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Mendeleev Super Heavy Tank

The Russian Mendeleev Super Heavy Tank looked more like a reprisal of a train car than a main battle tank. Thirty feet long and 15 feet high, it carried a single 120mm main naval cannon mounted inelegantly sprouting forth from the front of the train car like tank. This behemoth would have required 8 men to operate. This project, proposed in 1911, was never adopted by the technical committee of the tsarist army. Vasily Mendeleev (1886 — 1922) developed the project's own super-heavy tank in 1911. Working in the 1908 — 1916 years as a designer at a shipyard, in his spare time, he thought about how to make a machine that would be fine armor and invulnerable for a gun and artillery fire, had a devastating firepower, and could do it all delivered combat puzzle.

As is well known, he was a marine engineer, and his creation of the tracked vehicle displayed the main concepts of building ships since then. In the period 1911–15. in his spare time without any assistance, Lead Designer of the Nevsky Shipbuilding Plant (actively engaged in manufacturing submarines for the Marine Technical Committee in those years) V. Mendeleev (son of the famous chemist DI Mendeleev) carried out his own project. Based on his education and design experience, for four and a half years, V. Mendeleev carried out not only the conceptual design of the idea, but a full-fledged project brought to the level of working drawings of a prototype. The project proposed by him was quite realizable at any shipbuilding enterprise of his time.

This "prototank" was an armored tracked machine of record weight of 173 tons, the power plant of which was a gasoline engine from a 250 hp submarine. The layout of the machine also resembled more likely not a tank, but a submarine laid on tracks. She carried weapons in the bow, the engine-power compartment in the stern, and the control and crew compartment in the middle of the hull.

At first glance, Mendeleev’s tank is nothing special - a rectangular box with a gun in front in the front armor plate and a machine gun turret on the roof of the hull. However, carefully understanding the features of the design, which was developed in the years 1911-1915, then the genius of the developer of this project is aapparent. In this project, several technical solutions were simultaneously applied, which were actually implemented in tank building after many years. Here are some of them:

1. as the main armament used a large-caliber gun (120 mm), such guns on tanks began to be put mainly after the second world war;
2. most powerful protection - frontal armor 150, onboard 100 mm. As is well known, all the tanks of the First World War had anti-bullet reservation, and here it was not just counter-missile, but also of such thickness that even the famous "Tiger" never dreamed of. In addition, the designer applied differentiation of armor - the frontal armor detail is thicker - which in the world tank building was widely used mainly from the middle of the Second World War;
3. Air suspension suspension with variable ground clearance. The use of a pneumatic suspension in modern tanks is a promising direction for improving the characteristics of the suspension and the mobility of the tank.

August 24, 1916 VD Mendeleev presented project for review. It should be emphasized that project has been designed very carefully to small details. Machine plan design reminiscent of a land battleship. In general, at the time, by analogy with the sea, the tanks were called land fleet. The design of the tank was a box-shaped housing length of 10 m (length with a gun — 13 m), the height of 2.8 m. Armor ["reservations"]: forehead — 150 mm (cast steel plate), a board feed — 100 mm (Solid Plate), roof — 76 mm (5 assembled from cast slabs) was very highest figure at the time. Such armor could withstand 152mm shells.

The machine was virtually immune to at least some guns as long for its destruction would take a direct hit at least 305-mm shells of marine instruments, then V.D.Mendeleev was the first engineer who applied protetive armor. Running the machine was based on air suspension rollers (on board by 6 rollers of small diameter, 5 and 4 support rails were leading the upper rear wheels), which allowed the car to change the ride height or even fall to the ground with heavy fire in order to avoid running injuries parts. It was also intended to lower the body on the ground to increase the accuracy.

V.D.Mendeleev, taking into account the impressive weight of the machine, anticipating a design chassis can move by rail, install the special tool carts on wheels that can be driven car engine, allowing it to move by rail without the help of others. Landing crew of eight men (commander, mechanical, control, gunner, machine gunner, three gunners) and loading ammunition was carried out through a door located in the rear armor plate.

The suspension was supposed to be somewhat flexible and buffered by air. It was flexible to accommodate rough and unpredictable terrain. This 100-ton vehicle would be powered by internal combustion engines, and it would run on gasoline. The machine is also provided for interior lighting on-board power supply. Estimated weight of the machine — 172 tons, with the specific ground pressure less than 2.7 kg/cm2. Design speed — 24 km per hour, with a power carbureted engine with water cooling of 250 horsepower. The engine was placed in the back of the case with a small offset to the left side, with the fuel tanks are in the center hulls, which lacked the capacity of the car to go 50 miles without any additional charge. Tank had a manual gearbox with four-, 4 — go ahead, 1 — back. On the roof of the body was placed spinning retractable machine gun (one 7.62-mm machine gun "Maxim") cylindrical tower with a radial arc of fire, which sank in the stowed position inside the housing. Armor for the turret was 8 mm.

Drawback of such placement was the presence of dead zones, but the project provided loopholes in the sides of the machine to fire crew members from personal weapons. The main armament — 120mm naval gun Kone — housed in the frontal armor plate, with a rotating armored gun mask, which was one of the main features of the design deflection was 16°. The shells were moved on a monorail pneumatic, so greatly increasing the rate of fire of the weapon.

At the time it had almost indestructible purposes. By all measures it was a stern and majestic battle machine, which were on the shoulder the most difficult and unsafe combat missions. But the story of this project was completed. Later, in autumn 1916 V.D. Mendeleev again tried to present a modernized version with the introduction of the British battle tank project, but he was not subject to review.

Although the project remained a non-incarnated in reality, it was a major step in the history of tank development. Neither the project nor its painstaking study not intrigued the military. It was not accepted for consideration and was put in a long box, like a lot of other similar projects.