German super-heavy tank Pz. Kpfw. Maus left a noticeable mark on the history of tank building. It was the heaviest tank in the world, designed as an assault vehicle, practically invulnerable to enemy fire. In many ways, the fate of this tank turned out to be similar to the fate of another giant - the French FCM 2C, which still bears the title of the largest (in terms of dimensions) tank in the world. Like the French super-heavy vehicles, the German one never entered the battle: in both cases, the crews blew up their tanks. Another similar feature in their fate was that the blown up tanks became trophies and objects of careful study.
Unlucky defender of the German General Staff
Work on the topic of super-heavy tanks and self-propelled units based on them in Germany was officially curtailed in the second half of July 1944. In practice, the order of the 6th section of the Department of Armaments about the surrender of the reserve of hulls and towers for scrap metal, given on July 27, was not even executed. Concern Krupp hid the existing reserve in warehouses, where they were later discovered by the British and the Americans.
On August 19, Krupp management informed Porsche that the Armament Service had given an order to stop work on the Typ 205 project. The specialists assembling the second prototype left Boeblingen. However, this did not mean that the Pz. Kpfw. Maus is over.
In the fall, the second prototype of the tank, designated Typ 205 / II, received a new engine. Instead of the petrol Daimler-Benz MB.509, the car received a diesel MB.517. For the first time, this engine was supposed to be installed on a tank in the fall of 1942. This time, the engine was available in a turbocharged version, thanks to which its power increased to 1200 horsepower. It is not known exactly when the MB.517 was installed in the tank, but correspondence dated December 1, 1944 states that the engine was installed in the Typ 205 / II and has not yet been tested.
By the way, Porsche managed to install the motor bypassing the SS, which oversaw its development. When the SS men woke up, it turned out that one of the two engines, each of which cost the Germans 125,000 Reichsmarks, was already in the super-heavy tank.
The only effective way to stop work on fine-tuning the super-heavy tank was to confiscate the "favorite toy" from Porsche. At the end of December 1944, both Pz. Kpfw. Maus were transported from Böblingen to a warehouse near the Ruchleben railway station on the western outskirts of Berlin. They stayed there at least until the end of January 1945, after which they were sent to the Kummersdorf test site, located 25 kilometers south of Berlin. Here, a technical description of the second prototype was drawn up (at the same time the only one that had a turret and weapons), after which the tanks were placed in a hangar, where Porsche could no longer get.
What happened to these machines from January to March 1945 is unknown. There is no reliable evidence that they participated in any tests. However, it was at this time that tests could be carried out by shelling the first prototype, which had the designation Typ 205 / I.
In March 1945, the Typ 205 / II was delivered under its own power to Wünsdorf, 2.5 kilometers south of Zossen, where the headquarters of the German General Staff was located. In Soviet documents, by the way, this place was often designated as Stamlager. The car was included in the forces that guarded the headquarters; in the Zossen area, the outer ring of Berlin's defense also passed.
Much has been written about how the Typ 205 / II was used in the battle for Berlin; many copies have been broken in disputes on this topic. With a certain degree of certainty, we can only talk about who the super-heavy Porsche tank could potentially fight with. Units of the 3rd Guards Tank Army attacked Berlin from the southeast. On April 21, 1945, the 6th Guards Tank Corps, which was part of this formation, reached the Tophin-Zelensdorf line. Before Zossen remained very little, he was captured during a night attack from 21 to 22 April. Thanks to the confusion, the headquarters of the German General Staff was able to leave Zossen at the time of its occupation by the 6th Guards Tank Corps. According to the recollections of the commander of the 53rd Guards Tank Brigade V. S. Arkhipov, before leaving, the SS men shot some of the staff officers, the rest were evacuated.
As for the Pz. Kpfw. Maus, his fighting career was short and sad. An engine breakdown occurred during maneuvering. The immobilized car ended up at the intersection of the Zeppelinstrasse and Tserensdorferstrasse in Wünsdorf, not far from the headquarters. She stood up so that it was impossible to use her even as a stationary firing point. As a result, its crew had no choice but to blow up the tank. In a word, no heroic defense happened, the super-heavy tank turned out to be a colossus with feet of clay.
In the memoirs of Arkhipov Pz. Kpfw. Maus V2 is mentioned, but with an obvious distortion of the picture:
Either the literary editor mixed together the Pz. Kpfw. Tiger II and Pz. Kpfw. Maus captured at the Sandomierz bridgehead, or Arkhipov had mixed something up, but the reality turned out to be different. The tank went to the Red Army already blown up. The force of the explosion tore off the right side of the hull and tore off the turret along with the turret ring.
Underestimating combat mass
Due to the general confusion during May, no one cared about the super-heavy tank blown up at an intersection. The fact that the Germans not only developed, but also built super-heavy tanks, Soviet specialists learned after the end of hostilities. Only at the end of May, a more detailed study of the military-technical heritage of the Third Reich, scattered around the German capital, began. On June 29, 1945, memoranda were sent to the leadership of the State Defense Committee (GKO), including Stalin and Beria, signed by the head of the Main Armored Directorate of the Red Army (GABTU KA), Marshal of the Armored Forces Ya. N. Fedorenko:
The greatest interest was aroused by the second prototype of the super-heavy tank. Despite the fact that the internal explosion inflicted very serious damage on him, it was he who was mainly studied. The fact is that the first sample had no weapons, and instead of a turret, a mass-dimensional model was installed on it.
