It feels like everytime I start a video about superheavies I always bring up tanks like
the Maus.
Although there is a good reason for that considering how well known that tank has become it is
far from the first tank to receive such a designation.
In fact it's not even the first Superheavy design from Germany with dozens of different
tanks being drawn up in excess of 100 tons.
One design in particular though, much like its cousin the A7V, has been all but forgotten
by the pages of history.
Weighing in at a staggering 120 tons or even more depending on the source the K-Wagen was
the first ever super heavy tank to actually reach the production line.
Stay tuned and we’ll take a look at this colossal design.
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Now let's get back to today's big game.
As we discussed in my last video the battlefields of WW1 by this point had become locked in
a stalemate.
Trenches stretched unbroken for miles with casualties from artillery and snipers only
surpassed by those resulting from deadly charges into no mans land.
However, the British introduction of the tank had finally started to break through the trenches.
This resulted in it once again being possible to advance further than just a few hundred
yards slowly weakening the stalemate.
The Germans were somewhat slow to respond to this with it taking them nearly 2 years
to create the first tank of their own.
This is not to say that the Germans were stupid though as they did quickly learn ways to counter
the British Mark tanks and even invented some of the first anti tank weapons but that's
a topic for another video.
Moving our attention back to the tanks it should be no surprise that both sides not
just pursued the designs but also tried to push it to the extreme.
One example of this is the 200 ton project by the US to create a mobile fortress named
the Trench Destroyer.
We’ll definitely look at that design in the future but for this video I just included
it to show that the Germans were not alone in this thought process.
That being said, it's somewhat interesting that we see parallels between German engineers
in WW1 and WW2 in terms of what was deemed worth allocating resources to.
With this we finally reach the K-wagen.
This project was the brainchild of Joseph Vollmer who you may recognize from the A7V
program which he also worked on.
Over the course of its development the tank would grow and shrink in both size and weight
with a 100 ton design, 120 ton design, and 150 tons with the final approved design being
the middle ground of 120 tons.
This weight can be a bit misleading as it might cause you to think the armor would be
incredibly thick like WW2 heavies.
In reality the armor was only around 30mms at its thickest.
Still for that time this would have been pretty close to being immune to anything other than
artillery fire so it's respectable for its day.
With such thin armor I’m sure you must be wondering how it could possibly weigh such
an enormous amount.
In this case size truly is what matters with it being reduced to just under 43 feet long.
Yes you heard me right, reduced to 43 feet, I wasn’t able to find what the original
proposed length was but considering the construction was reportedly given to companies that specialized
in building bridges it's safe to say this was a giant.
Even with this size reduction it still makes it the longest tank in history excluding proposals
like the P.1000 Ratte.
As with any tank size plays an important role in transportation and with this being a size
like no other it was out of the question to try and drive this thing wherever it was needed.
The designers would need to get creative with the way they built the tank to allow it to
even remotely be useful.
This led to a fairly unique modular design being developed which separated the landship
into 4 pieces which could then be loaded on rail cars for transport.
Supporting the landship name this vehicle would have supposedly utilized U-boat technology
to allow communication between the crew.
With this immense size it’s obvious that the mobility was going to suffer tremendously.
We know that this design was planned to use a two engine layout to power it like the A7V
however it seems that somewhere along the line some confusion has crept in on exactly
what engines it used.
Most sources list the tank as using 2x 650 horsepower engines but when you stop to think
about this it makes very little sense.
Even if this is an error and is the combined horsepower of two engines that still would
require a power plant capable of producing 325 horsepower especially since most label
them as V6s.
I did some digging to try and see if any engines fit this description but even the most powerful
German engine was only around 500 horsepower and this was not certified until the very
end of the war.
As the source material for this tank is shaky at best I see this as having a few potential
explanations.
1) The 650 horsepower was a combined total and I missed the engine that produced 325
hp in my research.
2) This figure has been created out of thin air or an error made by someone which has
since been parroted.
Or 3) The two 650 horsepower engines were indeed planned however the engines did not
actually exist at the time.
This last one is certainly plausible considering a similar situation can be found with the
1000hp engine in WW2 for the later superheavies.
