The Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte was supposed to be an enormous super tank that Nazi Germany could use during World War II. With Hitler’s approval, Krupp designed it in 1942, but Albert Speer canceled the project in early 1943, so no tank was ever made. The P-1000 would have been five times heavier than any Panzer VIII Maus, which was the biggest tank ever made.
The biggest and heaviest tank would have been the Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte- Hitler’s 1,000-Ton Super Tank. Hitler pushed for the creation of this extraordinarily large tank during World War II. It is one of the most powerful yet least useful weapons ever made. It was 115 feet long and weighed 1,000 tons, which was five times heavier than the heaviest tank ever made.
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The unusually large tank would have had a rotating turret with two linked battleship cannons that could fire 280mm shells at their enemies. It would also have had a lot of other small arms and anti-aircraft weapons. It would have needed a crew of 40 people to run, and its vehicle bay would have been big enough to hold a reconnaissance motorcycle squadron.
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The tank had three 69-foot-long treads on each side to make this behemoth move. In addition, its 300-ton armor was made of 10 inches of hardened steel that covered the whole tank. This would have made it nearly impossible to attack from the ground.
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Edward Grotte, who was in charge of the German steel and weapons company Krupp during WWII, came up with the plan for this crazy juggernaut. Krupp was the one who made the famous Tiger tanks that the Nazis used.
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Krupp did a strategic study of Soviet heavy tanks in 1941, which led to the development of both the Ratte and the Panzer VIII Maus- two very heavy tanks. The study prompted Krupp’s director Grote, who was in charge of building submarines, to put forward his suggestion about building a 1,000-ton tank that he called a “Landkreuzer” to Hitler on June 23, 1942. It was to be armed with naval artillery and armored with 9 inches (23 cm) of hardened steel, which was so thick that only similar weapons could hope to damage it.
Since it was thought that its height and 2 m (6.6 ft) of ground clearance would have made it easy for it to cross most rivers. Hitler liked Grote’s idea so much that he told Krupp to start working on it in 1942. On December 29, 1942, a few preliminary drawings were done, and the idea was given the name Ratte (Rat).
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The Ratte was one of the “Wunderwaffen” that the Nazis thought of making. Wunderwaffe, which means “Miracle Weapon” in English, was the name the Nazis gave to a number of superweapons they tried to make during the war. There were many bizarre creations like the “ball tank” (Kugelpanzer), the “800mm caliber railway gun” (Schwerer Gustav), and the “huge Messerschmitt Me 323 transport plane.”
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Like many of these “Miracle Weapons,” the Ratte was ultimately not very useful in the end. Due to its weight, it couldn’t go over bridges or roads because it would quickly destroy them, and it was too big to go through tunnels or on a train. Also, because it was so big and heavy, it couldn’t go faster than 25 miles per hour, which made it an easy target for enemy planes and guns.
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Even with all these problems, Adolf Hitler jumped on it right away, as he did with many impractical weapons. In his autobiography, German general and head of the Third Reich’s tank divisions Heinz Guderian said, “Hitler’s fantasy led him into the realm of the gigantic.”
He wrote, “The engineers Grotte and Hacker were ordered to design a monster tank weighing 1,000 tonnes.”
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After a year of work, Hitler’s Minister of Armaments and War Production, Albert Speer, finally put an end to this pet project of Hitler’s. Speer correctly realized that the colossal tank had no practical uses and put it out of its misery. However, since he canceled the project, this immense tank was never built.
The other German super-heavy tank partly influenced this decision, the Panzer VIII Maus (“Mouse”), which weighed 175 tonnes and was the largest tank ever made but didn’t work very well. The names “Maus” and “Ratte” were probably meant to be funny since these tanks were anything but small. Even the Maus was too heavy to cross even the strongest bridges. Instead, it had to go underwater to get across rivers. However, it wouldn’t have been damaged by anything but the largest air-dropped bombs.
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The modern rockets, smart bombs, and explosively formed penetrators nowadays would have rendered the Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte and other super-heavy tanks like it worse than obsolete. Even back then, super-heavy tanks were seen as a liability on the battlefield, and it took a large regiment to protect them at close range. The Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte is an excellent example of the kind of ambitious planning that cost the Nazis the war. In later years, the obsession with the size of hardware spread to the Soviet Union.
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