Shipbucket

One wonders what good 13 tanks, no matter how good, will do in a full scale war. And lets face it, they're not going to be good tanks.
On a more constructive note, I'd move the coax MG out to the side near the gunners sight. It's the weapon most affected by parallax and it'll clear up some much needed space for the big guns and it'll reduce the chance of spent cartridge cases getting caught in the works.
Also, you've placed the radios and the operator about as far from the commander, the guy who needs the radio the most, as it's possible and stuck a great big engine compartment in between them. If the intercom gets damaged you'll have no way of communicating short of poking your head out the hatch and yelling back and forth. Move him and his equipment to the rear, get a second mechanic (You're going to need him) and kick out the centre loader. You're unlikely to use both set of guns at once and with ~0,5 metre between them I doubt there's enough room for all five of them to work at the same time anyway. Get one of the other loaders to pull double duty.

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Hi Thiel,

While the 13 (well, 12, Denton took one) aren't going to win a war single handed that's not really the intention. By the time NSWE have completed these, both their Africa Korps adventure and the attempted invasion of Chile have gone badly, leaving NSWE expecting an invasion once their naval forces and fleet air arm have been beaten back by the Allies. These tanks are supposed to be heavy backup for more normal tank forces, plugging holes if needed but ideally engaging opposing tank forces with standard tanks providing flank protection (the sides are thick but certainly not impenetrably thick, and it'll quickly get flanked and killed on it's own). Agreed that they're not good tanks, they're not supposed to be. They're only cost-effective in an environment that'd kill a normal tank without it being able to do the job - trying to knock out a US T28, for example, or a British A39 Tortoise, or hordes of late-war tank with guns that will kill Tigers and Tiger IIs - in effect, this is itself a break-through tank, writ large. As such, they're very limited vehicles. Apologies for not making that clear.

I'd debated putting more in about the internal layout but feared I'd already made the post too long. I'll clarify here - the left and right gun loaders are actually stationed outside the guns, reaching into the sponson ammo racks for shells and cartridges (this is why the turret hatches are along the sides rather than down the middle, though I should perhaps put in a centreline hatch for the 75mm loader) - the centre loader has that whole space to himself. And, importantly, the loaders for the 128 can't reach the centre guns, the 128mm itself is in the way. Not without trying to duck under or around the gun. That's also the reason the MG's in the middle - unless I get the gunner reloading the MG as well, the loaders are going to have to step on him to get at the MG in the first place. I'd figured it was easier to get the centreline loader to do it instead. I'd figured the gunsight in the mantlet would be the backup gunsight, normal gunlaying being driven by the rangefinder and the director (and, if something appears in a hurry off to one side, I'd figured the cupola would take care of it, while it doesn't get the benefit of director control, the sight's right between the barrel axes so should get minimal parallax issues anyway).

Fair point about the radio guy, I can give him the spot at the left rear of the turret where he can look after the radio-location gear and the proper radios. That leaves the bow gunner doing not much more than working a machine gun, so I'd guess they can help out the engineer (I'd figured try to get the driver to work out what's going on with four separate engines just wouldn't work).

I think that's covered everything off, did I miss anything?

Regards,
Adam

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They're going to be able to plug a hole, singular. You simply don't have the numbers required to do anything with them. If you deploy them in penny packets they'll get defeated in detail and if you concentrate them they'll get targeted by every support weapon within reach.
As for going up against other super heavies, it's a nice idea, but why would your enemies oblige you? It's mid-late WWII, they have support weapons out the wazoo that can deal with you. The numbers are simply too small to make a measurable difference.
This is the reason why the British and the Americans designed their abortive super heavies the way they did. They were specialist tools for cracking fixed defences such as pill boxes. If the regular forces came upon a fortification they couldn't crack they'd draw back and call in the heavies. Pill boxes aren't known for their great mobility and they certainly aren't going to flank you so you have time to wait for them to get to you and do their thing. In that role very small numbers are viable, if not terribly useful.
I suppose, given the likely lifespan of your automotive components, you might see an engagement between two super heavies, but yours will most likely be acting like a badly sited pill box at the time.

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The only thing you can use it for is up against fortification or if you have an fortification like Germany had, and need to close a hole, but even then... There is a reason Germany never build one, that USA never designed anything like that they had the T95 (T28) Tank destroyer that was the only thing you needed if you wanted to go up against a fortification, but the Americans build only a prototye of it, since they could just bomb any fortification to hell, and beyond.

