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| Modern Full-Scale Mockup of the Tsar's Tank in Moscow |
By James Patton
Before World War I, the armored fighting vehicle (AFV) had been merely a tantalizing concept. Even Leonardo da Vinci had taken a stab at it, with sketches of a human-powered AFV, even mounted with cannons. In the 15th century, a Czech general had actually built some armored wagons, fitted them with artillery, and used them effectively. In 1903 the fantasy author H.G. Wells had imagined a hundred-foot long AFV, also with cannons, and large enough to carry about 40 soldiers. He even included a retractable fixed turret that could be raised like a periscope.
Armored automobiles existed before the war, but they did not prove useful off-road. They couldn’t span obstacles such as walls, fences, trenches, ditches and shell holes. Plus, since they were armor-plated and carried weaponry, they were too heavy to get traction on soft or muddy ground. The solution to this was a long time in coming. Beginning in 1825 with Sir George Cayley’s (1773–1857) “Universal Railway”, numerous inventors in several countries had tweaked the idea of having the wheels run on a hard surface rather than directly on the ground. In 1901, Alvin Lombard (1856–1937) of Waterville, Maine, produced the first workable tracked vehicle, a steam-powered lugger that pulled skids of logs. In England, Richard Hornsby & Sons of Grantham were developing a similar heavy hauling vehicle, but repeated efforts to interest the Royal Artillery were unsuccessful, and their vehicle never made it past prototypes.
In 1908 Benjamin Holt (1849–1920) of Stockton, California, paid Lombard $60,000 for the right to use his patent and made the first tracked vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine. In 1911 Holt also bought the Hornsby patents for £4,000. Holt’s track system, which he renamed the “Caterpillar,” became the basis for all of the AFV’s developed by the British and French, which became known by the British code word, “TANK.” The tracks solved the weight problem by distributing the weight of the vehicle over a greater surface area without needing additional drive train, and are still the standard for all the world’s tanks.
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| A WWI-Era Holt Tractor |
While all of this was going on in the West, over in Russia there evolved a different approach to the problem. It was noted that the Turkic povozki carts, which were used to haul goods in Southern Russia, had oversized front wheels, which enabled them to carry heavy loads across fields, on dirt roads or cobblestone streets. There seemed to be a rule here: the bigger the wheels, the rougher the terrain that could be traversed. Thus by “super-sizing” the front wheels, a vehicle could be built that could breach enemy defenses. This idea was referred to former Captain Nikolay Lebedenko (1879–1948?), the head of a private military and technical laboratory in Moscow, who was at the time engaged in the development of better fuses for artillery. In May 1915, he proposed the construction of an armored vehicle with huge front wheels (about 8 meters in diameter), which sort of resembled a gun-carriage. He recruited two young engineers, Boris Stechkin (1891–1969) and Alexander Mikulin (1895–1985) as assistants. Mikulin later reminisced: "Nikolay Lebedenko invited me to come to his office, he locked the door and whispered to my ear: 'Professor Nikolay Zhukovskiy (1847–1921) referred you as a skillful engineer [both Stetchin and Mikulin were also Zhukovskiy’s nephews]. Do you agree to work on the project of the machine that I invented? Such machines will help to break through the whole German front just within one night, and Russia will win the war.'"
Lebedenko designed a heavily-armed, motor-driven three wheeled battle machine, weighing some 40 tons, like an inverted tricycle, except with the rear wheel being used for steering, and driven from the front by two very large spoked wheels, almost 9 meters in diameter. These wheels were attached to an armored hull, which was shaped like a tuning fork, tapering down to the two-part rear wheel, smaller but not really small (2 meter diameter). There would be two 76.2mm guns and several M1910 Maxim machine guns in a top-mounted centrally placed but non-rotatable turret, and a line of yet more machine guns along each side to protect the tank from enemy infantry. There was even a small weapons turret on the bottom. The overall height with the turret would be 12 meters.
The front wheels (designed by Zhukovskiy) had a T-shaped metal mid-section. A wooden overlay was then fastened to the shelf of the T-beam. Each front wheel was powered by its own 240 hp Maybach MbIVa six-cylinder gasoline engine, two of which had been salvaged from a crash-landed Zeppelin. Each engine drove an automobile wheel, which was pressed down until it touched the wooden overlay of the big wheel, and by counter-rotating, the automobile wheel delivered power to the big wheel. Since these were aircraft engines that were designed to operate in a slip-stream at cool high altitudes, on the ground they were prone to over-heating, especially if stressed, so a mechanism had to be designed to automatically disengage the driving wheels to protect the over-heated engines from seizing up. It was thought that, on smooth flat ground, the behemoth should be able to reach a top speed of 17 km/—faster than any other AFV then in service.
Lebedenko likened the design to a hanging bat, and called his invention "Netopyr," which is the Russian name for Pipistrellus (a genus of smooth-nosed bat), but instead it was officially known as the "Lebedenko," and later it was whimsically tagged as "The Tsar’s Tank.” Modern writer Peter Suciu has described it as "something out of Steam Punk."
Lebedenko built a working scale model, made from wood, and using the clockwork spring motor from a gramophone for power. He was given the opportunity to demonstrate this model to Tsar Nicholas II, who was much impressed when the model made it across some obstacles, including climbing over a stack of law books. The sight of a three-wheeled, cart-shaped vehicle rolling swiftly across his carpet delighted the tsar and the project was given royal approval. Lebedenko was directed to proceed to build a prototype, with a budget of 210,000 rubles, and the tsar got to keep the model, but it was lost after the revolution.
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| Depiction of the Tank in the Field |
The construction progressed quickly, and at the end of July 1915 the prototype was ready for its first trials. Because of its weight and size, it had to be designed and built in sub-assemblies, which would be individually transported to the front and field-assembled before going into action. The prototype had no artillery, due to a shortage of guns at the front. When it was assembled at the proving ground 60 km from Moscow, it was found to weigh nearly 60 tons, 50 percent more than specified, mainly due to thicker gauge steel having been substituted. Nevertheless, the field test in front of an imperial commission went ahead as planned. It started well, the prototype moved speedily over firm ground, negotiated ditches and crushed a birch tree, but when it moved into a wetland, the rear double-wheel got stuck, and the engines couldn’t deliver enough torque to free it from the muck. It was later determined that the proximate cause was that the rear wheels were too small for the weight that they were carrying. The prototype remained there, bogged down, for the rest of the war and even through the revolutionary wars, until it was finally scrapped in 1923. Several photographs and drawings of the original prototype are available today, and there is also a full-scale replica on display at the T-34 Tank History Museum in Moscow.
Besides insufficient engine power and the bad weight distribution, there were other drawbacks with the design. Due to its size and high profile, the Lebedenko would have been an easy target for enemy field artillery. The large front wheels were spindly and the spokes could be destroyed by machine guns or even volleys of rifle fire. The 76.2 mm guns would have had a no-fire zone looking directly ahead due to being located outside of and behind the front wheels.
After the field test fiasco, Mikulin and Stechkin were certain that the problem could be solved by purpose-built, more powerful engines. Both continued to design engines, and eventually became experts on aircraft engines. Meanwhile, the Russian Army observed that both France and Britain had successfully developed the afore-mentioned tanks that ran on caterpillar tracks, so the the Lebedenko project was cancelled. By then it had cost about 250,000 rubles. As for Nikolay Lebedenko, in 1917 he chose to flee from Russia, heading for the U.S.
Sources: Russia Beyond, Landships, Amusing Planet, The Armory Life, Wikipedia, Yandex
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