In my quest to increase the amount of content I provide you guys I’ve tested various ideas
lately.
I’ve started posting much more often to my Instagram in the form of short educational
content which I’ve also posted to a new Shorts youtube channel and even dipped my
toes into the cess-pool of tiktok.
However by far the most successful of these has been me making content on this channel
talking about fake and concept tanks.
As I don’t really feel like those tanks fit into the Cursed by Design series though
I bring you a brand new, series Fake Tank Friday.
We’ll be looking at tanks from movies and TV as well as from a variety of other places.
To kick off this series I figured we should look at what is probably the most infamous
fake tank which has cropped up in the tank community.
Allow me to introduce the one and only KV-6.
At an astounding 15.6 meters or 51 feet 4 inches long this super heavy dwarfs even the
largest tanks ever built.
With its absurd design and history related to it you might wonder how something like
this could have possibly been believed by anyone.
If that's the case then you clearly haven't been around on the internet very long because
believe me, if you can make even a half convincing photoshop you can easily find someone gullible
enough to believe it.
Before we get into the fake nature of this machine and what brought it to life in the
first place, however, I think it's only fitting that we slip into the alternate universe where
it exists and explain its supposed history.
The origin of the KV-VI is said to have come in 1941 when Stalin learned of the KV-2 which
was able to hold off an entire German panzer division for more than a day.
Likely, this is referring to the heroic stand at Raseiniai we talked about in my KV-2 video.
Seeing this success Stalin immediately ordered the start of a new program for a land battleship
on the basis of the KV-2.
The joint team of Kotin/Barkov were given the project, quickly making complaints of
how long the tank was.
This was caused by Stalin’s insistence on the tank having 3 turrets as clearly the SMK
had performed so well with 2.
Despite the engineer's concerns of its turning radius he simply replied “It doesn’t need
to turn, it will drive straight to Berlin.”
Upon completion the design was designated the KV-6 “Behemoth”.
The utilization of parts from the KV-1, KV-2, BT-5, T-60, and T-38 was deemed necessary
due to the pressure Stalin was putting on the designers, and if there's one thing you
don’t want to do it's upset Stalin.
Weighing in at a staggering 138 tons it was clear that no bridges would support this monstrosity
so it was designed with wading devices to allow it to cross rivers up to 2.7 meters
or 9 feet deep.
Clearly with its top speed of 13 miles per hour this would be a very simple task especially
since the length would surely not impact this at all.
With the overall size of 51.6 meters as I mentioned earlier and a height of 4.65 meters,
15 feet, it would also carry a removable observation tower to allow it to direct the fire from
its howitzers and rockets, yes you heard right this tank has rockets.
With that said we can smoothly transition to the armament of this beast.
We already covered the turrets but to clarify further it has a total of 3 primary turrets
along with 4 smaller turrets and a single Katyusha launcher.
Starting from the front is a KV turret armed with the 76.2mm cannon with a double barreled
12.7mm turret on top.
Immediately behind the first turret is another small 12.7mm turret followed by the primary
turret of this machine.
Here we have a modified KV-2 turret with 2 152mm cannons mounted side by side.
Of course this is nowhere near well armed enough so an additional BT turret was fastened
to the roof to give another 45mm.
Just before the engine compartment in the rear we find the last armament of a final
KV turret with a 76.2mm and a final BT turret adorned with a rocket rack for good measure.
Just to be safe the machine did retain the KV style hull MG as well as being equipped
with 2 flamethrowers mounted on the sides.
Exact armor protection of the Behemoth is not known but it ranged from 160mm at its
thickest down to 7mm. 3 of these machines were said to have been
built with the first completed in December 1941 and used for the defense of Moscow.
This vehicle was lost due to friendly fire when the rear turret mistakenly fired into
the middle turret caused by a lack of visibility and leading to a total loss of the machine.
The second tank was finished the following month and sent to the Leningrad front.
