A working Maus

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I don't know if you've seen maps of Paris or Warsaw, but I can assure you, the Seine and the Vistula are not drainage ditches.

Why the hostile tone? You know as well as I do that, in the case of Warsaw for instance, the Germans would defend the western half.

Or in the case of "generic western european city", the Maus could be brought by rail in and just stay in its alloted districts. No need to be all condescending just for the sake of it.

EDIT: Again, this isn't meant as an argument in favor of building the Maus, but rather a "this is the best-case scenario for it", and it still sucks
 
The rail carriage itself would be vulnerable and offer no real mobility outside of moving forwards and backwards along the track.

A fixed position is vulnerable to artillery fire, and you can't really pack it up and retreat with it or redeploy it someplace else. With the Maus at least, you have your own mini-fort you can reposition (albeit slooooowly) throughout the city as you see fit. :cool:

Still a shit design though
Actually armored trains were used by both sides on Eastern Front in I would say big numbers and even with sucess. However to build Mause, and put it on railway car would be waste of resources.
 
According to at least one source, the hammer and sickle were place on the beast by the Nazi as an intelligence deception. The Nazis thought if western intelligence saw the hammer and sickle on the prototype, then the West would assume the tank was a Soviet model that the Nazis had captured and not a knew Nazi tank.

I will note the symbol on the side of the stuck tanks looks something like a mutated hammer-and-sickle.
 
Heavy Tanks were largely on the way out at this time, with HEAT coming into the war as well as the use of airstrikes and artillery.
 
This happens:

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Maus proved a perfect defensive weapon.
Every time Allies threatened to over-run Nazi positions, Maus romped around until bridges collapsed, asphalt roads were chewed up and rails knocked askew.
All that damage slowed Allied advances by weeks!
Hah!
 
Oh, I never said anything about it being being actually deployed, and certainly not in World War II. This was basically "assume it becomes an on-again/off-again research project. When, if ever, might it become possible to build a Maus-like tank that would actually work?" Work in the sense of being deployed on a battlefield as more than a very expensive target?
 

All Rounder

Gone Fishin'
Well my opinion on this whole thing is:
-Eat up resources=Possible earlier allied victory
-May hold off allies a little longer than OTL
*Contradicted both statements :oops:
-Would eventually become a turret as it is not worth moving or spending money on it's whole body as it won't contribute anything significant to the war effort
My own opinion
 
Worst case for the allies might be that Hitler, upon seeing the test results, finally sees that bigger-is-better has its limitations and orders R&D to focus on more practicable size and design.
Then in late 1941 an ATL equivalent of the Panther enters mass production :eek:
 
Maus proved a perfect defensive weapon.
Every time Allies threatened to over-run Nazi positions, Maus romped around until bridges collapsed, asphalt roads were chewed up and rails knocked askew.
All that damage slowed Allied advances by weeks!
Hah!
Except the allies were very good at taking out bridges in the first place, so the Maus would be stuck way behind the lines.
 
Maus proved a perfect defensive weapon.
Every time Allies threatened to over-run Nazi positions, Maus romped around until bridges collapsed, asphalt roads were chewed up and rails knocked askew.
All that damage slowed Allied advances by weeks!
Hah!

General Patton say about "Smaller" Königstiger (68.5 tonnes) some thing like this: "Hopeless piece of battle tank, but a excellent roadblock!"

Before someone argument that Königtiger is in Mass range of US Adrams tank
Yes that true, but That Tiger II got oversize armor do soft steel, it engine suck full tank empty after 120 km drive.
While the US Adrams has mass of 54 tonnes, got turbine engine, Chobham special armor.

and even here it got problems with terrain
95.jpg


Let face it
If the Königstiger was to heavy, suck up all resources of Steel and Petrol in Third Reich
What to hell will do Maus for carnage in Reichs war industry ?
 
Grr... did anyone in this thread actually read the OP? Seriously, I'm not asking about the Maus as originally designed being put into production. That could never have happened. And I'm not talking it being made to work during World War II, that's also not going to happen. I'm very clear on that. I'm talking about people in West German military R&D looking at the Maus concept, intermittently over a period of decades, thinking, "Can we make this thing work? This is an interesting challenge," and asking at what point, if any, the vehicle, heavily modified one presumes, could have sufficient performance that the deploying of one to a battlefield would actually be possible, as in "suboptimal but not totally moronic." Obviously, much would need to be changed, like lower surface loading so it doesn't sink.
 
Grr... did anyone in this thread actually read the OP? Seriously, I'm not asking about the Maus as originally designed being put into production. That could never have happened. And I'm not talking it being made to work during World War II, that's also not going to happen. I'm very clear on that. I'm talking about people in West German military R&D looking at the Maus concept, intermittently over a period of decades, thinking, "Can we make this thing work? This is an interesting challenge," and asking at what point, if any, the vehicle, heavily modified one presumes, could have sufficient performance that the deploying of one to a battlefield would actually be possible, as in "suboptimal but not totally moronic." Obviously, much would need to be changed, like lower surface loading so it doesn't sink.

Yes i have and it's same result
The MAUS is to heavy even build from real steel, instead that surrogate they produce at end of the War,
Also would the Engine booze petrol like hell and i will only mention the Gearbox problem of germans Tanks.
It will have lower production numbers around 1500 units on available resources, while Soviet or USA can build 7,500 tanks with same amount of material....
 
Oh, yes. The Maus prototypes were the perfect example of the Nazi wunderwaffen and why they never really came to anything. They looked great on paper, but...
I never understood why the Germans kept making their heavy tanks taller and taller, when the Soviets were making their super heavies with short stature. It amazes me that one country can make the IS-3 while the other is making static pillboxes.
 
For Germans best way was not produce follow: Maus, king tiger, jagdkingtiger/and produce : vk1602 Leopard, Tiger 2-Porsche/ vorne, tiger vk4502p/ hintern and more elefants and sturer-emils. Also good was continued to produce Tiger-1h, with new weapons as 105cm howitzer and 75mm/L70 sniper antitank.
 
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