Lebedenko’s Tsar Tank Netopyr
At about the same time as the all-terrain vehicle, another unique combat all-terrain vehicle was created in Russia, with the help of which it was supposed to break through the German front. The idea belonged to the head of the secret laboratory of the Ministry of War N. Lebedenko. No matter how paradoxical it sounds, Lebedenko’s tank, for all its originality, is completely unoriginal. Look closely at this tank - it is a self-propelled gun carriage, only very large! Due to its distinct shape when viewed from above - this resembling the profile of a bat handing upside down, the Tsar Tank was also known as the "Netopyr", translating to "pipistrellus", the genus name for bat.
The Tsar Tank was one of those projects that seem to be a great idea at first but once built are a complete failure. The Tsar Tank was born between 1914 and 1915 in response to modern warfare in which the cavalry was already obsolete.
The simplest idea is to protect a regular cannon with armor and put an engine on it, but the dimensions of a conventional cannon, of course, do not allow it, all the more it is necessary to transport the calculation of the tool and overcome obstacles. Therefore, wheel diameters and dimensions increase, weight increases.
Regarding its size, it was bigger than any tank ever built before: 18 meters long, 12 meters wide and with a weight of 40 tons. Instead of caterpillar tracks, it had a peculiar system that resembled that of a tricycle, with two giant wheels of 9 meters in diameter and three smaller ones. At the time of design, it was expected that such large wheels would help the tank go over any trench. But when testing the prototype, reality hit hard. Due to the tank's weight, it had to move very slowly so it would have been an easy target for the artillery. Also, its wheels got easily stuck in soft ground and it would go up slopes with difficulty. On top of that, production cost would have been extremely high.
Each of the front wheels was driven by an independent engine. From the point of view of the overall layout, the tank differs for the better by placing weapons in rotating towers, however, large diameter wheels sharply limit the firing sector and, at the same time, do not provide a sufficient area of ??contact with the ground. The result was high specific pressure on the ground and low permeability.
Such scientists as N. Zhukovsky, B. Stechkin and engine-engineer A. Mikulin were involved in the creation of the machine. A. Mikulin recalled how once Lebedenko himself invited him to himself and said: “Professor Nikolai Yegorovich Zhukovsky recommended you as a capable designer. Do you agree to develop the drawings of the machine I invented? With the help of such machines, a breakthrough of the entire German front would be accomplished in one night, and Russia would win the war ... ”
Mikulin gave his consent. N. Lebedenko explained his idea to him like this: “Can you imagine wheels with a diameter of ten meters?” So, we will build a car like a tricycle with two large, ten-meter wheels in front. When compared with the crew, it turns out that if he can move across a hole of 20 centimeters, the wheel having a diameter of ten meters can roll over any trench, and a small house will be crushed by such wheels and a car weighing about 60 tons ... "
N. Zhukovsky conducted the calculation of the wheels and the drive to them, and the design was carried out by Professor Stechkin. The peculiarity of the car was that the engine capacity of 200 liters. With engines removed from the downed "zeppelin", the rotation was transmitted to two car wheels, tightly pressed to the drive wheel of the car. Due to friction, automobile wheels with rubber tires drive a drive wheel into rotation.
The construction of the car was carried out in deep secrecy, the work was carried out first at the arena in Khamovniki in Moscow, and then in a clearing in the woods near the town of Dmitrov (Orudevo station). In the autumn the car was built. It had wheels with a diameter of 9 meters and a weight of 40 tons. When tested, she moved forward, knocked down a huge tree standing in front of her and tied up with a rear roller in the ground. A total of 210,000 rubles was spent on the development and construction of the GVTU machine and the “Union of Cities”. Therefore, when it was necessary to increase the diameter of the rear skating rink to continue the tests, the technical commission overseeing the construction refused to release additional funds, especially since the dimensions of the machine assumed its greater vulnerability from enemy artillery fire.
t is often stated that the Tsar tank was underpowered, but explaining its failure is not that simple. 500 hp, for the time, was a huge amount of power and even given the weight of the vehicle, its power-to-weight ratio would have been better than any other tank at the time, even the light Whippet. However, the way that power was transmitted to the wheels was crude. But the biggest problem of the Tsar tank was its weight distribution. Due to some miscalculations in the design phase, too much weight rested on the rear wheels, which, indeed, got stuck during the tests. In spite of the fact that the giant wheels of the Tsar-Tank broke birch trees in tests, like matches — it didn’t differ by high traffic — the rear controlled roller, in the absence of an engine of adequate power, was instantly tied to the ground.
But the pure psychological effect of seeing such a beast rolling towards the trenches would have been tremendous. The machine remained standing in the woods and in 1923 was dismantled for scrap. For its size Lebedenko fighting machine received the nickname "Tsar-tank".
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