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I guess, the name of the topic says for itself: the part of military history, when everybody thought, that today-tomorrow the battlefield would be infested by hordes of tanks with size of skyscraper.
And I also guess that the phenomena of "da ork Supa bigga tank" dates even earlier then the tank actually was invented.
Take a glance of the Mendeleev tank (one of the first tank projects in the world):
(BTW: Vladimir Mendeelev, the inventor of this tank, was the son of other famous Mendeleev - Dmitriy, who invented the periodic table. Noble blood!)
The more you would be surprised, when you'll know that it dates 1911! And weight 100 tons plus has a modern-calibre 120-mm cannon!
Such tank even by modern standards would have heavy armament and classed superheavy.
BTW: Well, I wasn't right when said than Mendeeleev tank is the first proposed superheavy tank. Well, superheavy tanks are even older than engine!
Asped-dragon siege tower. (Why don't call it a tank? It moves (by muscle-power, of course) and has a cannon armament. True tank!)
Then WWI broke out.
Mk.1 crossed the Soma river in 1914, and Germans reacted with A7V in 1917. The Russians with their 20-tonn Mendeleev tank-2 didn't make it on time:
But all tanks made in WW1 have shown themselv too vulnerable to anything bigger than infantry rifle. I guess this was the direct reason of birth of the supertanks - generals wanted under their command The Whole-Owning Thing That Would Eat All And Be Uncrushable. Several projects follow this maniacy:
K-Wagen, Germany (prototypes were finished but scraped by demand of Allies after Versalles treaty. F*cking Allies!)
Flying Elephant, Great Britain (proved to be such fat that could have max. speed only 2 mil/hour! Fantastic thing
)
Char 2C, France (The most large-producted superheavy tank in the history... and, maybe, the only one (except Maus) that saw actual combat. Though, designed during WW1 it was used to frighten Germans at some degree in WW2. A real pshyhodelic tank: appearance frightens more than armament!)
But tanks weren't alone wo entered the battlefield in those gloomy years. They were acommpanied by they soon-become eternal competitors: bombing aircraft. And to decide on what money investment would be more usable, Italian officer Due expresses his vies in his military fiction story "Winged Victory", where Germans attack Allies with 4000 (!!!) ton tanks, with 2 crews in each and that spill chemical pools in 100 m radius.
Such monsters Due needed only to tell how cool the bombing aircraft is against any tanks (with wich the Allies win in his story).
But the biggest rise da orkz supa bigga tankz saw after Europe got bored to kill itself - in Interbellum period. Everybody heart about T-35, almost everybody heart about A1E1 Independent, but I bet you see the first time this little baby:
Continuation of this poem coming soon!
Edited by AL_Hassan, 13 November 2008 - 17:16.
