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The designer behind this design was a naval engineer named V.D. Mendelejev. From 1903 until 1906 he worked in the shipbuilding department of the Cronstadt Institute of Naval Engineering, and at shipyards in Petersburg until 1916. Mendelejevs background sure showed: the "Armoured Land Cruiser" he proposed in 1915 used heavy armoured plating, evidently of the kind used on war ships (150-100mm thick), an engine from a submarine (the whole thing had a vague submarine-ish look) and a 120mm Naval gun. (Note however, that this gun had not a rigid mount, as has been put forward by some, but a modern recoil system - the whole system was to be found inside the tank.) It was a VERY big thing, weighing some 170 tons, making it one of the biggest AFV:s ever proposed! (It would have been even heavier than the German 150 ton K-Wagen.) It would have been served by a crew of eight. But still, the most remarkable feature of the design was that the running gear was to be retractable! The road-wheels were mounted on a pneumatic suspension system that could lower the hull to the ground, thus covering the running gear and temporarily converting the tank into a static blockhouse! The calculated speed of this monster was an impressive 22-24 km/h, which is quite good, but that really seems unrealistic. An obvious drawback - common to many early tank designs - is the configuration of the front of the tracks, giving it a very poor climbing capacity. Had it ever been used on anything less than pretty flat and firm terrain, it would probably have faced the same destiny as som many french S:t Chamonds: it would have got stuck: the trench crossing capacity would have been nearly nil. As far as we know, no vehicles of this type was ever built. My model is based on KORA:s fine kit, built virtually straight out of the box, save for a new barrel for the 120mm gun. The Green colour scheme is the one seen on many Russian AFV:s at the time, but is purely conjuncture: but then again, no one knows how it would have looked, if it had ever been built and deployed. Click on the thumbanails to see more views of the model: More info (in russian, but containing good plans) on the Mendelejev tank can be found here. |
In most countries participating in the
Great War there soon evolved, quite independently, ideas of breaking
the rigid trench systems by using a tracked, armoured and gun
equipped vehicle. But the idea was quite new, and the form of this
new vehicle was not in any way given. In many countries there
circulated ideas about true "Landships", huge, seemingly
irresistible vehicles that seemed to be more inspired by, say, HG
Wells or Jules
Verne than by true reason. The Russian Mendelejev Tank was one of
these.
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