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Weird Tanks in History

From Early Tank Ideas to Enormous Pre-WW1 Steam Tanks
Cataloguing the machines of destruction may seem like a thankless job (when you think about how much pain and misery they brought to mankind), but the sheer ingenuity of military engineering is certainly fascinating. It's that "anything-goes, testing be damned, let's quickly put it into production" attitude that leads to frenzied arms races, as well as technology breakthroughs. This is how we ended up with laser-tanks, spherical bomb-tanks and nightmarish land dreadnoughts, in the short period of the last hundred years or so - all conceived and built by super-powers in the name of winning righteous wars (any war, it may be argued, can be considered "righteous" by their participants, if they absorb enough propaganda and ideology).

So we look at some of the weirdest tank examples here at AMJG, marveling at their uninhibited design coupled with war-time mythology, brute force and potential for intimidation (seeing how the race to "build a better tank" quickly turned into "building a bigger tank", for example).

It all started in the 14th century. We have a record of a "pre-tank" machine, called "The Fighting Unicorn" (left) - a fragment of a page from the work of Mariano di Jacopo (aka Mariano Taccola) from Sienna:

The armored body of this weird tank precursor concealed a number of soldiers (who must've been of a somewhat slight build to fit in there), all running in step - with the "unicorn horn" either lowered into a "charge" position, or simply used to pound on the helmets of astonished enemies.

The image above right shows another early tank concept: a sketch by Leonardo Da Vinci, one of fifteen found in his notebooks that contain weapon and defensive systems designs (among them are some wildly imaginative ideas like "mobile walls", or the sinister "cluster bombs"...

Here is a better graphic representation of this complex weapon:

Interestingly, the idea of a turtle-like tank shape found its realization much later, in the 1930s, in this Venezuelan armored vehicle:

As you can see from the wonderful recreation of Da Vinci's concept below (courtesy Discover Channel's Doing Da Vinci show), this amazing tank idea from 1482 features a tortoise-shaped armor which literally bristles with cannons all around. Some even call this design "shock and awe" of the 15th-century battlefield, as it certainly would create fear and havoc among enemy soldiers.

Seen on the right in the image above is the Da Vinci's Armored Assault Vessel and the already mentioned mobile walls: "as the enemy used ladders in an attempt to breach the walls, the levers were engaged to move the rails built into the walls that the ladders were leaning on, causing them to become unstable and eventually fall".

More Leonardo Da Vinci war machines - a pivoting radial barrage canon found in the Codex Atlanticus (left) and the multi-barreled machine gun (right, sketched in 1480):

Moving right along to the Victorian Age we have a mention of first caterpillar tracks (invented in their crudest form in 1770 by Richard Edgeworth) being used in the Crimean War, where a "relatively small number of steam powered tractors with the caterpillar track were seen manoeuvring around the battlefield’s muddy terrain.". The idea of armored assault vehicle certainly was floating in the air but needed better engines and more commitment from political powers.

Here is the armored steam-powered vehicle proposed in 1855 for the British Armed Forces... apparently this design did not advance past a certain Lord Palmerston (who happened to be Prime Minister at the time) who deemed it "utter nonsense" and not worthy of further development:

Meanwhile in France, the strangest idea of a caterpillar-like armored train on tracks was proposed by Eduard Boyen in 1874, boasting an incredible weight of 120 tons and a crew of two hundred people! -

In Germany engineers came up with the Mobile Gunpoint 3-ton unit in 1885 ("Gruson 5.3cm L/24 Fahrpanzer"). It was brought to the battlefield by horse, or on rails - and then fired 1.75 kg projectiles from its 53mm gun. it went into mass production in 1890:

In England, in 1902, Frederick Simms designed an armored vehicle on wheels (he called it a "motor-war car") which could also be converted to a track version. Its two revolving machine guns were developed by Hiram Maxim:

In the years leading to the First World War, the British government was not keen on developing such "pretty mechanical toys" as tanks (or as they called them "Land ships"), preferring to concentrate on cavalry and infantry instead. It took backing of some prominent political figures (Winston Churchill among them) to advance the idea - and so the "Little Willie", and then the "Big willie" were born in 1915:

The "Little Willie" had a huge limitation in that it was unable to cross trenches. Crossing trenches was one of the requirements put forward by Winston Churchill when he commissioned the design of a vehicle "capable of resisting bullets and shrapnel, crossing trenches, flattening barbed wire, and negotiating the mud of no-man’s land".

Crossing trenches was a challenge not only for British engineers. Also from 1915 is this bizarre "Machine Boirault" tested for the French Army as a trench crossing vehicle:

Meanwhile in Russia...
...another monster was taking shape on the drawing boards: the Mendeleev's Super Heavy Tank, 1911. It was intended to have a 256 horse power engine and would weigh 86 tons:

The square and brutal shape of this war machine was later repeated in the Rybinsk Tank, 1916 (lower right corner, above). These were developed based on the tractor chassis of the Rybinsk Tractor Factory - and were quite similar to the squarish hull of the French medium tank St. Chamond, for example. It's interesting that the word "tank" comes from the strong resemblance of early armored hulls to various water carriers and liquid tanks, and so the name stuck for good - even when the shapes of tanks changed.

