Scratchbuilding C&Cs Mammoth Tank

[sassgrunt]

On the subject of barrels for the guns of the Mammoth, you might consider using cheap collapsible graphite fishing poles. It's lightweight, and like I said, cheap, (I buy them at my local big box store and they cost around $7). The are comprised of three sections, with the smaller two fitting inside the larger one, (which is just about one meter in length). I don't know what the diameter of your 11" gun scales out to; but when I measure a 40cm length of the the largest-diameter section, it's about 2cm at the base and 1-3/4cm wide, 40cm torward the tip. So, it has a very gradual taper that looks nice; is sturdy and won't flex without a LOT of effort; and won't add a lot of weight to your turret, to throw it off balance. Just a thought. -Mike

[majordisastor]

Thinking a liitle further down your engine route...You could easily take the stance of stolen technology.

A recent example was the American Stealth fighter downed over Kosovo - I think - during the yugolsalavian war.
The serbs were quite tight with China so when this top secret state of the art jet crashed in their backyard they organised chinese techs to crawl all over it - and low and behold - they surprised the west with their new Stealth fighter.

That arrived years before the Americans were expecting it to be anywhere near operational.

I guess what I am arriving at would be a scenario where the ameriacan engine could easily be copied or recovered during any number of exports,wars.

I typical Russian style I would expect them to make the design a bit simpler, more robust - and for your point of veiw bigger and moe powefull.

I think the general rule of thumb would be to adopt the thinking of a good thriller writer and create a set of facts, embellish them but remain plausible.

I hope this helps and does not end up making you retire to a quiet room with an icepack for your head !!

Andy

[Saxondog]

Need a Custom Barrel? I know a guy that can make some fine aluminium and brass barrels that are not to costly, How about a set of 88 in a twin brass mounting,or a 188 in a single mount with a 6mm bore so you can add the flash or would you prefer airsoft? After all your fine work a barrel needs to be metal and have recoil. Just my opinion,

Saxondog

[blimp]

- Thinking about engines , why not have a multiple turbofan set up ? if one is enough for an Abrams , why not have 2 , 3 or more turbofans - 6 maybe even 10 ! ( allowing for contempary outputs of the era ) after all helo's have had this technology for decades . As for the grill , this could be just be the outer layer of an exhaust heat exchanger/ diffuser system to keep the obviously large infra-red signture down ? ( and making the engines run leaner/more fuel efficent)

• Oh, alright , I'll get back in my box now . . .

[Munty]

I love my first login to this site in the mornings as everyone always posts when I'm asleep haha Thanks for all the thoughts guys, some really helpful stuff there. I'd like to get back on track to where I was meant to be yesterday and finish that second track off but I think I'm going to dedicate it to googling and wiki'ing some stuff and try to work out a design for this tank. That means I'm going to need any and all information there is about how tanks are actually put together! Engines, transmissions, hulls, turrets, the lot! Where do they store the ammo? How many crew and with what purposes? What features are incorporated besides the obvious radio and guns?

On top of the ordinary layout of tanks I also need to address the fact that there are 4 tracks whose drive wheels all seem to be on the ground, dual cannons that appear to have been fitted from a cold war navy cruiser and AA and AI rockets mounted on the turret. Also the design I'm working with has no hatches and I'd guess I'll need at least 2 for the size of the vehicle (one in the turret one in the hull)

Anyway, that's going to take some time to get used to but I'll try and get some form of plan drawn up as to what the insides of this beast could have looked like. At the end of the day, if there isn't enough room in the turret for massive recoil and 2 loaders I'm going to have to change the size of the guns and that situation will repeat itself everywhere until I can reach a plausible outcome. If I work out armour thickness and I already know the area it covers can I use that to work out a basic weight? That would be pretty nice to finish off the project

Thanks for the barrel and engine input too guys, it's all good stuff! If anyone knows of a good way to source some models of any of the above please tell me! Any large scale Abrams model kits with a visible engine for example? Truck kits with the same? Anything really, I can modify it to suit the role and scale doesn't matter as long as it's BIG! I have an area of about 20x10x10cm to fill with engine I think I'd like 2 powerplants, one on each flank and a little crawl space for emergency repairs between the two. That would look very cool

[Munty]

Making some progress here remarkably I've decided on a few things but not much is set in stone yet and the more in-depth I look at the whole project the more questions turn up! Anyway here's what I have so far and I'd like some feedback on it (either way) as you guys are sure to know better than me what sounds logical and not

Firstly I'm going for a crew of 6 compared to 4 in an Abrams. I must say it seems like a tank this big should have more than that but I think it's more than enough as one of them is arguably non-essential personnel as it is! I'm going for 2 loaders, a driver, a gunner, an engineer and the commander.

The loaders will each be responsible for one cannon and one rocket pod. They'll be sat towards the rear of the turret itself, as opposed to in the basket, on both the left and right side of the vehicle. There will be x amount of rounds stored IN the turret itself but I'm yet to decide on a figure. The way I see it you'd want enough ammo on hand to last through any one particular engagement as I think the only possible way of resupplying the turret with ammo while in combat will be through engineering and thus would require the turret to be locked dead-ahead. (explanation to follow :p)

The driver will be in the forward section of the hull (in a sort of thunderbird 1 contraption now I come to think of it) with all 4 tracks controlled independently via hand controls. It's hard to explain without a doodle but they're frequently used in aircraft... In this instance there will be one control to either side of the driver's chair, each controlling the tracks on the corresponding side. There will of course be a neutral state in which no drive reaches any of the tracks and then however many forward and reverse gears which will be supplied by multiple gearboxes (having one powerplant and drivetrain per side of the vehicle with a failsafe differential to allow one engine to drive all 4 tracks in an emergency) While each hand control will typically be locked as a single unit, each one can also be seperated into 2 controls per side allowing the driver totally independent control of each track in case of maneouvering difficulties or mechanical failure.

