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Is that your little game?
Hmmm,
I better paste it then
The P. 1000 "Ratte" Type: The Biggest Tank that Never Was
Specific Features: Before I get into the specific features of the "Ratte" let us reminisce briefly about the largest tank ever completed; The Maus. I covered it in my first article on German super weapons and it's one of the more well known of Germany's uber tanks. The Maus weighed in at 188 tons (the M1A1 tank currently used by the United States weighs only 67 tons), had a massive 128mm main gun, and had armor that was a quarter of a meter thick in places. The Maus was built, it was real, it may have even seen combat although details are sketchy and this is probably unlikely. The Maus was also a monumental waste of resources and was ultimately impractical.
The Ratte was the next in line to wear the crown of world's biggest tank, and it made the Maus look like its namesake. The Ratte was to be a nightmare machine and its scale still boggles the mind. It would have been 35 meters long, almost four times as wide as the Maus, and 11 meters high. Armor would have been similar or possibly slightly thicker than that seen on the Maus, but of course covering much more surface area. The tank would have been propelled along on a total of six 1.2 meter wide tread assemblies, three on each side of the tank. This means that the treads on one side would have been only slightly narrower than the entirety of a Maus. No less than eight Daimler E-boat engines would have provided the tank's requisite 16,000 horsepower and the turret would have literally been a Graf Spee class battleship turret with only two instead of three gun positions.
If your pants aren't feeling uncomfortably tight yet, just wait until you hear about the armament. The turret would have mounted a pair of 280mm long barreled ship cannons, each gun weighing in at almost 50 tons and firing shells that weighed over 300 kg a piece and were capable of reaching out and touching someone 42 kilometers away. Practically these weapons w was built, it was real, it may have even seen combat although details are sketchy and this is probably unlikely. The Maus was also a monumental waste of resources and was ultimately impractical.
The Ratte was the next in line to wear the crown of world's biggest tank, and it made the Maus look like its namesake. The Ratte was to be a nightmare machine and its scale still boggles the mind. It would have been 35 meters long, almost four times as wide as the Maus, and 11 meters high. Armor would have been similar or possibly slightly thicker than that seen on the Maus, but of course covering much more surface area. The tank would have been propelled along on a total of six 1.2 meter wide tread assemblies, three on each side of the tank. This means that the treads on one side would have been only slightly narrower than the entirety of a Maus. No less than eight Daimler E-boat engines would have provided the tank's requisite 16,000 horsepower and the turret would have literally been a Graf Spee class battleship turret with only two instead of three gun positions.
If your pants aren't feeling uncomfortably tight yet, just wait until you hear about the armament. The turret would have mounted a pair of 280mm long barreled ship cannons, each gun weighing in at almost 50 tons and firing shells that weighed over 300 kg a piece and were capable of reaching out and touching someone 42 kilometers away. Practically these weapons w was built, it was real, it may have even seen combat although details are sketchy and this is probably unlikely. The Maus was also a monumental waste of resources and was ultimately impractical.
The Ratte would have been able to drive over trucks, houses, and even the mighty Maus tank with ease. Its guns would have leveled buildings, blasted craters ten meters across in the earth, or sunk an unfortunate naval cruiser loitering a little too close to shore. The term P.1000 was a reference to the estimated thousand ton weight of the Ratte, but odds are it would have been much closer to 2000 tons.
History: Very little remains of the history of the Ratte, but it is known that its development began at Krupp in the summer of 1942. Concept work and illustrations were completed by December of 1942 but it is unknown how much beyond this stage development of the Ratte progressed. It can be assumed that not much was finished because the P. 1000 program would have left a pretty easy to identify prototype behind. The Ratte program was never officially cancelled despite the immense waste of resources it would have been if a prototype had ever been completed.. Finally, instead of a turret machinegun the P.1000 was intended to mount either a dual or quad 20mm anti-aircraft gun on top of the 380 ton turret. .