Mendeleev's Super Heavy Tank also featured a revolutionary "elastic" suspension system, as can be seen from the drawings below:

Also in 1916, the Russians came up with the "Vezdekhod" concept (All-Terrain Tank). It had a prominent forward slant of the body, enabling better traction and climbing various obstacles - and also perhaps influencing rhomboid tank designs of the British from the same period:

The "Vezdekhod" (translated as "Go Anywhere") vehicle was strangely streamlined in the first prototypes, could be outfitted with both wheels or tracks, and was slated to go into production in the final form shown on the right:

And yet for all its streamlined curves, this was pretty tame and conventional layout compared to this:

The Tsar Tank!
This lovely mechanism, designed by N. Lebedenko in 1914, could very well be the Biggest Tank Ever Built. It was certainly one of the strangest: a monster of a tank, with a distinctive steampunk-friendly shape, a full 40-ton battle machine with two very large wheels 9 meters in diameter. It was called "Tsar Tank" after Tsar Nikolaj, who helped finance it - and it also had another sinister name "Netopyr" (a vampire bat):

It was hoped that such unusual configuration of wheels will enable the Tsar Tank to pass any obstacle. Unfortunately during the initial trial run the smaller wheel got stuck in a ditch... and the engines did not have enough power to get the rear wheels out. So in the end this magnificent vehicle (looking like some wild modernist sculpture) stayed in the middle of the forest till 1926, when it was dismantled for scrap metal.

Weird "Iron Horse" War Machine from Italy, 1914
This was an Italian mobile gun unit, used in the First World War. It was equipped with a 305mm cannon, with a shooting range of almost 18 kilometers. It was allegedly used during the shelling of the Austrian fortifications in the Alps:

The Giant Destroyers of the Future
You've seen some of the outrageous concepts that appeared worldwide in the years leading to the First World War. Well, the imagination of certain artists of "super-science" publications ran even wilder, eagerly providing colossal visions (or rather, nightmares) that were to dominate public minds for decades to come. Here is an example from Popular Science magazine (December, 1916):

Another Mega Tank concept graced the pages of the "War Budget" publication in 1916:

And we finish today with the German Mega-Tank nightmare vision, taken from the October 21st, 1916, issue of the German news weekly, Die Wochenschau. "Fighting machines of the future: battle between a gigantic trenchdestroyer and a powerful electrically-driven circlecruiser":

Utmost Intimidation: The Power to Terrify - First World War TanksIn the first part of this series we saw some strangely-shaped armored vehicles from the first idea of a tank to real-world pre-WW1 war machines. The 1900s were perhaps the most fascinating period in tank history as nothing on the engineering side was "cast in stone" yet and the resulting shapes were wildly unpredictable. It was a time of experimentation, shifting ideas and a constant flow of prototypes. Now we come to the point in history when all this frightening potential had to become a sinister reality and a race to the top "number of casualties" from a particular machine...

(left: the 1904 David Roberts ‘crawler track’ seen on ‘Hornsby Steam Crawler Track Tractor’. right: “Dreadnought” 3D art)

"Steam Mastodons" on the Canadian PrairiesThe beginnings of enormous steam tanks can be traced to the humble steam tractors widely manufactured and used by the end of 19th century. "Humble", that is, if you do not consider the truly monstrous tractors from British tractor maker Marshall, Sons & Company. This company was in business since 1848, making its first tractor in 1907 and now looking for new markets in Western Canada. Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Saskatoon, Saskatchewan got the first taste of these grandiose plans:

Titled "Dreadnaughts of the Prairies" the company promoted its "British Colonial Tractors" with the slogan, "Built like a Battleship, Runs Like a Watch."

Enter the American Steam Powered Tractor, All Dressed UpAmericans were one of the first to think of a steam powered tractor as a great chassis for a military "land ship", or a "tank". Here we see The American Steam Tank from 1918:

This was the heaviest ready-for-combat tank of WWI, "The America". Some specialists cite glaring problems with this tank, for example, "a stray shell would have ignited the kerosene stores, and exploded the steam-chambers scalding to death everyone inside". The Steam Tank, however, was a step above the Tsar Tank in that it did not completely fail. It was ready to be sent to the battlefields... equipped with a flamethrower!

This gigantic beast was similar in shape to the classic British "lozenge-shaped tanks", except it ran on steam and sported a flamethrower... Er, did we mention it had a flamethrower? Well, this could be just a rumor: "...the flamethrower was eventually placed in a small turret on top of the cab - yet there is no photographic proof this ever took place".

Named "Steam Tank, Tracklaying" it was built by the Army Corps of Engineers in conjunction with Stanley Steamer (the makers of the Stanley Steamer automobile) - and could also act as a battering ram if needed. "Accounts state that this tank arrived in France in 1918, however, the war ended before any meaningful tests could be carried out."