Fun fact about the T95(T28) is that the outer sets of belt could be disconnected and trailed back of the tanks as an trailer!

Hi Thiel, heuhen

True. There's only going to be two of these on each island group, so yes, one hole. I think I'm missing your point here, and I'm really trying not to, so I'll need you to explain. Except for last-ditch emergencies, these are intended to operate as part of a whole. If it gets to these two versus the Denton army, I think we both agree that they'll get surrounded and killed. That's not what I'm suggesting, but this discussion seems to keep going down that path. Is there something fundamental to these machines that means that they will only engage in a 2-vs-everything fight? If they've got Tiger or Panther equivalents working with them, how do they get defeated in detail? Does two count as a concentration that'll draw support fire, and what support weapons are you talking about? If we're talking aircraft, agreed, that's why there's a derivative AA (and, depending on where the engagement is taking place, may be fixed AA close enough to discourage bombers or fighter-bombers). (and that'd be in addition to ostwind and wirbelwind equivalents, too, plus whatever air cover NSWE would have left at that point) If we're talking infantry support weapons like the PIAT, bazooka or panzerschreck, they'll need to get around the sides - even the Korean-war era M20 bazooka doesn't quite have the penetration to beat the turret front or the upper glacis and is marginal against the lower glacis. Are we talking artillery? Naval support? I'm unsure what counter they'll be defending against so poorly as to be pointless.

It's a fair point about opposing super-heavies, but I'd turn the question around - if it's the sort of battle that would suit another tank better than a super heavy, why would I not send that other tank? Unless everything else has been killed, in which case anything putting itself in harm's way is going to be fighting a delaying action and expecting to be destroyed. Again, I feel I don't understand why this is in this scenario but nothing else is. Can you explain?

Given that these are going to be in a rear area (or somewhat closer and acting in an SPG role) until it's possible to determine where they'll be most effective, they aren't going to be encountered initially - as you've said, there aren't enough to scatter them around the battlefield and hope for the best. So, if the fighting is taking place around a NSWE fortification, until it's determined whether it's a feint or not the superheavies wouldn't commit, surely? Similarly, if Denton (given the storyline, it'd probably be Denton if anyone) medium tank forces encounter, oh, I don't know, some dug in anti-tank guns and call on some heavy tanks for support, that's when you'd look to commit the superheavies, no? Am I fundamentally misunderstanding the way that this works? By saying "engaging the main body of the enemy force" have I mis-stated somewhere?

Also, yes, you're right, these are war-built machines and do suffer from a limited service life, but how limited are you talking? It kinda sounds like you're expecting them to fall apart while being built?

I'm not sure I understand, heuhen. I can't shoot tanks with it? Again, I suspect I'm being particularly dense tonight, can you explain why it's only useful for fortifications? As for bombers, yes, but they wouldn't be operating unopposed - in addition to whatever fighter cover NSWE had left, they'd also have AA defences, both mobile and fixed.

Yeah, I'd read that about the T28, the Tiger had a similar thing - well, it had narrow travel tracks to fit on trains.

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I'll try my best

Well, you kinda did. At least you said they were intended to be deployed in places too hostile for other tanks to survive.
How many constitutes a concentration obviously depends on how big the forces in the area are.
However, the problem is that if deployed in ones and twos they're not going to have much more impact on the overall battle that a tiger or a panther. Yes, they can take and dish out a lot of punishment but they're so slow and lumbering that they'll slow down the rest of the attack or be left behind.
By support weapons I mean everything your enemies have in their arsenal.
The problem is not so much the tank itself, but the lack of numbers. There's simply not enough of them to make a difference. Yes, they're probably going to dominate any one engagement and the poor Tommy who runs into it is going to shit himself so hard his grandfather will need new underwear, but they can only be in 12 places in total. It's the classic line: A tiger can kill five Shermans, but there's always a sixth. Just much, much worse.
Only by flipping your question once more. What kind of battle suits a super heavy tank? Historically it seems to be a slow and methodical attack against fixed positions. By mid war there isn't really much of that for the axis powers. Pretty much any other scenario you're either better of or just as well of with another tank as far as I can see.

