If you look it that way, and assuming it would be able to crawl it's way out of the assembly plant... For some reason I'm reminded of this NASA - Happy Anniversary, Crawlers
I would like to see how the Germans would build anything that big without it a) being blown to bits while being constructed b) after completion the cost of maintaining it would ruin germany c) after completion the Brits just drop a tallboy on it d) being blown to bits after being staled for three days while it's tanks were being filled,... whatever else you might want to add. Oh not to mention that it couldn't cross anything other than highways and if it got stuck in the mud well, that'd be the end of it. Cheers...
I think the P.1000 would look tiny beside a crawler !!!! I believe the shuttle alone, even empty, weights in at around 2 tonns.
OOPS converted twice from kilos to tonns. I must admnit the Bolo SF stories, quoted earlier in this thread, are amongst my favourites, and Bolos look remarkably like a P.1000 so I have a soft spot there. But the land battleship will make no sense as long as technology gives the gun (or guided weapon) the advantage over the armour and your main defence is not being seen and hit.
From the info that is pubblished it would use up as much fuel as four U-Boats (the engines are the same), not really unsustainable. Anyway the military have never been particularly pricky about fuel consumption unless it interfered with range.
I remember there was a Thunderbirds episode where they made a rocket powered by seawater...maybe the Germans could have done something like that for the Ratte?
Lol. A Steam Ratte. That would be amusing the cloud of steam it let out would make it invulnerable to allied aircraft since they wouldn't know where to hit. Like a foggy day... By the size of the beast, you could take the opportunity and haide army group center under the steam cloud Cheers...
Well, that book (which I also have) mentions yet another problem. Boiler getting pierced by a shot... With the size of the Ratte, the resulting explosion would probably wipe out the remaining German industry not touched by allied bombing. So it appears that in the end, building that freak of nature would actually end the war faster. Cheers...
I think the Ratte deserves points for sheer audacity. Stupid and pointless, yes, as ultimately wasteful as the 'Dora' gun and the Yamato. But what a sight it would have been! P.S. I also think the coolest way to attack the Ratte would be with specially built 'land torpedoes'.
Miguel, to put the ratte in perspective you have to think trains and ships, it was huge by land vehicle standards but not particularly large by other. It was smaller than most WW2 destroyers and, while I'm not an expert here, I believe it woud mass less than a average train. Za mice against RATte have no chance , you need cats and big ones (someting like a Leo2).