Specialists arrived at the scene of the discovery and began to study the blown up tank. To begin with, it was decided to draw up a brief technical description of the machine. The report turned out to be small - only 18 pages. This was due to the fact that an order came from above to compose a description of the discovered vehicle as soon as possible. Such a rush did not look strange: in the hands of the Soviet military there was a tank that looked like a much more dangerous enemy than all the combat vehicles with which they had previously met.
Contradictory testimonies of German prisoners of war and severe injuries caused a number of inaccuracies in the description. For example, the combat weight of a tank was estimated at 120 tons. The reason for this inaccuracy was not a mistake by the Soviet military. Exactly the same mass was indicated at the end of 1944 by German prisoners of war who ended up with the allies. And this was not deliberate misinformation. POWs told the truth, Pz. Kpfw. The Maus really once weighed 120 tons. True, it was still at the "paper stage": this turned out to be the initial design mass of the tank, dated early June 1942. Since that time, the machine embodied in metal has managed to "recover" more than one and a half times.
Another serious inaccuracy crept into the weapon description. In addition to the 128-mm long-barreled and 75-mm short-barreled cannons, two machine guns of a strange caliber 7, 65 mm were also included in the description. Much more surprising is the fact that an automatic cannon of 20 mm caliber was also listed among the weapons. It appeared in the description, probably also from the words of prisoners of war. Strange as it may sound, such information is also not complete disinformation. Indeed, at the beginning of 1943, the Pz. Kpfw. Maus featured a 20mm MG 152/20 automatic cannon as its anti-aircraft armament. True, this idea was prudently abandoned, since it was guided only vertically, and the use of a huge tank turret to aim an anti-aircraft gun horizontally was an absurd idea.
Despite such errors, in general, the technical description gave a very detailed picture of the internal structure of the tank and its armor protection. Of course, there were some inaccuracies here, but they turned out to be relatively small.
Soviet specialists paid special attention to the power plant and transmission of the super-heavy tank. Almost half of the technical description was devoted to these questions. Such attention does not seem surprising: a year before that, work was actively underway in the USSR on an electric tank transmission, which ended generally unsuccessfully. Now in the hands of the Soviet military was a tank with an electric transmission, and even a super-heavy one. Experts disassembled its engine right on the spot and examined it. They did the same with the guitar (gear) and the drive wheel. The undercarriage of the tank was also studied in detail.
In the middle of the summer of 1945, the technical description went to Moscow. Meanwhile, the training ground in Kummersdorf, captured by the Red Army, was gradually investigated by Soviet specialists. At the same time, captured German soldiers and engineers were interrogated. The amount of information on super-heavy tanks began to grow sharply. The captured documents of the German Ministry of Armaments also fell into the hands of the Soviet military, thanks to which, by the end of the summer of 1945, accurate data on the Pz. Kpfw were obtained. Maus. In addition, some of the factory drawings were found.
As already mentioned, both prototypes of the Pz. Kpfw. Maus. The first of the built vehicles was found at the Kummersdorf shooting range. Although, according to the initial information received, the Typ 205 / I was also blown up, the available photographs refute this information. Even if they tried to blow up the vehicle, it was clearly unsuccessful: the Typ 205 / I did not receive damage comparable to the damage of the second tank received from the detonation of ammunition. It looks more like the car has already been partially dismantled at the shooting range.
It is interesting that by the time this tank was discovered, there were four marks on its left side of the hull from the hit of large-caliber armor-piercing shells. Another mark was on the left side of the tower's weight and size model.
The fact that these marks could be the result of shelling the tank with Soviet guns is excluded. Nine hits of the same nature were present on the frontal sheet of the hull. The tank, on the other hand, stood parallel to the forest, and it was impossible to fire on a frontal projection from another point. By the time the car was found at the shooting range, it was inoperative, and it was physically impossible to deploy it for shelling. In short, the Germans themselves fired at the vehicle, it is even possible that the second prototype fired on the Typ 205 / I. By the time the tank was discovered, there were weld-on fastenings for spare tracks on the protection of the chassis from frontal fire, and three hits were found in the area of these nodes.
During the summer and early autumn of 1945, both vehicles gradually began to be dismantled. This was due to the fact that it was impossible to bring any of them into working condition. In addition, tank units were of interest separately. To simplify the dismantling procedure, the mass-dimensional model of the tower was dropped from the first prototype of the tank. The removed units and assemblies were immediately described. In the fall of 1945, the units removed from the tanks were sent to Leningrad to a branch of experimental plant No. 100. It was at this time that work was going on there on the design of a new heavy tank, and one of its versions provided for the use of an electric transmission.