In the end though this really does not matter as it seems this was only intended for the
150 ton version of the tank.
The chosen version would use smaller 200 horsepower engines leaving this machine grossly underpowered.
Again I cannot say if the 200 hp is a total combined power or if each would produce 200
and either are possible, although I'm leaning towards the latter.
If you have any knowledge on this subject please leave it below because this has me
perplexed and I’m curious if something is missing or if we possibly have another Panther
II situation.
Assuming that the 200 horsepower figure is correct the mobility of the tank is thought
to be around 5 miles or 8 kilometers per hour.
All this power was directed into a massive gearbox which one source claims to be an electromagnetic
clutch system.
This would drive the wraparound tracks which we clearly see in the plans for the tank.
Seemingly these would be covered by a some sort of plate on the top.
This is a questionable design due to the lack of mud chutes to prevent it from packing soil
on the roof and leading to a broken track.
There could possibly have been some special design to the tracks to alleviate this but
as the A7V-U would later show that exact issue I tend to think they just were unaware of
the risk at the time.
Moving on from the design lets talk about the armament of this behemoth.
The main weapons would be 4 77mm cannons with 2 mounted in sponsons on either side of the
vehicle.
Backing these up 7 machine guns were sprinkled around the hull covering pretty much every
angle other than the very rear.
Going off the blueprints these weapons would be manned by a staggering 20 soldiers out
of the total of up to 27.
Realistically though I think we can expect that more would be crammed in there similar
to how the A7V often carried more than the required number of men.
The design was approved on June 28th 1917 for production as the “K Grosskampfwagen”
with an order for 10 tanks.
This order was split between two companies Wegmann and Riebe-Kugellager.
When you clicked on this video you more than likely expected me to get to this point in
the video and tell you something along the lines of the design not progressing past this
stage due to supplies or the end of the war, but surprisingly this is not the case.
Believe it or not two of these tanks were very nearly completed by the end of the war
only being stopped by the armistice with one being basically finished.
This makes the K-Wagen technically the largest tank to have ever been completed being even
longer than other tanks like the Char 2C or Mark 8.
Sadly both these vehicles were scrapped under the conditions of the armistice which forbid
Germany from owning tanks.
As with most projects like it, not much exists today of the tank with no physical parts remaining
and only a few photos and drawings of the vehicles.
I do have to say that the source material for this video is much less solid than I usually
like to deal with so do take the exact figures with a grain of salt; but I’ve done my best
to find as much as I can on the vehicle.
If more information does surface in the future from the archives somewhere I will gladly
return to cover this tank again.
With not much left regarding the design of the tank itself I think it's worth taking
a few minutes to consider how effective this vehicle could have been.
We can see by the initial experiences with tanks in the war that they did have a strong
impact on the battle.
Assuming one of these giants did somehow get to the front it certainly could have a devastating
impact if we give it the best possible scenario where everything works as planned.
The cannons would make short work of anything they encountered and the incredible length
would allow it to cross any trench it encountered with relative ease.
However, as we’ve seen from just about every wonder weapon type design this was unlikely
to be the case.
At first it might startle the enemy and even cause some level of panic like the Mark tanks
before it, but before long the slow speed and massive size would prove to be its undoing.
The 30mms of armor would be able to shrug off even some field guns and any small arms
fire but artillery would be a different story.
With such a lumbering pace some well placed artillery fire would more than likely cripple
the beast.
This is all without considering the likely terrible interior conditions for the crew,
although credit where it's due, with a separate engine compartment it would be better than
most tanks of its day.
All in all this tank would likely be no different than its WW2 counterparts in terms of usefulness.
Fortunately the Great War would not last long enough for any more deaths on either side
to result from these monstrosities so we will never truly know, but it's still a fascinating
story.
So what do you think of this giant German super tank?
Let me know in the comments down below.
If this piqued your interest in other WW1 designs, be sure to subscribe to the channel
and check out my last video on the A7V.
Thanks as always to my YouTube members for their continued support and one last reminder
to check out Hunting Clash using that link in the description and get it for free on
both the IOS and android.
That's it for today so I’ll see you in the next one.