Tanks of alternative history. In Soviet times, namely from 1949, it was considered that the birthday of the tank in Russia is May 18, 1915, when the tests of the "tank A. Porokhovshchikov" "Vezdekhod" began. They wrote that he passed the test successfully. And that the inventor and his associates were ready to "bring" the car to mind soon and even "teach" it to swim. But the inertia of the tsarist military became the reason that Porokhovshchikov's project did not receive support, and was completely ruined due to the "admiration of the noble officers before the West."
Since the photographs of this machine and its drawings (still from the magazine "Tekhnika-youth") are well known to everyone today, there is no point in citing them. Although it should be remembered that there was only one caterpillar track on the "All-terrain vehicle", first canvas, then rubber, that it was driven by wheels and that it would have been simply impossible to make its body hermetically sealed due to the design features. The tower with the "Maxim" machine gun was added to it later, obviously forgetting that it was possible to shoot from it only with two hands, and then two more hands would be required to control this machine. So it would have been impossible to lead her alone and, in addition, to shoot.
Could not "All-terrain vehicle" and tear the barbed wire. The reasons are simple: the mass is small, its size was tiny, and the caterpillar itself did not inspire confidence. That is, we have an all-terrain vehicle in front of us, and a poorly designed one, and it is not at all surprising that it was rejected!
Moreover, the fact that it was a "tank" was later written by almost the same people as the authors of the 1943 tank design textbook, which said:
"A tank is a combat vehicle that combines armor protection, fire and maneuver."
By the way, there was no armor on the "All-terrain vehicle" either, although Porokhovshchikov offered it and even tested it on … a wheeled vehicle.
So not every experimental vehicle on one or two tracks is a tank! For example, the British built a smaller model of Hetterington's "cruiser" out of wood, saw what was happening, weighed all the pros and cons, and … They refused to build a large machine in June 1915.
In the same July 1915, Colonel Engineer Evelen Bell Crompton presented a project of a composite, four-tracked tank with four towers mounted linearly elevated, like the towers of a warship. "Committee of Land Ships" and rejected it. And then he rejected the development of the Canadian engineer Robert Francis McFay. But already the very first project of his machine also provided for a propeller, that is, it was conceived as a floating one! He was also on his other project. It was supposed to lower it if necessary, and to raise it to protect it from damage when hitting the ground. Moreover, they were offered a tracked chassis made of tracks located in the shape of a triangle: one in front and two on the left and right behind.
The front caterpillar played the role of a steering one, that is, it could turn to the sides and, moreover, change its position in the vertical plane. The second "tank" McFay had four tracks according to the project, and the two front ones were located one after the other. The front track was supposed to facilitate overcoming the encountered vertical obstacles, but all the rest - to reduce the pressure of this heavy machine on the ground.
The armament could be installed both in the hull itself and in the sponsons on either side of it. But to the military, its design seemed too complicated. But an interesting tank could have turned out for him, no worse, probably, than a serial Mk. I, and all the other tanks that followed.
It is interesting that after Porokhovshchikov was shot, all his papers disappeared in the KGB archives, and what was in them is still unknown today. But one more of his projects survived, fortunately, survived in the documents of the GVTU from August of the same 1915, which he named "Earth battleship". Moreover, he offered two vehicles at once: "field battleship" and "serf".
Well, he ended up with a very interesting project, albeit completely unrealizable. Even "Tsar-Tank" and that, by the way, gives in to him. And if some German had invented it, one can only imagine how he would have been ridiculed in our press for his "gloomy Teutonic genius."
Well, and we will begin to consider it with what we indicate: the armor of a field battleship, according to the author, should have had a thickness capable of withstanding the hit of shells from field artillery, the second - from the artillery of the fortress. Therefore, it was assumed to be … 101.6 mm thick!
However, what else could you expect from a car that looked, well, just monstrous? She had no body as such. It was replaced by a steel riveted truss 35 meters long and 3 meters wide, to which 10 motor wheels were to be attached, in the form of rollers with a diameter of 2.3 meters each. Naturally made of armored steel. Gasoline engines with a capacity of 160-200 hp were located right in the rollers. with., and there was a transmission and a fuel tank. The total power of the propulsion system would thus have to be equal to 2000 hp. with.
And also our "talented" designer put three more people there: a mechanic who maintains the engine, and two shooters who were supposed to shoot from two machine guns and … a bomb. That is, the "battleship" was supposed to have 20 machine guns and 10 bombers on each side.
But all this seemed to Porokhovshchikov not enough. And he also installed two armored turrets on his "battleship", armed with two cannons: one 4–6 inches (101, 6– 152, 4 mm) cannon and a twin gun of a reduced caliber - 47–75 mm. The armored wheelhouse of the battleship commander and all his assistants was in the middle of the farm, with a searchlight on top of it. The crew of the "field battleship" was supposed to consist of 72 people.
The speed was supposed to be 4.4-21 km / h. The permeability due to the great length had to be great. In any case, Porokhovshchikov believed that the "armadillo" would be able to force ravines and ditches up to 11 m wide. The inventor obviously did not think about the bending loads that his farm would experience.
How would his car turn?
In theory, like any tank, it could do this by braking the rollers on one side. But … for this, it would be necessary to synchronize the rotation of all rollers, and it was almost impossible to achieve this with the then state of the art. But the author did not forget to put the "battleship" on the railway. Thus, he proposed to resolve the issue with his operational mobility.
"Fortress battleship", in addition to enhanced booking, was also supposed to have an armored casemate for 500 people. Approaching the object of attack and pouring fire on the enemy with machine guns and bombs, the "battleship" landed troops, and a breakthrough of the enemy's defense in this place would certainly be ensured.
After weighing the proposed engineering solutions, the members of the Technical Committee on August 13, 1915, wrote the following:
“… Even without detailed calculations, we can confidently say that the proposal is not feasible. It would be advisable for use in a combat situation to distribute the battleship's armament into separate mobile units that are not linked into one rigid system."
Usually the inventors of such "super cars" do not accept criticism and fight for them "to the end."But here Porokhovshchikov agreed with the proposal for "distribution among the links", and by the end of 1915 he presented another project of the "Earth battleship", already from "hinged links" or armored platforms, "capable of deviating from each other in all directions."
It turned out … a real "articulated tank" with armament in the towers and with wheelhouses for the landing - an unattainable dream for designers even today. Now each "site" had only two pairs of rollers and a turret with weapons. But the Committee did not consider this project either. However, even this is not surprising, but the fact that all projects were proposed not by some drop-out student, but by an engineer with a completed higher technical education, and he should have understood how stupid and inoperative everything that was offered to them was …
Probably, only the project of a wheel-drum of a certain S. Podolsky, in October of the same 1915, offered a car in the form of a six-meter roller, was more stupid, but a whole company of soldiers who were inside him had to push it at the enemy! To fire at the enemy scattering in horror, turrets with machine guns should have been marked at the ends of the rink … Forward to Berlin?
So this was the "real Porokhovshchikov's tank", but for some reason no one wrote about this in 1949.