Again we run into the issue of numbers. With only one or two at hand you're forced to deploy your entire reserve to shore up one spot. On top of that you'll still have to choose in advance where to put them. These things are slow and their effective speed is slower still. Not a problem if you have numbers, but you don't.
I suppose, but the allies have no heavies, let alone super heavies.
I pretty much do. I don't know exactly how your drive train is set up, but best case is two engines fixed end to end clutched to a gear box that drives one track. This solution has a whole bunch of issues, but it's mechanically the simplest.
Anyway, first issue. You'll need a gearbox that can harness ~3700hp. To this day that remains problematic. The closest I can get in terms of power and weight today is the biggest Ultra Class Haul Trucks and those only really became viable with computer assisted driving in the mid 1990ies and they have half the total power that you have. Granted you'll have two gearboxes to share the load.
In comparison the Maus had about 1/7th the power and half the mass to deal with. The US and British super heavies were both about 100 tons lighter and had about 500hp each.
But lets assume you can make such a gearbox. Without computer input you'll need a world class driver and the mother of all clutches just to get it going. Getting this thing to move will require a level of precision control engines of this size simply doesn't have. The solution to that is to lots and lots of creeping gears which will make the gearbox horribly complicated. Or alternatively you can let the clutch slip which is a fancy way of saying drive like a granny. In case you're wondering that'll kill the clutch in a small commuter car in about two years. With the kind of power you're proposing we're probably talking days at most.
So in conclusion I don't think it'll fall apart on assembly, but I suspect it'll break down on its way out the factory gate.

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Hi Thiel,

Thank you for clarifying, that helps a lot.

In order, then: I think I can see where you and I are diverging - while, yes, they're intended to face disproportionate odds and survive they're still expecting backup - in tactical terms I was thinking in terms of the Säbelzahntiger holding a choke point against all comers, with attached heavy tank or medium tank platoons / companies making sure that the enemy doesn't come around the flanks. On the offence, they'd be the tip of the spear but they wouldn't be the entire force, and again, there'd be support to prevent them from getting flanked, though this would necessarily be a little way back to protect it from whatever the Säbelzahntiger hasn't finished killing yet, but they'd be as close as necessary to provide effective cover (if the attached heavy tank platoon / company has to take some risk to keep the flanks clear that's probably still less risky than having the enemy charging through the middle of the group).
I agree without about rapidly getting left behind on any sort of extended campaign - these are largely defensive weapons, not intended to leave the particular island group that they're on, and as such the scope of any engagement is defined by the island groups themselves - even there, I'd envisaged them being transported as far as possible by train and only proceeding themselves for the shortest possible distance, to alleviate fuel consumption and mechanical wear.
OK, fair point, but NSWE does have measures to alleviate or blunt a quite few of these. As I've said, they'll be operating under mobile and possibly fixed AA protection even where they don't have actual fighter cover. Infantry support weapons, even Korean-war era stuff if it gets rushed into service, will need to flank to enjoy any sort of success, which the covering units will hopefully break up, similarly with hostile tanks attempting to flank to take advantage of the weak side armour. Artillery, both land-based and naval, could present a real concern depending on how much of NSWE's own artillery and navy has been disabled by that point. I'd envisaged NSWE holding quite a few railway guns for artillery support (I'd thought that a fixed, fortified gun would be too vulnerable to getting struck by either naval gunfire or aircraft) to try and provide artillery superiority, at least on their home turf - this is part of the reason for NSWE's radio location system, to help mobile batteries accurately lay their guns.
Yep, agree completely. You could characterise these as NSWE's Yamato, only on land - as a reaction to the realisation that NSWE are never going to be able to build more tanks than the Allies can deploy, NSWE instead tries to make each individual tank a better combatant, only with the Säbelzahntiger they fall off the other side of the efficiency curve. Against a determined invasion, they'd probably extract a terrible cost from the invaders but because of the sheer cost preventing anyone from fielding more than a few, they'll eventually be overwhelmed. Ezgo and I are still discussing precisely how the end of WWII goes, but the thinking is that after the failure of the Chilean invasion, NSWE throws Argentina under the bus (by declining to bolster Argentinian defences when the combined Denton \ Chilean force comes after - and past - the defeated expeditionary force into Argentina itself) and immediately starts forting up - NSWE knows that with Japan and Germany still to deal with, they're some way down the list in terms of priority, but having taken the Falklands from the British, have no illusions about being forgotten. What actually saves NSWE in the end is the combination of this forting up and Operation Büroklammer (paperclip), which, in this AU, is rather more effective than the American version, resulting in a lot of the know-how being held by NSWE - with the carrot of access to the German science and the stick of another bloody invasion (Ezgo and I aren't sure if the awareness of the strength of the defences comes about through Allied espionage or through an under-equipped Denton force getting dropped in the meat grinder yet) the Allies respond positively to NSWE's overtures for a peaceful surrender, with fairly substantial reparations on NSWE's part. The Americans, particularly, want access to the German technology and lean hard on the British to accept basing rights and reparations for the loss of the Falklands - NSWE could never have convinced the British on their own but by the war's end Britain doesn't really have the resources to stand against the wishes of America and launch an invasion of NSWE by itself. As a result, quite a few of NSWE's Germans never set foot on the Falklands again, for all that it's NSWE territory, for fear of what British agents operating from the British base there would do to them.
I'd largely envisioned these as fighting defensive battles to keep Denton (as before, given the force disposition I'm assuming "Denton" for "Allies" here) forces from leaving the beaches they land on - that'll force Allied forces into the sorts of bottlenecks that the Säbelzahntiger can work with and give NSWE time to deploy them to the site.
Yes, this is a concern with these tanks. Against multiple landings, NSWE would be forced to choose which one to deploy these to cover and trust to more normal tanks to defend the rest. That said, with the range and speed (slow as it is, it's quicker than a Tiger II), even without using the railways as much as I'd anticipate they should be able to relocate relatively rapidly.
True. This is a failure in NSWE's intelligence, expecting Allied tank doctrine to follow their own (as an aside, I can't remember if Ezgo's Denton would be developing or deploying heavies. Ezgo, can you advise?) - but it is still valid to an extent in that in the invasion of Chile, NSWE's medium tanks (the rugged terrain precludes heavy tanks) prove inadequate against Denton's 17-pdr equipped machines, tilting NSWE's preferred force mix in favour of heavier tanks, not to mention the fact that they've just lost a bunch of mediums.
It's a Maus derivative with electric drive (NSWE has a mania for all things electrical anyway and it was actually appropriate in this instance, I was quite happy to find out!), so the mechanical connection is between the motor and the drive wheel. That has a whole bunch of other issues - most of the top surface of this tank appears to be devoted to ventilation to prevent the thing turning into either an oven or a bonfire - but I'd not anticipated the sorts of gearbox issues you're mentioning because I'd not anticipated gearboxes - maybe a reduction gear between motor and drive wheel, but I wasn't sure about that.

