Great Balls of Steel !! (Kugelpanzers and Spherical tanks)

[raafif]

A new book is coming -- "Stalins Balls of Steel", designs especially for us




Those old Mechanics Illustrated magazines & DRB's webpages are gonna get a lot of re-reading !

[GTX_Admin]

Is it in Russian or English?

[Diamondback]

LOL, me I'd rather have seen Stalin's balls IN steel--crushed in a vise.

[raafif]

Is it in Russian or English?

probably only Russian - have asked, waiting for reply.

Author says "More than 50 wartime projects of soviet spherical vehicles, with scale drawings and 3D-reconstruction. More than 300 pages"

[Alvis 3.1]

Uhhh..what? Seriously? They had designs for spherical tanks?

Cuz I made a parody of that whole idea somewhere around 15 years ago....

Egads! I'll have to find the models and take some pics. *Sigh*

Alvis 3.1

[Jacques Deguerre]

@ Alvis- Yes, please post photos if you get the chance. I would love to see them.

@ raafif- A couple of questions; are there other books in the series and do you know where they may be purchased?

[raafif]

the book is Russian language for now - English version later (couple of years).

All projects in this book were REAL proposals.

The author has written a few books on Russian armour - the latest is on KV-based SPGs (production & prototypes).

Ordering ... seems anyone really into these books knows where
apparently they have their own site which is currently down, also possible to buy via "Viktor Kulikov" & in Moscow hobby shops.
You're travelling around the wrong countries Greg ! ..... can't we do some business with Yak, Mig etc

More on Ball-Tanks here ...
http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,3708.0.html

[GTX_Admin]

You're travelling around the wrong countries Greg ! ..... can't we do some business with Yak, Mig etc

Not adverse to the idea...though I prefer Sukhoi and Beriev.

[raafif]

You're travelling around the wrong countries Greg ! ..... can't we do some business with Yak, Mig etc

Not adverse to the idea...though I prefer Sukhoi and Beriev.

well , we did build a few small ekranoplans up in Darwin for the Asian river-transport market - apparently they weren't too enamoured with the concpt tho

[Kerick]

I've looked up a site recently on one wheel transportation. Seems an Englishman built a couple versions of the "Dynasphere".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynasphere
It seems that a major problem was steering and "gerbiling", the tendency for the car the driver sat in to climb up the wheel when accelerating and ride up the backside when braking.
It would seem to make accurate weapon siting difficult at best and keeping the crew from upchucking nearly impossible. There are a couple of old films of his invention driving around on youtube and such that show what I mean.
But, this is whiff world so just say a brilliant engineer solved that problem and go for it! Just like the hover cars and walking tanks!
I'm secreting trying to figure out how to build a miniature one for radio control.

[Old Wombat]

A self-propelled mine! Awesome idea!

:)

Guy

[Kerick]

It appears American inventors were also interested in this concept.
http://www.military-history.org/articles/the-tumbleweed-tank-back-to-the-drawing-board.htm
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/novel-war-tank-resembles-a-rolling-ball/
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/war-tank-on-one-wheel-operated-by-one-man/
It seems we can get quite a bit of mileage out of this idea. 

[raafif]

people have already built models of the three basic shapes & displayed them at shows.  The idea is basicaly from the 1910-1944 time-frame so mainly steam-punk in concept ...... how about a modern 21st/22nd Century take on it ?

[Dr. YoKai]

A self-propelled mine! Awesome idea!

:)

Guy

Coming right up!

One Great Panjandurum, piping hot!

[Old Wombat]

Not quite what I was thinking of, Doc.

My thoughts were more along the lines of the remote-controlled "steel ball" variety. A section of paddock (or field) near a road strewn with motorised spherical mines, packed with explosives in both anti-personnel & anti-vehicle configurations, which are controlled by a radar/sensor-suite unit via secure data-link. The radar/sensor unit picks up vehicles or troops moving along the road & commands the mines to converge on the road, guiding them via data-link to hit the front & rear of the column first, then the rest of the travelling mines disperse along the body of the convoy/troop column, close on it & wreak havoc! There are no tell-tales on or overly near the road & the mines can be buried, while the radar/sensor-suite units can be camouflaged as rocks/tree stumps/what-ever. You could even have "sentry" fields, possibly guarding the main mine field, specifically designed to interfere with mine clearing vehicles & personnel.

:)

Guy

[Jeffry Fontaine]

Interesting enough, in the television science fiction series Firefly, episode 12 - "The Message" where Mal has a flashback to the war and a firefight with the Alliance that has what appear to be some kind of spherical tank thing that crashes into their position and forces them to flee.  I watched that scene over and over again trying to get a decent view of the tank things that were called "rollers" by Mal but they are always just a blur in the background animations. 

***Edit to try and fix broken/missing links.  Attempt to fix links failed.  Text and related html has been removed since it can not be supported. 

[raafif]

he's done a nice model !  Looked at buying that kit but at US$50 for a kit that's just 1½" round is too much

[Story]

[Story]

[Old Wombat]

I missed this one, somehow.

I'd love to see it when the gun fired!

[Old Wombat]

If they're light enough to manhandle into position, they're too light to give any significant level of protection, whether metal or fibreglass.

If they're fibreglass, the flamethrower is more dangerous to it & the crew than to the enemy.

Reload time of the 105mm recoilless will be negatively impacted by the "flexible stainless steel tube", which, when it starts leaking propellant gasses into the "turret" pillbox, will severely hamper crew effectiveness.

The thing is, for all intents & purposes, a three-man coffin-come-crematorium.

[Story]

The thing is, for all intents & purposes, a three-man coffin-come-crematorium.

Hush, now - you're retroactively breaking some contractor's rice bowl with that sorta talk.

Legg's Eggs would be about the right size for 1/35th, ya?

[Story]

I missed this one, somehow.
 
I'd love to see it when the gun fired!

Soviet crew training.


(Only sorta a joke - we had to do "rollover" training in MRAPs before going to Mesopotamia.)

[Old Wombat]

I was thinking more along the lines of;