The Claim
The Nazi’s created a secret battle tank that was the largest ever to have existed
The Panzer VIII, or the Maus tank as it was named was an attempt to make a tank so big and powerful, that no gun could penetrate its armour and no building or vehicle could resist the shear power of its enormous guns.
The Germans were well known for building all kinds of crazy things during World War 2, and the idea of a a super tank is far from the strangest of these ideas, but that doesn’t make it any less ridiculous. The idea of a super tank is all well and good, but in reality it creates more problems than its worth, something they didn’t realise until the later stages of construction.
Fortunately only 2 prototypes of this tank were ever built, and only 1 of the turrets, though it was never actually fitted to either of the bodies that were produced. The Maus tank measured 33ft 6 in long and just over 12 feet wide, which is the same width as the Tiger 2, though the Maus is 9 ft longer.
The frontal armour on the Maus was 8.7 inch’s thick, over twice the protection of the widely known Tiger 2 tank. The Tiger was feared by the allied forces as the American Sherman tanks and British equivalents simply didn’t have the firepower to crack the Tigers frontal armour, and instead relied on hitting it from the side or rear, or simply driving away as fast as possible.
The rear armour of the Maus tank was 7.9 inch’s, which was almost double that of the frontal armour of a Tiger 2. This means that there would be literally no allied tank from any of the armies involved that could destroy the Maus, even if it hit it directly in its most vulnerable areas. It would also be immune to anti-tank field guns and could resist any infantry fired weapon or anti armour mines.
The tank was intended to be a break through tank, which would lead the charge and simply drive directly through the enemy lines, soaking up all the incoming fire while shooting back with its huge 128mm main cannon and 75mm secondary cannon. Since nothing would be able to destroy it, the tank seemed like the perfect weapon to turn the tide of the allied assault.
Production ran into several problems along the way, with the main one being the capturing of the testing grounds by the Soviet forces. There were 5 of these tanks originally ordered and depending on how they went in battle, more would be produced. The soviets managed to capture the testing grounds and halt the production facilities, which saw an end to the Maus’s development.
Before this 1 of the turrets and 2 hulls were all that had been produced, but these alone created a number of problems. When one of the hulls had been finished it was taken for a test drive, and it was quickly realised that the tank was way to heavy. The total weight of the hull without the turret was 188 tons, and the vibrations caused by the vehicle were great enough to shatter the windows of any building it passed.
It was also way to heavy to be able to drive across any of the bridges in Europe, instead relying on sealing up the vehicle and driving across river beds with a special snorkel device. But even this wouldn’t work as the tank would sink into the soft mud and at 188 tons, nothings would be able to pull it back out again.
In the end after the production facility and testing grounds were captured, it was deemed to be way to expensive and impractical to continue the project, and not to mention the equivalent in resources could produce 5 regular tanks.
Even though a Maus tank wasn’t entirely completed, it still remains to this day the largest drivable tank ever made, and has served as a warning to tank manufacturers that there is indeed a maximum size for a battle tank.
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