After spotting a rather strange vehicle being sunk by French soldiers in the Seine river,
Nazi soldiers took it upon themselves to retrieve the machine.
Upon a thorough inspection, the Germans were amazed by the vehicle's structure
and immediately saw its impressive potential to hinder the long enemy Allied trenches.
There was no time to waste, and soon the Germans ordered a private contractor
to build a similar vehicle of their own.
The result was the mighty Goliath tracked mine, a series of two unmanned ground vehicles that
stood at a mere 1 foot 4 inches but could carry up to 220 pounds of high explosives.
The Goliaths were built with high expectations, and as they were put into service in early 1942,
Hitler himself was confident that they had the potential to change the course of the war...
Remote-Controlled Tank
As World War I raged on, inventors from different countries devised small tracked
vehicles that were controlled via remote and intended to carry explosive charges to
hamper the enemy's advances without risk of injuring the drivers. In particular,
land torpedoes were proposed specifically to combat engineering structures.
The first known product of this class was the French Land Torpedo Crocodile Schneider,
which carried up to 88 pounds of explosives.
However, the Crocodile saw limited combat in the summer of 1916 due to its underwhelming
performance, and the device was quickly outshined by the French Army's first tanks.
Trying their luck one more time, the French devised the Aubriot-Gabet Electric Torpedo,
driven by a single electric motor powered by a cable following its tracks.
Although the earlier versions of the vehicle lacked proper steering mechanisms,
The French didn’t really care, as the Aubriot-Gabet's main task was to go into
the always unpredictable No Man's Land and attack the endlessly long enemy trenches.
Inspired by an American inventor's patent named the Wickersham Land Torpedo, vehicle designer
Adolphe Kégresse perfected the French's technique and developed another remotely controlled armored
tractor after the war. The vehicle was loaded with up to one thousand pounds of explosives.
This prototype served during the early stages of World War 2,
as the French struggled to stand against the dangerous Germans.
Then, during the winter of 1940,
the ever-advancing Nazi Army was entering France when some soldiers
spotted a machine deliberately thrown to the Seine river by the defeated French soldiers.
The technologically-savvy Germans were astounded upon retrieving it,
as they'd never created anything like it before.
Impressed with the destructive potential of the remote-controlled device,
the Wehrmacht's ordnance office instructed their private contractor, Carl F.W. Borgward automotive
company, to begin the development of a similar tracked remote-controlled vehicle immediately.
Its purpose would be to carry a minimum of 110 pounds of high explosives.
Early Models
After two years, in the spring of 1942, Borgward rolled out their first prototype,
the SdKfz. 302 Sonderkraftfahrzeug, or special-purpose vehicle. It was an
electrically-powered automobile, cranked up by two 2.5-kilowatt Bosch motors.
This early model came with extremely high costs and a severely limited range of less
than a mile on flat surfaces, so the Wehrmacht was unsatisfied and requested the company to go back
to the drawing board to perfect their prototype. This was unusual at the time and considered a
military disgrace usually reserved for weapons that never saw actual battlefield action.
Months later, Borgward introduced the SdKfz. 303a. Now fuel-powered by a Zundapp two-cylinder
gasoline engine, the second prototype had an improved street range of more than seven miles.
These early models were sent to the battlefield as soon as they were finished,
joining the Wehrmacht's engineering units and several cavalry ones to destroy Allied tanks,
civil engineering structures, and other resistance points.
The model saw combat on all fronts and was mainly
used by specialized Panzer and combat engineer units.
By 1944, as the tides had begun to change in favor of the Allies,
Borgward created their ultimate remote-controlled tank: the SdKfz. 303b,
a slightly larger model that could carry up to a 220-pound payload.
Goliath
Although the Allies referred to the lethal vehicle as ‘Beetle Tank,’
the unmanned ground vehicle and all its prototypes were actually nicknamed ‘Goliath’ by the Germans.
The Goliath tracked vehicle had the capacity to carry up to 130 pounds of explosives
and was steered remotely using a joystick-style control box
connected to the craft by a 2,130-foot triple-strand cable attached to its rear.
The cable was used to both control and transmit power to the electric-driven version.
