The Turtle Tank
T-28 super-heavy tank
Based on the technological military advancements of the German and Soviet army in World War 2, the US had to develop its own beast on tracks that can withstand the competition. Here we are presented with one of the heaviest tanks from the World War 2 era. The T-28 super-heavy tank also nicknamed the turtle tank weighs in at 105 tones of pure steel, this is mainly due to the fact that it has a frontal armor of 330mm thick steel. The nickname came around the specifications of the tank being very slow due to it’s heavyweight, as well as, shape.
Design
The super-heavy tank has been designed based on the enemy it was to encounter which at the time of the designing stage would be Tiger II and King Panthers. At the same time, there are many speculations by different historians that Allied spies knew about the German design of the Maus tank and I believe this is true as the T-28 can withstand a 128mm projectile that would have been fired by the Maus (in a frontal engagement).
The sort of turtle shell-like design is very well as it is angled at a perfect 45 degrees which allow for higher chances of ricochet. US military engineers had the idea to make the tank as offensive as possible (based on the US army only attacking in World War 2), therefore they implemented a frontal gun rather than a turret gun, this would make the tank most effective in a spearhead formation as the flanks would be covered by other allied tank destroyers.
This new design also implemented the first tank with double tracks, this was not only implemented for better weight distribution to force ration but also to allow the tank to stay in combat even if one of the tracks is affected or shot down. A single error in the design would stop the tank for fighting in an efficient way as it was intended and this was its top speed of 13 km/h (8mph). This meant that the tank would not be able to keep up with the rest of the tanks and also it would need to be transported by train to the battlefield.
