Tanks are armor. It doesn't matter what - thick or thin, but the armor. Tanks are just iron - not tanks! However, it was also the case that they were made from improvised materials of the most diverse properties and were still called tanks. And sometimes these strange machines were even in service.
Yes, there were plywood tanks. And a lot. The real tank was created in England, which is probably why plywood tanks also appeared there. And the reason is simple: how else on the battlefield to teach infantrymen to fight with tanks. Real tanks were expensive, and they were replaced by plywood models with wheels. And they were set in motion with the help of horse teams. The plywood tank was a copy of the British MK-I female tank (armed with machine guns). True, the soldiers' impression of this new type of weapon was slightly spoiled by the horses dragging it.
Moreover, plywood tanks were used to increase the efficiency of the subscription to war bonds. There is a photograph taken in the city of Armidale in Australia in April 1918. There is an advertising platform in the shape of a tank - residents of the city are asked to buy shares in a war loan. A banner over the tank called: "Do it now." The Tricky Machine helped raise £ 237,000! Good performance for such an unusual advertisement!
Advertising with a tank made "of anything" sometimes played a greater role than imitation of the same tank on the battlefield. In America, in September of the distant 1917, the Popular Science magazine wrote about the city of Fresno, which is the center of raisin production in California. Raisin Day is celebrated there in May, and this holiday has never been without a parade. In that 1917, the highlight of the parade was a tank made of plywood, which was pasted over with blueberries, raisins and sprinkled with poppy seeds! Fourteen feet in height, twenty feet in length - such was the machine, and this "miracle" was set in motion by four horses!
Outside, this tank looked like an English "diamond-shaped tank", inside - a Ford-T car. After the end of the war, such tanks were rolled out in American cities for military parades and showed citizens that not only the French or the British have tanks, but we, the Americans, also have them.
Back in the 30s, the reviving German Wehrmacht also dabbled in motorcycles, which were covered with plywood hulls in the form of tanks. They were intended for training soldiers, and it was important for commanders to acquire skills in managing tank formations. Naturally, after the start of the war, the belligerents in the exercises beat wooden mock-ups of tanks into vulnerable spots! The usual military uniformity of layouts was not developed. Each unit made tank mock-ups "from anything" as needed. To increase the number of their tanks and deceive the enemy, tank models were installed: straw in summer, and snowy in winter, flooded with water. There is even a manual for the Wehrmacht published in Germany, where it was described with German pedantry how to make these tanks out of snow.
Well, what if there is no straw, no snow, no stones, as on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima? Yes, they used stones, even hewn ones, for tank mockups! However, models were still used to participate in parades. For example, the Sherman tank made of plywood, but on a car chassis, was used at celebrations in the Belgian town of Slading, where he represented the Polish division commanded by General Maczek, which liberated the city in 1944. And this is the most amazing thing! The question is, well, the Americans did not have enough tanks or did they feel sorry for a couple of Shermans to give to the Allies so that they could ride them at this parade?
"The tank is a symbol of pressure and power, uncontrollable forward movement!" Somehow the organizers of the soap exhibition in 1937 in Germany thought so. There is no other reason to spend one and a half centners of soap to cover a specially built plywood model of the Renault tank. The French tank was small in size and therefore for one of the exhibitions it was made of butter. This is the fantasy of advertising masters in the early 30s of the last century. But this is not the limit.
In Florida, the 11th Annual Cigar Show unveiled a mock cigar tank. 38 thousand real cigars were used by Tampa for the construction of the M3 General Lee tank. Of course, this tank was less than life size, but all the same, the residents who were looking at such a "miracle" were probably twirling their fingers at their temples. And there was why - 1942, the war in the Pacific Ocean, and then a tank of cigars and a girl in shorts! So they lived in America! But next year there was already a plane of cigars here, and the girls were in "cigar dresses"! Truly a smoker's dream.
There is no need to talk about the inflatable rubber tanks that are currently in service with the armies of the whole world. Less well known is the tank that was created and featured in the film Indiana Jones. The Last Crusade”. In this film, the tank looks just like a real one. Thanks to this layout, the famous Indiana chase for a German tank was filmed. It is interesting that on its basis the Hasbro company even released figurines - toys: the main character, a tank and a horse!
There was no tank chase in the script from the beginning! The producer and director thought about how to show a huge British tank of the First World War in the film. A large number of tanks were examined in museums around the world and then two tanks were built that look identical. One layout had an engine and a transmission, i.e. he could move independently, so he was filmed on general shots. And the second mock-up did not have an engine, so it trudged behind a truck with a platform. Here on the second mock-up, close-ups of Sean Connery, Harrison Ford, as well as tank fights were filmed.
The actor performed most of the stunts in these scenes himself, only occasionally allowing his stunt double Vic Armstrong, a famous stuntman, to work a little. He performed many of the stunts in the film, the most dangerous being Indiana's fourteen-foot jump onto a moving tank from a galloping horse. Vic Armstrong asked Harrison to refuse to perform dangerous stunts, arguing that the understudy remains out of work and without money. Only after such explanations did Ford reluctantly give way to the stuntman.
It is clear that in reality such a machine never existed, but in terms of the hull shape, this invention of filmmakers most of all resembled the American Mk VIII tank from the time of the end of the First World War.
We have also filmed various kinds of "armored miracles" in films. Take, for example, such a children's film as "Makar the Pathfinder" (1984). An English tank of 1914, which is shown there, is a real flight of engineering thought! Yes, he did not resemble anything in reality, but how he drove! After all, the chassis was wheeled. It was possible to make an English tank with fake tracks, which would be rewound just like that, and he would ride on wheels hidden from view. More difficult, more expensive, but what would be the effect. But no, we have simplified everything to the limit!
But even earlier, namely in 1970, the film "The Bullet Is Afraid of the Brave" was shot in the USSR. Events there take place at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War and it is clear that from our side there are T-34/85 model 1944, and then we had to come to terms with this. But how and from what were those two German T-4s that operate there? To say that they do not look like German is to twist your heart. Similar, very similar! But the Germans did not have such tanks at that time, although they were made for 1970 very well!
The tank, as you know, is a serious machine. The tank model is an imitation of a serious vehicle. And if the layout itself is imitated, then it is an imitation of imitation. In 2014, one of the news channels showed a footage filmed by Ukrainian operators at a tank training ground where tankers were trained. And they didn’t even study on mock-ups: their tank was a regular rhombus made of wooden bars with sides of 1.5 m. On these wooden bars … ordinary door handles are fixed. Ahead was the driver-mechanic, followed by the commander and the gunner-radio operator. On command, they all grabbed the doorknobs, raised the diamond and began to move.
For all its simplicity and uncomplicatedness of the product, quite specific skills necessary for each tank crew were studied: coherence, mutual assistance, the ability to hear and listen to the commander, get used to his voice and manner of command, and timely execute commands. Moreover, all this does not require practically any additional costs (of course, except for the manufacture of a simulator), does not require fuel, repairs, space for storing "equipment". Very economical!
