About tanks with love. Looking at the tanks, both serial and experimental, one cannot help but be surprised at the creative imagination of their authors and at the same time their … stupidity, that they did not see the obvious and at the same time rose in their creative impulse to genuine genius. Or, on the contrary, they reproduced pattern after pattern in the hope that people in uniform would choose at least something. And you don't have to go far for examples: here they are, right in front of you, in the next issue of our freak show.
And we will start it with the story of how in 1919 the Italian engineer Hugo Pavezi took care of the idea of increasing the cross-country ability of wheeled vehicles and decided to create a similar wheeled all-terrain vehicle. The diameter of the wheels 1, 2-1, 3 meters would allow it to easily roll over ditches and ditches. But the pavezi of large wheels did not seem to be enough. He decided to make all the wheels drive wheels, and in order to reduce their weight, he chose a bicycle-type design in which a narrow rim would be attached to the hub on spokes made of steel bar. The tires were supposed to be solid, like "rubber bands" on tanks. But that was not all: the Pavezi car relied on these "tires" only when driving on the highway. On bad roads, the narrow tires burrowed into the ground, and the wheels began to rest on metal rims that were about three times wider than the tires. This is how, for example, the chassis of the Fiat-Pavesi P4-110 artillery tractor was arranged. And since the smooth wide rim with the ground had poor grip, the designer provided special "claws" on the wheels. They were located along the perimeter of the wheel and could turn 180 degrees around their axis, and thus turn into effective lugs.
However, not even these amazing wheels were the highlight of the design of the Pavezi all-terrain vehicles, but the structure of their frame. It was of the "breaking type" and consisted of two carriages connected by a hinge joint. The turn of such a machine was carried out not by changing the position of the front wheels, but by the entire half of the frame. Thanks to this, the turning radius was only 6 meters, and the tractor itself turned out to be extremely maneuverable, although the connection of the halves of the car and the cardan gear system on it turned out to be quite complicated.
All-terrain vehicles Pavezi, as they say, "went", and then the designer came up with the idea to create a wheeled tank on his chassis. The first sample, which received the P4 index, began to be tested already in 1924. In terms of its running characteristics, it was not inferior to the light Italian FIAT 3000 mod.21 tanks and was superior to the French Renault FT-17. The tank's weight was 4200 kg, and its maximum speed on solid ground was up to 20 km / h. All his wheels were leading, so the P4 could overcome a ditch 1, 2 meters wide, took a vertical wall up to 1 meter high and, moreover, had excellent maneuverability - it could turn around literally on a patch!
Surprisingly, the military did not like this car at all, unlike the high-wheeled tractor. Then the designer presented an analogue version of the P4 with wheels with a diameter of 1.55 meters, but only armed with a 57-mm gun located in the frontal sheet of its hull. To observe the terrain, the commander, who also served as a driver, was served by a cylindrical wheelhouse with viewing slots. The shooter, who is also the loader, was the second member of the crew. The length of the tank was 4240 mm, width - 2180 mm, height - 2060 mm, ground clearance - 750 mm. With a total combat weight of 5500 kg, the tank developed a maximum speed of 24 km / h on the highway.
True, the designer himself did not call his car a tank. In the famous Heigl reference book - "Taschenbuch der Tanks", published in Munich in 1935 and then in 1937 republished in the USSR, it was called the "Pavesi high-wheeled tank fighter". And yes, it really could have been called that, since its 57-mm long-barreled cannon in those years could well penetrate the armor of any European tank except the French FCM 2C.
The Italian military did not like the third model with a more powerful engine, increased armor thickness and wheels of even larger diameter. The maximum speed of this car increased to 35 km / h. But this sample did not go into mass production, so the Italian tanks remained purely tracked. Perhaps the military felt that the vulnerability of the Pavezi wheels would be too great, and the wheels themselves, and the chassis too, would be too difficult for a tank. Although transport vehicles of this type did not cause any complaints and were actively used primarily in the army.