Hardware itself is currently 2 large Diesel powered V-configuration engines powering 2 gearboxes per side (one per track) to allow the vehicle to run on either rear tracks only or all four sets. The rear track is driven by a drive wheel towards it's front while the forward tracks are driven by a wheel at the rear. The 2 boxes are seperated by a further differential to enable drive on the 2 rear tracks or all 4. The two power-plants will occupy the rear of the vehicle running parallel to the tracks while a crawl space between them will allow for the Engineer to carry out checks and maintenance while in action. Although this is very odd, the Mammoth tanks in the game had the ability to automatically recover up to 50% of their health so there has to be some sort of low-tech method to put that in place. Besides, being in the biggest tank ever built won't count for anything if you can't move as without power you can't even turn the turret!

The gunner will occupy the front centre of the turret where he will control both cannons and select targets for the semi-autonomous missile pods. The commander will be located behind him and a fairly basic periscope mounted atop the turret will allow him a full 360degrees of view to advise both the driver and gunner of anything not visible or obvious to them. Alternatively, the image presented to these other crew members will come from 2 digital imaging systems situated on the front of the tanks central hull. This is because there are objects there in the game which look like headlights, and tanks don't have headlights... These will allow just under 180degrees of forward only views to the driver and will be displayed to him on a heads up display immediately before him. In the event of the damage or destruction of these electrical systems there is also a low tech viewing window above the drivers head which is incorporated into the design of the hatch. In normal conditions the hatch will close to an extent when this port is not exposed to hostile fire.

The gunner will be relying on the tank commander for primary target location and will then rely on the tanks fire control system to accurately place his shots. His digital view of the battlefield will originate from the ends of each barrel (you can see the long underslung objects in the first image I posted) and like the driver's will also allow infra-red and nightvision surveillance.

Based on the above not sounding like complete nonsense (that's for you guys to judge by the way!) I still need to work out a reloading system for the missile-pods (it should ideally be automatic to prevent taking the loaders off the main cannons) how much of each ammunition type is carried, how and where, and where the fuel tanks are to feed the engines. On top of that there is still plenty of space in this monster so anything else that needs to be carried can easily be accomodated.

Obvious things the tank will be missing are machine guns and smoke launchers but quite frankly there's no point in fitting the latter as the whole point of the vehicle is shock and awe. That means it's glory or death for the guys in these things as fleeing a battle is not in their orders! Regarding machine guns, the missile pods can actually be trained in infantry rather successfully so that solves that problem, plus of course noone wants to be outside a tank during the battle so top mounts are out of the question and the gunner will be busy enough with 2 cannons to handle let alone missiles and machine guns!

Anything glaringly obvious that I'm missing please let me know and anything above that is stupid, pointless or any other kind of wrong please inform me! Remember this is a fictional vehicle so there are bound to be some oddities like our friend the engineer but it does need to be logical or what's the point? I'm going to keep on with my doodles and see what else I come up with

[Wolftone]

You are doing all the right kind of thinking dude. I am impressed that you have got this far so quickly. Keep it up!

[Von kraftwerk]

powerplant idea,ferdinand porsche,had this thing about electric motors powered by generator,Tiger I(P) Elefant,Tiger II(P) and Maus,all had this,a German forklift company Jungheinrich uses this set up,say the Russians examined the Maus in thier possesion and took the concept and advanced it,like the US did with the Horton/B2 stealth,the Mammoth is more a giant S P gun than a tank,its role and reason is like that of schwere Gustav,Dora,and Karl,Thor Morser,the Sturmtiger used a 380mm weapon developed as a naval anti sub device,it fired a rocket assisted shell with a relative short range designed for demolition of strongpoints,Russian MBT's fire missiles as well as shells,your weapon could be a naval gun 11" heavy cruiser,designed to fire heavy shells,rocket assisted shell (longer range than sturmtiger hitting power near that of Gustav,Thor)and missiles guided,anti armour smart cluster type, nuke etc,sturmtiger shells (13 carried)were quite small for its calibre so would'nt be a logistic foul up,during the cold war the soviets may have wanted a prestige weapon such as Mammoth,the russkis have often used ideas of enemies,baby Gustav but more techy,computer controlled gun laying could put 4-5 rounds on target at the same time

[Von kraftwerk]

ps schwere Gustav need 4 rail tracks in parallel laid especially,your would only need 2 so could use most of rail net on russian wide gauge,thus not repeating the folly of Gustav,more powerful and versatile and less vulnerable than Thor,and like Thor and Karl,able to move independantly on tracks,but more so with ability to ford rivers,how about that for a concept!

[Wolftone]

Bizzarrel'y this is not as off topic as it may seem. I once in real life drove a crane that was a mobile dockside crane which had a 7.5litre turbo deisel, turning a generater, powering electric motor's. This meant a much smaller engine than the one that would have been needed to power it with motive power alone. The vechile weighed 65ton's of the british variety & would move at 15mph & acellerate to this speed in about 2/2.5 seconds..65tons remember. It would also lift 10tons at 5ft per second without straining itself. If the vechile was of a much lower height it could have moved faster. The driving cab was 65ft up. Nothing to do with tanks it may seem? more an example of the power of electrickery! perhap's.