Panzert

16 comments by Panzert on Jun 9th, 2010

Now, i 've heard some talk about this being some super tank that would've won them the war. I'm just going to say, it. No, no it wouldn't have. Why? Because time wasn't exactly in the Germans favour by the time this would have gone into production, assuming it was approved. It was likely to be destroyed before it could even have been completed.

Time issues aside, if it HAD been produced in time, although this is often mentioned, bombers and artillery would have been a constant hinderence for it. Though supposedly it was supposed to be covered with shitloads of AA. Artillery still would have remained a very real threat to it. Assuming they found someway to counter this, It could have performed well in combat tank columns were often clustered together, these would have been easy meat for the dual 280MMs. One shot from even one of them, bam that's half the column gone.

The ratte would never have been able to travel alone, individual tanks would have proved harder targets for this monstrosity. I'd imagine there wouldn't be much space for the Ammunition for the dual 280s, and they'd probably burn through that fairly quickly. The Soviets, the british and the Americans would eventually change their tactics and create alot more spacing between tanks. Of course, the ratte was also to have a 128mm gun mounted in the front of the hull, but this would have not proved very useful as the whole damn machine would've had to be moved to actually aim it.

Another problem for the ratte would be rivers, of course there is probably not a single bridge in europe that could've held it up. In order to actually cross rivers the crew would've had to find a ford.

In conclusion, the P.1000 ratte would've have been an impractical waste of resources that probably would've never seen the light of day. Even if it had its effect on the war would not have been very siginificant, maybe hold the Soviets off for a week or so before being destroyed if they got lucky.

I planned to go more in depth with this and make it longer but i really didn't feel like it.