And here, as it happens very often, Pavezi got imitators in Italy. Rather, a copycat who has adopted his ideas. And, apparently, he decided: "It did not work out for him, it will work out for me!" This man turned out to be the head of Ansaldo, Giovanni Ansaldo, who liked the Pavezi P4 artillery tractors so much that he decided to do something similar, but in his own way. That is, Ansaldo did not completely copy the Pavesi scheme, although he also decided to make a tank on high wheels.
Its wheels were 1500 mm in diameter and 400 mm wide and had developed spur-lugs made of rubber on the rims, which provided the car with good shock absorption. He made the rear axle in a T-shape, fixed so that it could tilt 30 ° to each side of the horizon, which, in turn, ensured a constant adherence of the wheels to the ground, even if the ground was very uneven. In this case, the axle was a housing for the rear differential and transmission of the rear wheels, which could rotate 40 ° to turn the machine in a horizontal plane. That is, the car had steering wheels at the back, but at the same time it was all-wheel drive. At the same time, her four-speed gearbox had three speeds forward and one backward.
The engine was a 110 hp 4-cylinder petrol engine. liquid-cooled, which was a step forward compared to the Pavezi cars, which had only 30-45-horsepower "engines".
The thickness of the armor, mounted on rivets, ranged from 6 to 16 mm and had fairly rational angles of inclination, although many of its sheets were still installed vertically. The entrance to the tank was a rectangular door on the left side. The tank was provided with a pump for pumping out water that got inside and protection from poisonous gases, carried out by creating overpressure inside the tank.
The armament of the tank compared to other Italian armored vehicles was very strong: a 37-mm cannon (in front) and a 6, 5-mm Fiat machine gun, model 1914 (in the rear of the turret in a ball mount), and it could be removed and used as anti-aircraft, and shoot through a small hatch on the roof of the tower. Observation was carried out through the viewing slits and with the aid of the gun's telescopic sight. The crew consisted of three people: the driver, the gunner of the gun (he is also the commander) and the machine gunner of the stern machine gun (he is the loader of the guns).
Since the weight of the tank was not so small - 8250 kg, in most sources of that time it was called "heavy wheeled tank". And although it was actually built, tested and showed a speed of 43.5 km / h (which was very good for 1929), and also freely overcame a vertical wall 1 meter high, a trench of 1, 2 m, and an ascent with a steepness of 45 ° the army never adopted it.
Well, if she did, and he would prove himself well in the same Abyssinia or during the Spanish Civil War? Then the whole history of world tank building could well have gone a little differently. I could have … but I didn't!
It seemed to be a "killer" weapon, but it turned out that tanks are much more often at war with enemy infantry than with tanks. Therefore, they need a powerful high-explosive projectile. And this weapon did not have it and, moreover, needed shells with tungsten alloy cores, and all the tungsten was … in the bowels of the Ural Mountains. And it turned out that nothing came of the idea of re-equipping the new Pzkfwg III cannon !!! Efforts, time and money were simply lost! By the way, the Soviet T-34 tanks with "anti-tank" 57-mm cannons also did not show themselves in toys, although they fired excellently at enemy tanks at the range!
But this is our "prayer for the cup", which could be called like this: "New medium tank, appear, appear!" How much effort was thrown during the war by the team of Zh. Ya. Kotin to create the KV-13! A topic worthy of a separate book. In what variants it was not offered: both with a 76-mm cannon, and with a 122-mm howitzer, which was supposed to fire a cumulative projectile at the tanks. But all his main technical solutions were old. Including the "branded" break of the front armor plate. As if you couldn't just take and copy it from the same T-34! To make the hull wider, put a widened shoulder strap under the turret, make the turret itself triple, put the commander's cupola on it, like the Germans, and place the engine across, like on the failed T34M, and you would get a really new tank (see the picture below), and not just another lightweight "KV". But the designers didn't have enough for that. Well, there have been failures in the field of creating new types of BTT …
This concludes the inspection of our tank freak show.
P. S. The administration of the site and the author are grateful to A. Sheps for the excellently executed illustrations provided by him for our tank freak show.