Two of the cable strands accelerated and maneuvered the Goliath,
while the third was used by the arms expert to trigger the detonation.
The Goliaths were naturally considered disposable,
as they were built specifically to be blown up along with an enemy target.
Although the first models were powered by an electric motor, they proved to be too difficult
to repair on the battlefield. And at 3,000 Reichsmarks, they were not exactly cost-effective.
As a result, later models used a more uncomplicated and reliable gasoline engine.
Making haste as the Allies closed in on the Germans,
the latest Goliath model was believed to be first introduced in the Battle of Anzio,
a six-month-long amphibious campaign in Anzio and Nettuno, near the Italian capital.
Engaged along the Atlantic Wall to protect the coasts against an allied invasion,
several Goliaths were installed all over the Normandy coasts.
On June 6, 1944, as air and sea allied forces descended upon the beaches of Normandy,
several Goliaths were spotted in the west, but most were rendered inoperative and
useless due to artillery blasts that severed their vital command cables.
Following the historical landings, at least one Goliath stationed in the Maritime Alps
made a successful attack against a vehicle of the 509th Parachute
Infantry Battalion of the United States Army.
That same summer, as the Warsaw Uprising led by the Polish resistance home army to liberate
the capital from the oppressive German government began, the Goliath exhibited a significant flaw.
Although effective, the peculiar remote-controlled
vehicle was quite vulnerable to enemy interference, as a single cut to its
cables with something as simple as plier scissors could render them unusable.
It wouldn’t take long for the Polish to figure it out.
Retreat
Ultimately, the innovative vehicle proved to be nugatory in most cases, unable to move in uneven
terrains or prone to be deactivated by cunning enemy soldiers who cut its command cables.
Although a large number of Goliaths were captured by the Allies,
their experts were certain that they had little to no military value.
Still, some Goliaths were used by the United States Army Air Force as aircraft tugs,
but they would quickly break down because of their flimsy and disposable materials,
as the vehicles were not designed for sustained continuous use.
Very slow, highly expensive at 3,000 Reichsmark units each, and characteristically fragile, the
Goliath Sonderkrafahzeug special-purpose vehicle was simply too ambitious for the era's technology.
The cables broke, the shielding was insufficient, and its crossing capacity remained quite limited,
often blocked by simple natural obstacles.
In the end, Borgward built over 7,500 Goliaths during the war.
A Romanian Version
Motivated by the Germans, the Romanian Army built their own remote-controlled tracked mine model.
Only known as Romanian Goliath due to a lack of information about its real name,
its existence is only proven through a series of photos, which show the model had no real armor.
Despite their source of inspiration,
the Romanian Goliath was remarkably different from its German counterpart.
To start off, the model had several logistical improvements upon the common Goliath,
as the Romanian-designed vehicle's chassis allowed it to cross through trenches and craters.
The unique chassis applied to the side of the Romanian Goliath had
two large-diameter road wheels and two pressure rollers located between them,
which functioned exceptionally well in different types of weather.
The model's rear roller was lowered to the ground and worked as a kind of guide wheel,
while the driving wheels were in the front.
Still, little is known about the vehicle, as data from their testing exercises is nonexistent.
It is believed that it never went past the prototype stage and that
it weighed just about two tonnes, larger than its German counterpart.
By the fall of 1944, the Romanian Goliath prototype was disassembled,
and it is widely assumed that this Romanian vehicle was of an experimental nature
since the highly specific chassis was too vulnerable for a real battlefield.
Pioneer
Even though the Goliaths only had one use, could only travel at a top speed of 6 miles per hour,
was too expensive to make and maintain, had no armor, was highly vulnerable to wire cutters and
anti-tank weaponry, and had a poor ground clearance of just four and a half inches,
they are still considered a technological success.
The early models proved to be disastrous in nature,
but the Goliath paved the way for the surge in post-war remote-controlled vehicle technologies,
and its failures helped engineers immensely.
Although the remote-controlled vehicle ultimately saw little use in combat,
it is the pioneer and precursor of all modern radio-controlled robotic vehicles.
Today, the surviving Goliaths that were not blown up by the Allies
are scattered across several museums around the world, now preserved for eternity.
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