"daender" (daender)
04/07/2015 at 14:21 • Filed to: None
6
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"daender" (daender)
04/07/2015 at 14:21 • Filed to: None | 6
| 14 |
British heavy assault tank design developed in World War II but never put into mass production. It was developed for the task of clearing heavily fortified areas and as a result favored armor protection over mobility.
Although heavy, at 78 tons, and not readily transported, it was considered reliable and a good gun platform.
Only a few prototypes of the Tortoise had been produced by the end of the war.
Only two remain. One that was restored to working condition in 2011 and one that sits destroyed at a training area in Scotland.
ttyymmnn
> daender
04/07/2015 at 14:24 |
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Interesting. It looks like it's designed to go pretty much straight ahead. I wonder how thick the front armor (armour?) is.
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daender
> ttyymmnn
04/07/2015 at 14:26 |
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Supposedly 228 mm, which is also angled. It has an American cousin called the T95.
Two built; one burnt to the ground, one was found in an American field 25 or so years after WWII and restored.
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ttyymmnn
> daender
04/07/2015 at 14:30 |
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Nine inches. I wonder how that stood up to anti-tank rounds of the day. The Tiger II (King Tiger) was only 185mm at its thickest.
MrDakka
> daender
04/07/2015 at 14:43 |
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It's pretty slab sided on the front, so no real hope of deflecting incoming rounds; was it just RHA/steel only?
Jcarr
> daender
04/07/2015 at 14:44 |
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What kind of powerplant(s) did this beast have? If it take a 1500 horsepower gas turbine to drive a 70-ton Abrams today, I wonder what behemoth they used back then.
RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
> ttyymmnn
04/07/2015 at 14:44 |
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It was calculated to be impervious to anything *at the time it was designed*. I think a few German late-war rounds could technically have penetrated, though. The real devil with the Tortoise, though, was that the entire upper hull was a single piece of cast, so mass production would have been limited. (Yes, I've read up on it a lot in the past)
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ttyymmnn
> RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
04/07/2015 at 14:56 |
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Holy smelter, Batman. That would have been something to see it being built. The pace of innovation during the war was staggering, with some extremely powerful equipment coming just too late for the War. What's equally fascinating, though, is just how quickly many of those ultimate weapons of the '40s became obsolete.
The Powershift in Steve's '12 Ford Focus killed it's TCM (under warranty!)
> daender
04/07/2015 at 15:02 |
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It would have fit in perfectly in Battletanx
BorkBorkBjork
> daender
04/07/2015 at 15:14 |
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Best T95 video ever (from World of Tanks):
Cé hé sin
> Jcarr
04/07/2015 at 15:19 |
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600bhp RR Meteor, which was a detuned Merlin deprived of it ssupercharger.
No, it didn't go very fast. 12 mph onroad was about your lot.
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daender
> MrDakka
04/07/2015 at 19:48 |
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The T95 has 305mm (12 inches) of armor at the front along with parts of it being angled. It's near-impervious to just about all WWII tank rounds minus the German 12.8cm cannon found on the Maus and JagdTiger (even then, it's a tough shot). It's designed to bounce rounds from strongholds, bunkers, forts, etc. while leveling them with a 155mm boom-stick.
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daender
> Jcarr
04/07/2015 at 19:53 |
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Horsepower of most tanks of WWII aren't great by modern standards. It ranges from 220hp in the Chaffee light tank (powered by twin Cadillac V8s making 110 each) to the aircraft-engined Hellcat tank destroyer with 400hp to the M4E8 Sherman with a 540 hp thanks to a 18L all-aluminum Ford V8 (dohc too).
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Jcarr
> daender
04/07/2015 at 20:13 |
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I got to reading on that and found the Ford GAC. Looks like they made a V12 version as well with ~750hp.
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MrDakka
> daender
04/08/2015 at 12:35 |
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What about the HEAT/HESH munitions of the time? And didn't some of the later panzerfaust and bazooka variants have something like 250mm of RHAe penetration? In any case, I love the design of late/post-WWII superheavy tanks.