A FOOTBALL BATTLE TANK !!!
- infinidea2024
- Sep 7, 2024
- 2 min read
Updated: Jun 14
SPHERICAL TANK (KUGELPANZER)
__________ Ronin
Warfare frequently drives innovation, of which all may not always work out. Bizarre tank prototypes for tanks are not unusual. At the beginning of the 20th century, futurists and engineers were hard at work thinking about the shape a fighting machine ought to take. Even the engineers settled on a shape later known as "tank" in the 1940s. Numerous exceptionally unconventional tank design solutions came up with the potential future belligerents. Think of the Swedish STRV/ S-Tank of the Cold war era. Like the STRV, one of the strangest, and least known, is the German Kugelpanzer or Spherical Tank.
This tank that was built by the Germans during World War-II and at some point was shipped over to Japanese-occupied China. It was subsequently captured by the Soviet Red Army in Manchuria in 1945. The only example is on display in Moscow at the Kubinka Tank Museum. There has been much debate about its usages and strange appearance, as it looks completely7 different than any other tank. People wonder, so as to why the Nazis build such an unusual machine.
With just 5 millimeters of steel armour, the Kugelpanzer rolled on massive 1.5 meters rollers and could only reach a brisk pace of 5 miles per hour. . It was manned by a single crew member sitting on motorcycle-style saddle. The lone crew could peer out into the battlefield through a narrow viewing slit and fire a single machine gun through a slot underneath the viewport.
The 1.8 ton Kugelpanzer had a two-stroke 25 horsepower engine managed to power the tank. It steered using a runner wheel on an extension which protruded from the rear like a tail, which probably gave it more stability. Theoretically, the Kugelpanzer tank with its low center of gravity and large wheel would be useful in traversing soft ground. This would help the machine climb over obstacles such as ditches.
Since with its lack of speed, thin armour and lack of required heavy weaponry the Kugelpanzer would be incapable to engage in a classic tank fight, the anticipated plausible roles of the Kugelpanzer are assumed to be as under:
· Reconnaissance role.
· Light combat tasks such as artillery observation and cable-lying.
· As a suicide vehicle that could ram into enemy troops, installations and tanks.
The Kugelpanzer is presently displayed at the Kubinka Tank Museum outside Moscow, stripped of its internal components and designated only as “Object 37.
Further may be found with this video clip:
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