Best's Track Machine, Model 75Built by an American citizen named Best in 1917, this military machine was looked favorably upon by the U.S. Army command (it ordered 50 of these vehicles in 1917):

A similar shape was seen on the Holt "75" conversion, built in 1916:

Here is a harrowing encounter on a narrow street (on the left is the original version of the Holt Steam Tractor):

There were a lot of interesting armored vehicles based on the 1905 Holt Steam Tractor chassis (seen above left). On the right are some bizarre Christie SPGs prototypes. Speaking of Christie, these were unusual tracked vehicles designed by J. Walter Christie - here is the M1919:

One of the Holt tractor conversions was the Holt gas-electric hybrid. "It had a crew of six and used a Holt four-cylinder motor to turn a generator in order to power two electric track motors". One problem: it looks really ugly (which is probably not a problem for a tank but rather an asset). Shown below is the Holt one-man tank prototype:

Right image above: this is an even more interesting Steam Wheel Tank (from 1916-1917) which is a throwback to the big-wheel design idea:

It was also referred to as "the three-wheeled steam tank", "the Holt Steam Tank" and the "Holt 150 Ton Field Monitor". The Steam Wheel Tank was designed on the basis of the early British "Big Wheel" Landships from 1915. It also resembled the German "Treffas-Wagen" of 1917. Speaking of landships, there were designs proposing linking two or even three such machines together, essentially building a tracked armored train! -

The British Side of Things
We already mentioned classic British "lozenge-shaped tanks with a kerosene engine". These were Mark I tanks: the British Army and the world's first combat tanks. "The Mark I entered service in August 1916, and was first used in action on the morning of 15 September 1916 during the Battle of Flers-Courcelette, of the Somme Offensive... It was the first vehicle to be named "tank" (partly to maintain secrecy and to disguise its true purpose). It could definitely cross trenches, thus fulfilling Winston Churchill's requirements that we mentioned in the first part of this series.

Here is a good crowd shot of the MK-4:

The British Mark IV tank, 1916 - truly a landship, rising over the trenches as though carried by ocean waves!

As you can see, tanks were getting heavier and more massive. It was only a matter of time till British Armed Forces would entertain the idea of a shell-proof super-heavy Land Dreadnought: The Flying Elephant!:

Here is an interesting Gun Carrier MK-1 version:

And a unique photograph of "Mk.VIII International", an Anglo-American effort with a very compact-looking "Renault M-1917" (or Renault FT) on top of it! Right image shows bizarre American Skeleton Tank:

French Heavy Tank Monster
In the meantime, the French military came up with the "char lourd" (heavy tank) St Chamond in 1916:

This beast (second of the French heavy tanks of the First World War) had very strange specs: it had no rotating turret and the long nose was prone to dig into the ground, which despite pretty decent speed of 12 km/h, made it a rather cumbersome vehicle. No crossing trenches for it either, due to its short tracks and very long body. The word in the army was that "Nobody wants to serve on the Saint-Chamond"... Despite this, production continued with a total number of around four hundred tanks made.

German Intimidating Offerings
The famous Treffas-Wagen machines (well-known in steampunk and gaming circles) were essentially armored steamrollers or tractor engines with a shooting platform on top:

Near the end of World War I Germany introduced the A7V tank in 1918 (the only tank used by Germany in WW1 operations). British forces respectfully called it the "Moving Fortress":

Which brings us to... the German Super Heavy Tank Project! (I bet you were waiting for this). German K-Wagen was 12 meters long, 6 meters wide and weighed 120 tons! -

Last but not least, strange Italian battle machines. Here is a Carro Armato interpretation of the wheeled armored vehicle, capable of crossing trenches of reasonable depth:

All the players set, all tank pieces developed... the First World War action starts

(on the right is Italian CV-35 tests in 1940)

The Battle of Verdun in 1916 (among other First World War photographs) from the pages of the LIFE Magazine:

On the left image below is weird and inappropriately "cheery" depiction of the tank in action - and on the right is a significantly more realistic painting by John Hassall, showing pain and suffering on the Somme battlefield. "By the time the Battle of the Somme ended, there were over a million casualties on both sides, with over 300,000 killed or missing".

Other (Mostly) Imaginary Steel Leviathans
The imagination of the reading public was fired up pretty early: consider this sketch made in 1906 of the "Lethal Armored Vehicles" featuring egg-shaped streamlined armor:

"Exit the Cavalry, Enter the Tanks!" proclaimed Popular Science magazine in August 1931:

The readers and editors did not spend much time mourning over the "impending passing of the United States Army’s most romantic unit, the mounted cavalry". Horses were definitely too slow for modern warfare, and cavalrymen of the future were expected to ride their gasoline steeds (new tanks) into battle.

(Future War Tank, 1939)

The Electrical Experimenter, July 1917 cover (left) and Science & Mechanics cover from much later period, 1934 (right):

A more modern approach, this is a tank design for the "Nadia: The Secret of Bluewater" (1991, Japan), and the tank concept from the WarHammer game universe: Land Raider Proteus:

Camouflage! -

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Weird Tanks in History