This thing is by far the weirdest and possibly most massive self-propelled land vehicle we’ve ever heard of. Built by a Russian engineer as the ultimate weapon for use in WWI, it ended up as a monument to failure as it was deemed unusable on its initial test voyage.
Engineer N. Lebedenko is the man credited with coming up with the idea of building this vehicle back in the early 1900s. It was physically constructed in 1914 and 1915 by a team of Russian craftsmen. Looking at the photos you really have no idea how large this thing is. For starters, it weighs 40 tons. Those big looking wheels, yeah, they are 27 feet in diameter.
The concept, as you have probably figured out by now, was to built a massive, self-propelled version of a gun carriage, similar to what cannons were towed around on.
The rear wheels provided the steering while the big front wheels were driven by car tires that were pressed down on them. The car tires rotated, forcing the big wheels to turn, providing forward movement. It was powered by two 240hp Maybach engines. Those engines at the time were the gold standard in power and reliability, there was not much else on Earth that could touch them. Despite all that, the thing was totally underpowered. The designers thought it would be able to go about 8 mph when completed, but it never really got the chance.
For armaments, the vehicle had a central turret that could hold machine guns or a small cannon and additional machine gunners could be placed on the outsides of the central frame. With the turret, the vehicle was nearly 40 feet tall.
In mid 1915, the vehicle was ready to be shown to the military brass. It wowed the crowds by driving around, crashing down some trees, and looking mighty. It then moved to some soft ground, got stuck in a ditch and could not free itself. The engines did not have the guts to power the big wheels out of the ditch.
That was it. The monster sat in that same position for the rest of WWI, it literally did not move. It was cut up for scrap in 1923.
We dare you to find something stranger than this.
Could have been used in an early Star Wars movie
Very cool. Proof once again, that real stuff is cooler than anything you could make up. Steampunk’s got nothing on stuff like this!
it would be cool to see it crush and then machine gun fire on the mexican jumping bean cars,…and drivers, in the other post about car wars.
i’m still mad about wasting that 6 minutes, lol. 🙂
I’m no engineer but if the wheels are 27′ in diameter and the turret doesn’t stick out above the wheels, how can it be 40′ tall???
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxiKlfq-Sw8 , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z12eCMy1dx4