Something Awful takes a 2nd look at WW2 Tech!

[MKSheppard]

http://www.somethingawful.co*

My Tank Has Armor Plate to Save Me From Hate

9 out of 10 hyperactive fourth graders agree that World War II super weapons are totally awesome!

Those of you who don't carefully avoid all of my updates probably know by now that one of my passions is World War II history. From time to time I find an excuse to put all my relatively worthless knowledge to good use in attempting to amuse the readers here at Something Awful. One of the most popular applications for this otherwise moronic waste of my reading time has been my series of articles detailing the crazier shit to come out of the Second World War. Since it has been a while, and since everyone enjoys a good romp through the playground of crazy tanks and airplanes, I am pleased to offer the third in my continuing series of Wacky World War II Technology!

This installment marks two firsts for the series. One is that for once not all of the oddities have been produced by Nazi Germany. While the Germans provided us with the vast majority of crazy World War II sci-fi pseudoscience the Soviets, Japanese, and even Americans provided their share of questionable high-tech. Another first this time is that all three pieces of technology were actually completed, although only two of them entered service. So hot-glue your ass into the sex swing, because things are about to get wild, socks will be flying around the room like there's a poltergeist and minds may accidentally be blown.

T-35
Type: Massive and Dorky Soviet Tank

T-35 Tank Commanders were required to stand at the turret and repeatedly scan the horizon yelling "land ho!"

Specific Features: You might think from these articles that the Germans had the market cornered on unnecessarily big tanks, but the Soviets were just as obsessed with creating impossibly gargantuan vehicles. The Germans lost the war but ultimately won the "biggest tank arms race" with their Maus tank. However, when war broke out the Russians had the biggest tank in the world at the time already deployed, and boy was it silly. The T-35 mounted an almost comical four small turrets, two mounting light anti-tank guns and two mounting machineguns, with a fifth "queen turret" lording over them with its stout 76mm main gun. Naturally all these turrets took plenty of crewmen, and the T-35 was a veritable fun bus of personnel with eleven fucking people inside it. The tank was over 22 feet in length and weighed some 55 tons fully loaded. With a screaming top road speed of about 20 miles per hour the T-35 wasn't going to be winning a whole lot of stoplight drag races with Type R Civics. Despite all the armament and weight the T-35 was fairly lightly armored, sporting only 35mm of armor plate at its thickest point.

While it doesn't look that bad in this image, don't forget that there are two turrets you can't see that can only fire backwards and sideways.
History: Before war broke out with Germany the Soviets were busy exploring tank designs of every imaginably classification. One of these designs happened to be a super heavy tank with five turrets that came to be known to World War II trivia nuts as the T-35. The first prototype rolled out of the factory and almost directly into a military parade in Moscow in 1932. From 1933 to 1938 only 61 more T-35s were produced. The strength of most Soviet tanks of the era was their ease of use and their simple design that made them cheap to produce. The T-35 possessed neither of these qualities, being both exceedingly complex and almost impossible to effectively use in combat.

The T-35 first saw combat in Finland during the ignominious Winter War, where it served without any distinction whatsoever. There is no record that any were lost in combat, but this is probably because so few (less than a dozen) were used and those that did get deployed tended to get stuck in the mud. Since the tank was so heavy and hard to maneuver it was extremely difficult to recover them. Prior to the outbreak of hostilities with Germany and immediately thereafter the majority of the T- 35s were stationed in Moscow to serve with the defensive forces there. The Germans brushed up against several of them at Lvov in Poland, but luckily for probably everyone involved they had run out of fuel. After capturing the chassis the Germans immediately set to work not duplicating these pieces of shit. The T-35 stands as a testament that copying a battleship and putting it on tank treads is not a good idea, especially when your fire-control commander tends to be a scared barely-trained conscript leading a bunch of even more scared and barely-trained conscripts.