A completely different fate awaited the tanks themselves. At the end of the summer of 1945, it was decided to assemble a "hybrid" using the Typ 205 / II turret and the Typ 205 / I chassis. This task turned out to be non-trivial, since it was not easy to evacuate the 50-ton tower resting on the torn off turret plate. The problem was solved with the help of a whole line of German semi-tracked tractors (mainly Sd. Kfz.9). Not without difficulty, this cavalcade dragged the tower to Kummersdorf, where it was possible to disconnect the turret ring. Already in September 1945, a copy of the Pz. Kpfw. Maus assembled from parts of both tanks was loaded onto a special platform that survived the war.
Interestingly, the hull and turret numbers of different tanks are the same: the hull with serial number 35141 has a turret with the same serial number 35141.
In this form, the tank stood in Kummersdorf for a long time. Despite the fact that it was ready for shipment back in the fall of 1945, the order to transport it to the NIABT proving grounds was given only six months later. According to the list of the landfill, the car arrived in Kubinka in May 1946. Here, the study of the tank continued, but in a simplified mode. Since its units went to Leningrad, there was no question of any sea trials. Basically, in Kubinka, materials were prepared on the study of the elements of the chassis. Shooting trials were also ruled out, as the gun mount was damaged by the explosion, and the barrel of the 128 mm gun was actually loose.
As you can see, there are marks on the frontal sheet of the hull from shell hits.
One of the few tests carried out at the NIABT proving grounds was shelling. It was produced in a reduced volume. One shot was fired at the frontal part of the hull and starboard side, as well as at the forehead of the turret and its starboard side. All other traces of hits in the tank are of "German" origin.
Unlike the super-heavy E-100 tank, which the British sent for scrap, its competitor was more fortunate. After studying the Pz. Kpfw. Maus was towed to the museum at the test site. At that time it was an open area. A full-fledged museum appeared here already in the early 70s, when the tank took its place in the hangar of German armored vehicles.
Recently, the idea arose to restore the car to running condition, but the project did not go beyond the preparatory work. This idea, of course, is interesting, but as a result of its implementation, it is unlikely that something will turn out, except for a stuffed animal with dubious prospects in terms of reliability. After all, not only have all the units removed from the machine, but one of the carts is also missing. The service life of the tracks of a huge tank is very low, and repairing a torn track of a 180-ton vehicle in the field is a dubious pleasure. And this is only a small part of the problems that will inevitably arise when trying to restore this tank to running condition. After all, even just transporting it is not an easy task.
Growth generator
Separately, it is worth mentioning what impact the captured German super-heavy tank made on the development of Soviet tank building. Unlike the British and Americans, who almost did not react to the materials found on the E-100 and Pz. Kpfw. Maus, the reaction of the Main Armored Directorate of the Red Army (GBTU KA) was lightning fast.
There is nothing surprising in this. On June 5, 1945, a preliminary design of the Object 257 heavy tank was presented, which had increased armor protection and a 122-mm BL-13 cannon. It was assumed that this vehicle would become a real leap forward for the Soviet tank building. And then, quite unexpectedly, it turned out that a tank was discovered in Germany, which with a promising cannon could hardly pierce, and the gun installed on it completely penetrated the armor of the "Object 257".
On June 11, 1945, a draft of the tactical and technical requirements for a new heavy tank was developed. Its combat weight was approved within 60 tons, the crew increased to 5 people. The armor was supposed to protect the tank from a 128-mm German cannon. In addition, in addition to the BL-13 cannon, there was a requirement for another gun, caliber 130 mm. Except for the launch of a program to create an "anti-mouse" tank, these tactical and technical reasons are difficult to explain. It was from them that the tank, known as the IS-7, was born.
The discovered German tank triggered a second wave of the arms race, similar to the one that spawned the KV-3, KV-4 and KV-5. Instead of concentrating on improving the already good samples, the designers began work on creating steel monsters. Even the IS-4 now seemed outdated: according to plans for the second five-year plan of the 1940s, from 1948 it was planned to produce 2,760 heavy tanks of a new type (IS-7) per year. By the way, the "Object 260" was far from the heaviest and heavily armed. In Chelyabinsk, they were working on a project for a heavy tank "Object 705", its heaviest version was supposed to have a 152 mm cannon, and the combat weight would be 100 tons. In addition to tanks, self-propelled guns based on the IS-4 and IS-7 with long-barreled 152 mm guns were also being worked out.
All this violent activity did no less harm than the development of steel monsters in the spring and summer of 1941. It came to the production of prototypes of the IS-7, although the government did not dare to launch a large series. Of course, the tank turned out to be outstanding, but too heavy. On February 18, 1949, by decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 701-270ss, the development and production of heavy tanks weighing more than 50 tons was stopped. Instead, the development of a heavy tank, better known as the IS-5, began. Later it was adopted as the T-10.
The tragedy of the situation was that four years for Soviet tank building were largely wasted. The only worthy opponent for the IS-7 all this time stood at the museum site in Kubinka. As for the former allies in World War II, they curtailed the development of their armored monsters after the war. The promising Soviet heavy tanks simply had no one to fight with.