Learning from the mistakes of the first design, this one featured indicators for the turrets
so the crew would not accidentally fire upon their own vehicle.
Upon its first use in combat this tank was lost as well when it attempted to cross a
ravine only for the immense length and weight of the vehicle to cause it to break in half.
During this the flamethrower fuel was ignited by a spark and the entire machine was again
lost.
Still determined to deliver on Stalin's orders a third prototype was completed and again
sent to the Leningrad front.
Now with both the turret indicators and a reinforced hull the tank saw some success
when it was able to shoot down 3 German aircraft.
Later when engaging a ground target all the guns were fired at the 3 o’Clock position
resulting in the tank flipping onto its side from the immense recoil.
This would have been recoverable had it not set off the 152mm ammunition resulting in
a total loss of the vehicle once again.
With this final catastrophic loss the KV-6 claimed 45 lives of its own crew with 15 in
each machine all for the defeat of 3 German aircraft.
As Stalin is a very forgiving man, the designers who followed his orders exactly as he gave
them were given free one way passes to Siberia for the remainder of their lives.
The project was canceled after that, more likely due to the material cost rather than
the lives lost.
It is said that the few Germans who did manage to witness these tanks nicknamed them “Stalin’s
Orchestra” because of the massive array of weaponry.
Now I won’t lie and say that this is a completely unbelievable story aside from the obviously
absurd specifics of the design, but it should be clear to most with a basic knowledge of
tank design that this is all fake.
In reality this vehicle was created by a model maker named Brian Fowler for a science fiction
competition in 1995 later posted online in 1997.
For anyone curious I will link to the original article down below which gives the exact way
he built it but the short explanation is 2 KV-2 model kits and 2 KV-1E kits along with
parts from a few other Russian tank kits.
I need to be clear that this was not done to mislead anyone into believing the KV-6
was real as the photoshopped images and other media surrounding this tank would not come
until later.
However, it can possibly be seen as a slight mistake to have included fake reference books
in the original article as many will never bother to look past the fact that sources
are listed to see if those sources are actually legitimate.
There’s probably some sort of lesson to be had there but I’ll leave that for others
to discuss.
From its initial contest debut it was later featured on the cover of an April Fools edition
of Boresight.
Later fake historical photos would begin to creep onto the internet on places such as
Deviantart with one from Sir-Zora-Crescent as well as a detailed cutaway by VonBrrr.
Over the years the KV-6 has sometimes changed with different depictions of it varying slightly.
At this point the tank has become so widespread that it's likely if you have spent any time
in the history community you would have heard about it.
The more elitist types in the community may scoff at things like this and claim they mislead
people and misinform them and in some ways I do agree with that sentiment.
On the other hand if someone sees a design this absurd and it causes them to start down
the path of researching more about it not only will it quickly become clear it's a fake
but odds are they will learn more about real tanks while they do it.
I mentioned it before in my video talking about Girls und Panzer but I think the quote
bears repeating “the first thing you have to do if you're going to teach history is
find a way to make it interesting”.
Not to mention with this design being old enough to qualify for classic car plates in
most US states I think it's fair to say that although it's a fake design it still has cemented
itself as a piece of tank history.
As far as the real-world KV-6 goes it's unclear exactly what the design was as any documents
relating to it have either been lost or are yet to be shared publicly.
I hope you enjoyed this video.
If you did, I'd love to hear about it in the comments down below so I can take your feedback
into account for future episodes.
Huge shoutout to the Tank Encyclopedia for their article on this vehicle which really
helped to summarize the history of this tank and provide the links to the original information.
As always a huge thanks to my youtube members who support the channel.
Be sure to let me know what fake tank you’d like to see covered in the next episode of
Fake Tank Friday which will possibly be next week, but I’m not sure if this will be a
weekly thing just yet.
Either way be sure to subscribe and hit the bell so you don’t miss it when I do post
the next one.
Regardless, thank you all for watching and I’ll see you then.