Gotha 229 (Ho-IX)
Type: Badass Flying Wing Fighter

Specific Features: The Gotha Go-229, or Horten Ho-IX depending on which designers you think are more "totally rad", is an interesting design from the late war crazy Luftwaffe department made more notable by its visually apparent relation to modern aircraft like the B-2 "Stealth" Bomber. The order was made in 1943 for a fast heavy-fighter bomber and Walter and Reimar Horten received approval from fat bastard Herman Goering for their tailless aircraft design. The aircraft mounted a Jumo turbojet inside each streamlined wing and carried an armament of four heavy 30mm cannons and two heavy bomb hard points. Speaking as a purely objective and scientific observer the aircraft was nothing short of screaming jet-powered sex. It was an unusual and almost organic-looking design that featured a number of unique components which would have probably made it difficult to maintain. The final production model was to have been a two-seat fighter with advanced (well, as advanced as those things got in that day and age) radar mounted in the elongated nose.

History: Three prototypes of the Go-229 were constructed and two of these were tested and flown, making it one of the most practical aircraft I've covered in one of these pieces. The first prototype was built as a glider and flew in 1944 to test the airframe's airworthiness and provide data for future modifications. The second prototype was constructed while the first was being tested and took to the skies in February of 1945 powered by a pair of stand-in BMW turbojet engines. Test pilot Erwin Ziller reported that the aircraft performed admirably on both this test and during a second test, although during the second the undercarriage was slightly damaged during landing. The third test saw a catastrophic engine failure and the death of the famed test pilot, but hey, you can't always get things like that right!

Work on a third prototype continued despite this mishap. The Go-229 was larger than the two previous prototypes, mounted the Jumo turbojets, and was intended to serve as a model for the ordered pre- production run of 20 aircraft. Only a few weeks later in mid-April the facility where the Go-229 was to be produced was overrun by American forces. The completed third prototype and four other partially assembled early production models were captured. In over fifty years since this incredible and, dare I say, erotic aircraft first took to the skies only two production aircraft have directly benefited from the work of the Hortens on the Go-229 and similar designs. The first was the Concord aircraft, which utilized much of the Hortens' research but very little of the actual design. No, the true spiritual successor of the Go-229 is America's B-2 Stealth Bomber. In those 50 years of development and technological achievement we somehow went from a sleek, fast, and maneuverable fighter to a lumbering and slow bomber that requires a fucking super computer to keep it from crashing into a ditch and looks about as sexy in the sky as a drowned bat covered in superglue.

Sturmgewehr-44 mit Krummerlauf

Type: Bizarre Gun Attachment

Specific Features: For the majority of the war the primary German infantry weapon was the Kar 98k bolt-action rifle. It was a high-caliber slow firing rifle, and while it was capable of killing a man past 1,000 yards, scarcely over 100 yards separated combatants in most engagements. The Mp-40 or "Schmeisser" (which was a misnomer, Hugo Schmeisser had nothing to do with it) provided a close-in automatic weapon or submachinegun, but this was ineffective at even medium ranges. The solution for the Germans was to develop a round that was larger than the pistol rounds used by submachineguns and shorter than the rifle rounds used by the Kar 98 and other full-blown rifles. Based around this mid-sized round, the Sturmgewehr-43/44 was the world's first assault rifle and was arguably the best infantry weapon of the war. But this isn't about the StG-44; this is about a special tool that could be attached to the front.

The Krummerlauf or "bent barrel" was developed for a variety of different weapons but was mass-produced for the StG-44. Its purpose was to allow a soldier to fire his weapon from behind cover while still maintaining visual contact with his target. The unwieldy and heavy contraption consisted of a prismatic scope that reflected the image seen through the angled viewfinder and a barrel attachment that curved the trajectory of the weapon. Different versions of the Krummerlauf were produced allowing anywhere from a 30 degree angled shot to a complete 90 degree angled shot. Only the 30 degree angled version was successful enough to be issued in significant numbers and estimates are that as few as 1,500 to as many as 8,000 were issued.

History: The versions of the Krummerlauf that allowed for modifying bullet trajectories above 30 degrees were essentially worthless in combat conditions. Bullets fired from them frequently fragmented due to stresses and the attachments, and even the guns themselves, were easily damaged by this. The 30 degree version, designated the "I", was issued to frontline soldiers usually in the Eastern Theater and was rarely used but was effective for what it was designed for. The fact of the matter was that most soldiers in combat preferred to do their fighting without worrying about clamping several pounds of metal and glass onto the front of their rifle. No doubt there were times when men who were pinned down behind cover happened to have a Krummerlauf in their gear and found it quite useful. However, running around with one attached to your gun rendered the weapon basically useless for normal combat unless you happened to be fighting midgets or some sort of sentient giant caterpillars. Not to mention you would probably get made fun of by other soldiers. In the military jokes can be so cruel.

