If there is something in which humanity has surpassed itself, it is in the development of weapons, but there has always been the temptation to take a design... and make it bigger. Perhaps some of our readers remember the Landkreuzers of Nazi Germany, yet between 1914 and 1915 the old Russian Empire created the Tsar Tank, also known as Netopyr'. Its configuration based on two giant wheels supposedly served to avoid all kinds of obstacles, but it turned out to be so large and heavy that it ended up almost abandoned at the test site...
The story begins with the intervention of four Russian engineers and designers: Nikolai Lebedenko (who in 1914 was an employee of a private company that worked for the Russian War Department), Nikolai Zhukovsky, Boris Stechkin and Alexander Mikulin. Their experience in artillery led them to imagine a gigantic armored vehicle, adopting a configuration similar to that of a tricycle, with two gigantic wheels at the front, each measuring 9 meters in diameter.
Both wheels were connected directly to the hull, while the third wheel was responsible for steering. Two Maybach engines (from the old Maybach that precedes Mercedes-Benz) with 240 horsepower transmitted power to both wheels. In fact, the engines used traditional tires as a point of contact and transfer on the wooden rim that was installed on the giant wheels. In case of overheating, this contact could be interrupted at will to protect the engines, but initial calculations suggested a maximum speed of 17 kilometers per hour.
One Test Was Enough
The builders constructed a scale model using a gramophone motor, presented it to Tsar Nicholas II, who was impressed by the performance of the "toy", and so the "Tsar Tank" got the green light. Building the prototype took approximately one year, and in July 1915 the first maneuvers began... and the problems.
The tank was so large that it could only be transported to the evaluation area piece by piece. When they finished assembly, they discovered that the weight exceeded the original specification by 50 percent (from 40 to 60 tons), but there is more. The initial test in August started well, with the tank moving at good speed and knocking down trees in its path, but the third wheel got stuck in a ditch in soft ground... and it never came out.
The engines did not have enough power to pull the Tsar Tank out of its predicament. Stechkin and Mikulin (both nephews of Lebedenko) tried to install more robust engines, but that never happened. The Army quickly rejected it, citing two reasons. On one hand, the cost. That prototype had required a quarter of a million rubles, a fortune in the middle of World War I. And on the other, its wheels with spokes (like a bicycle) were a giant target for enemy artillery. The Tsar Tank was left lying there, 60 kilometers from Moscow, until in 1923 they decided to dismantle it and recover the metal.
(Note: Other sources place the test year at 1917.)
Source: Landships via Wayback Machine
