocket version of the tank suffered
from severe stability issues that sent the vehicle veering in every direction.
In addition, the crew had no control over the vehicle's speed and direction
while the rockets were engaged. The tank essentially became a 40-ton
unguided projectile that had to be aimed before unleashing the rocket engines.
If there were rocks, woods, or other obstacles in the way, the rockets could send the vehicle
directly on a lethal collision course that the crew could not do anything about.
Even so, the rocket contraption was highly effective at taking the tanks out of the mud,
and thus, the experimentation continued…
Keep It Going
Another prototype shown in the uncovered footage was model 025,
a modified BMP-1 amphibious tracked infantry fighting vehicle.
In the process of converting it into a rocket-powered tank,
the Soviet engineers divided the vehicle's tracks into two different sets.
Meanwhile, the rear, which usually carries a dismounted infantry squad, was equipped with
two jet-powered engines. And to top it off, the prototype was armed with a mock turret.
The third model tested was a tank based on the PT-76 chassis amphibious light tank, but instead
of a gun turret, the Soviet engineers placed two jet-powered engines from a Yak-40 airliner.
During the trials, the jet-engined models worked successfully with mud, snowy hills,
and wetlands, dealing with many sorts of rugged terrain easily.
The prototypes were filmed from many different angles,
performing jet-powered feats across a large field. After uncovering the exhaust for the engines,
model 025 can be seen dashing across the battlefield in a rocket-powered haze,
while amphibious models were capable of moving in shallow bodies of water.
Some years later, the clips were featured on a
Russian TV show along with a little more information about the secretive project.
The Problem With Rockets
Despite the incredible potential of these fast and powerful tanks, the technology
used on the vehicles soon became noticeable, particularly in issues with the propulsion system.
Inherently more dangerous to a tank crew, rocket engines would be quite vulnerable
in an actual battlefield, where a single shot of an enemy tracer could penetrate
the armored skin of the rocket and set off the vehicle in a second.
Other problems included massive fuel consumption,
technological complexity, and, most of all, exorbitant costs.
In the 1950s, the Red Army kept an arsenal of tens of thousands of tank vehicles,
and outfitting all of them with rocket engines would have become prohibitively expensive.
Because of all these issues, the rocket-powered
tank never came to fruition, and the three prototypes remained just that.
Since then, no other nations have attempted to use these fiery engines for their main battle tanks.
Influence
Despite the failure of the program, rocket-powered engines influenced a current tank.
Using the experience and data gathered during the jet engine Russian tanks canceled program,
the Soviet Union produced the T-80 main battle tank. With a multi-fuel turbine
engine as its main propulsion engine and despite suffering from reliability problems,
the tank continues to be used in Belarus, Cyprus,
Egypt, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Russia, South Korea, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.
While crazy innovative ideas regarding warfare have emerged all over the world
throughout the decades, the Soviet Union was notable for being one of
the few nations willing to risk it all to see if they would work.
The Russian rocket-powered tank program is long gone. However, the footage of
the vehicles zooming by on a battlefield will remain a curious oddity for decades to come…
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