A shitty land boat with too many guns, a jet fighter that seems more at home in 2003 than it does in 1945, and a gun that can shoot around corners. Coming next time on "Crazy Inventions from World War II" I'll have a mechanical spider tank, a robot that eats brains, and a giant cat that can fly. Okay, not really, but the truth won't be much less bizarre.

[Sea Skimmer]

Fools, the T-35 didn't see combat in the winter war, its three turreted little brother T-28 did, and had its assed kicked. That lead to the canceling of T-35 production after only a few vechicals. The only time the T-35 attempted to go into combat, against the Germans, the whole unit ran out of fuel before finding anything to shoot at.

[BlkbrryTheGreat]

Definatly an interesting read though.... Btw is this aircraft the same one thats featured in Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator 3 (the European theater)?

[Nathan F]

Heh, my favorite quote:

(concerning the HO-229)"...nothing short of jet powered sex..."

how true, that plane is plain sexy, IMHO, almost on the lines of the P-51 and A-10 (hey, the A-10 is a sexy beast IMHO, kinda like that chick that is incredibly hot, but could most likely bench press you and half your friends, at one time)

[Bartman]

...hey, the A-10 is a sexy beast IMHO...

If not sexy then definately phallic. I've been fond of the A-10 since I got my first model of it 20 odd years ago. It certainly is a distinctive machine.

And the Go-229 was a sweet machine wasn't it? That portion is my favorite of the three articles. They are all quite good Shep.

[Nathan F]

...hey, the A-10 is a sexy beast IMHO...

If not sexy then definately phallic.

dunno about you, but, I have never really considered something phallic to be sexy...

[Montcalm]

...hey, the A-10 is a sexy beast IMHO...

If not sexy then definately phallic.

dunno about you, but, I have never really considered something phallic to be sexy...

And what is the obsession of seeing phallic in everything

[Howedar]

I would have thought that a normal fuselaged aircraft would be more phallic than a flying wing.




Oh well, I thought it was an okay article, an amusing read and fantastic by SA standards.

[Vympel]

The T-35 was a shocking tank. Not only was it huge, it's armor was wafer thin and it's guns were pathetic. Brilliant.

[Sokar]

The whole thing about the Ho/Go-229 was great,"...jet powered sex..." Ill never shake that quote There is just something about its lines that grabs the eye and dosent let go...

[Raptor 597]

I remember reading abou the T-35 long ago. How thin exactly was the armour? Kinda of like Vice Admiral Beebee's Battlecruiser at Jutland facing the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen. And there was also no real point too the Ho/Go-229 because Germany didn't a morale crushing atomic bomb. The History Channel insists however that Japanese Wooden Jets and a few German Jets could defeat the US Air Force and change the course of the War. Quite a reliable source.

[Sokar]

If jets had been introduced early in the war, like the Me-262 could have been in late 42 early 43 if Hitler hadn't dicked with the plans to have it be capable of ground attack, then it could have shifted the war dramaticaly. I still think Germany loses in the end, but the American air war would have become a damned nightmare. The speed and lethality of the 262 Interceptor would have torn bloody holes in the American bomber formations and potentially we might have been forced back to flying only night raids as the British had been doing since 41. The Me-262 was decades ahead of its time , and with proper support from a Germany that had yet to be completly pulverized by the bombers could have dramatically changed the war. Also , I know that both the US and Britian had jet fighter programs, but IMO the 262(in its pure interceptor design, which was almost 600lbs lighter than the production 262 and more areodynamic as it had no external hardpoints to increase drag) would have eaten both the P-80 Shooting Star and Glouster Meteor for breakfast....add the Arado-234 and the Horten Ho-162 as a support fighter in '44ish along with the incredible performance of the Fock Wulf 190 and jesus, I wouldnt fly into that for all the tea in China, not without Mustangs by the truck load to support me......

[Raptor 597]

Ah, true. But I know that was the German's whole set of problems. They did not begin full drafting until 1942. The Nazi's War Machine problem was it got started too late on revolutionary designs for those designs too be effective in the field. And all those P-51s would have been utter cannon fodder.