Lets discuss the effects of steam driven tanks if they're invented in the late 1800's

SPJ

One of the modern weapons often incorperated and reimagined in steampunk fiction is the armoured tank. Lets analyze this topic seriously on this thread and discuss what effects the invention and use of steam driven tanks in the late 1800's would be.

Here are a couple of examples of steampunk tanks based on American Civil War era technology.

snapping%20turtle%20test.jpg

http://www.freewebs.com/steamnoir/landvehicles.htm
dllu-sml.jpg

http://dllu.net/design/tank.html
 
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Elfwine

First question.

Where do you put the boiler?

Second question: What about the fuel supply?

Third question: And the water?
 

JacktheCat

Fourth question: Can an army really afford to wait around a few hours for the boiler to warm up enough to build up a head of steam?
 

carlton_bach

What do you do if you need to drive somewhere the ground is not level?

Tanks are like bicycles - the harder you think aboutr a way in which they could have been invented earlier, the more reasoins you find why they weren't. Steam tanks require a lot of handwaving, so they're fine for RPGs or steampunk novels, but they make lousy technology.

That means that to discuss their impact, you first have to decide what capabilities they have. Realistically, the impact will be a fair amount of money and time wastesd on something that looks good parading on metalled roads. High-streampunkish tanks are a totally different proposition.
 
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Flubber

Banned
SPJ said:
One of the modern weapons often incorperated and reimagined in steampunk fiction is the armoured tank. Lets analyze this topic seriously...
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Your first mistake is using the terms "steampunk" and "seriously" in the same paragraph without that paragraph reading something like "Only people who know nothing about engineering and technology take steampunk seriously.".

As for your other mistakes, the first one is more than enough to make this thread a non-starter.
 
von Adler

von Adler

It is not until the early 1900s that steam engines become strong enough to propeller themselves over land with the steam agricultural tractors that were popular for 10-20 years before combustion engines took over.

You need to advance steam engine technology by 40 years and metallurgy (to be able to build high-pressure boilers for these engines) 40 years as well for any kind of the weakest steam tank.

It would be far easier to have an earlier combustion engine and build from there.

But both scenarios would cause butterflies that probably will eliminate the US Civil War entirely.
 

amphibulous

Banned
carlton_bach said:
What do you do if you need to drive somewhere the ground is not level?

Tanks are like bicycles - the harder you think aboutr a way in which they could have been invented earlier, the more reasoins you find why they weren't. Steam tanks require a lot of handwaving, so they're fine for RPGs or steampunk novels, but they make lousy
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Notice that one of the photos shows an enormous "tank" with narrow iron railroad wheels - these would sink into an destroy a road, let alone rough or soft ground.

The closest thing to a steam tank ever built is a traction engine:

NMSR_Traction%20Engine%20Elizabeth.jpg


If you add armour, the weight will go up hugely. This means means more enormous wheels. A traction engine didn't have the ability to move on rough or soft ground to start with - so what do you think it will be able to these impediments?

Tanks are about armour plus ***mobility***; mobility is a function of surplus power. Surplus power was barely adequate with the first tanks using IC engines, and these engines had much better power to weight than any steam engine - or at least any steam engine you can build without stupidly advanced technology.
 

Paladin

As others have said, steam tanks are probably out of the question. On the other hand, a lightly armed and armored steam car is a possibility-someone tried to sell one to the French Army in 1763, and had they succeeded, they could have been commonplace by the 1800s.
 

SPJ

Flubber said:
Your first mistake is using the terms "steampunk" and "seriously" in the same paragraph without that paragraph reading something like "Only people who know nothing about engineering and technology take steampunk seriously.".

As for your other mistakes, the first one is more than enough to make this thread a non-starter.
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Well excUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUse me! I want to see if anyone hear has thought of this before and perhaps can provide plausible concepts for steam driven tanks. Of course they are going to be supper heavy and energy inefficient though but that may not stop their use if an army needs a mobile fortress.
Paladin said:
As others have said, steam tanks are probably out of the question. On the other hand, a lightly armed and armored steam car is a possibility-someone tried to sell one to the French Army in 1763, and had they succeeded, they could have been commonplace by the 1800s.
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Thanks that sounds pretty cool. Do you have a link to any sources on that?
 

RamscoopRaider

Donor
The US Army actually built a Steam Powered Tank, it did not work

Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot did build a steam powered vehicle that supposedly worked in 1769, King Louis XV gave him 600 livres a year in 1772 so he impressed him at least, but that was unarmored

You could probably design a steam powered tank of some sort (be lightly armed and armored of course) out of a tracked steam tractor, but an acceptable design probably would not exist until the 1890's or so (if it can pull heavy farm equipment over fields it has enough power to fit some thin armor and a machine gun or two)
 
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amphibulous

Banned
SPJ said:
Well excUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUse me! I want to see if anyone hear has thought of this before and perhaps can provide plausible concepts for steam driven tanks. Of course they are going to be supper heavy and energy inefficient though but that may not stop their use if an army needs a mobile fortress.
Click to expand...

Actually it will. Because they won't be mobile or a fortress. The most you can hope for in a traction engine that can stand some rifle shots while running on a road, like that 1900 British Army tractor. Going off road - forget it. Standing up to cannon fire - forget it.
 
Kome

Kome

What about a tank that runs on train tracks?

Yes i am talking about armored trains. Armored trains are cool. :)
 

Shtudmuffin

What if there was a tank shaped like the tank design at the left in the top picture, but had a screw drive (perhaps driven by pistons, like a steam locomotive)? IOTL, screw-driven land vehicles were invented as early as 1868 for agricultural work; I don't think armor, heavy as it is, would adversely affect a piston-engine's rotary motion if said rotary motion is used to turn screws as opposed to smaller and thinner wheels; this would be because the weight would be spread out among a whole screw instead of a single wheel or a set of wheels, and the area of contact with the ground would be much larger, lessening the pressure of the armor's weight on the moving mechanisms. But hey, what do I know?
 

Elfwine

Shtudmuffin said:
What if there was a tank shaped like the tank design at the left in the top picture, but had a screw drive (perhaps driven by pistons, like a steam locomotive)? IOTL, screw-driven land vehicles were invented as early as 1868 for agricultural work; I don't think armor, heavy as it is, would adversely affect a piston-engine's rotary motion if said rotary motion is used to turn screws as opposed to smaller and thinner wheels; this would be because the weight would be spread out among a whole screw instead of a single wheel or a set of wheels, and the area of contact with the ground would be much larger, lessening the pressure of the armor's weight on the moving mechanisms. But hey, what do I know?
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Still leaves all the other questions, even if that's feasible. You need a lot of power to effectively drive a tank at any appreciable speed.
 

Shtudmuffin

Elfwine said:
Still leaves all the other questions, even if that's feasible. You need a lot of power to effectively drive a tank at any appreciable speed.
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I don't think too much mobility would be needed if it had enough armor (because it would likely take a lot to destroy it), so there would be an engine that would work, I imagine. As for the fuel and boiler, I would imagine that the boiler would go in a back compartment, while the coal and water would either be stored in another compartment or possibly some sort of "tender". Lastly, I would imagine such vehicles, barring a total surprise attack, could have enough time to warm up, although perhaps in a lot of cases it would just serve as a fortification that could be transferred from place to place easily.
 

Elfwine

Shtudmuffin said:
I don't think too much mobility would be needed if it had enough armor (because it would likely take a lot to destroy it), so there would be an engine that would work, I imagine. As for the fuel and boiler, I would imagine that the boiler would go in a back compartment, while the coal and water would either be stored in another compartment or possibly some sort of "tender". Lastly, I would imagine such vehicles, barring a total surprise attack, could have enough time to warm up, although perhaps in a lot of cases it would just serve as a fortification that could be transferred from place to place easily.
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1) I'm not sure it would take "a lot" to destroy it. Artillery is pretty potent.

2) "a back compartment". Which means what? How are you placing it relative to the guns and so forth?

3) A "tender" would be terribly vulnerable, not to mention something else to be dragged around - meanwhile putting it in "another compartment" raises the question in #2.

You don't have a lot of space to work with here.
 
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