I think that's covered everything, thank you again for clarifying, it's helped a lot to get a bit more detail on the queries you've had.

Regards,
Adam

P.S: This line made me laugh out loud:

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The Sabelzahntiger looks great!

To answer your question, Denton does build heavy tanks in the war, comparable to a Tiger II in weight and protection. Due to the large size and poor manueverability, they will not be used in the main landings at Chile, but after gaining a foothold in the flatter lands in Argentina, they will be put on trucks in Chile and transported to the front line. So the sacking of Argentina and the possible invasion of NSWE will be supplemented by Heavies.

As for force size predictions, I think a small force of special operatives dropped behind the lines or landing on the beaches at night would be the way for a general observation of the NSWE defense force on the islands. A botched small scale amphibious attack (with the hopes of securing a small beachhead) might be likely, but I haven't thought that far into it yet.

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In an attempt to be somewhat organised, rather than jumping straight to a torpedo boat, I thought I'd specify the torpedoes first ... so here we go:



NSWE's inter-War co-operation bore some fruit in the late 1930s with the 610mm Ulan torpedo. NSWE observers had, of course, seen the IJN's 610mm Type 93 torpedoes while exercising with them, but, denied a look at the internals, were unable to do much more than note the newer, bigger torpedoes in Japan's arsenal and start NSWE engineers looking to duplicate the torpedo. Initially just a big version of NSWE's existing G7a torpedo, the 610mm Torpedo Modell 35 "Ulan" was not a great success - while delivering a heavy 490kg warhead to the target, a 60% improvement over the G7a, it didn't offer much improvement in range or speed over the existing G7a torpedoes already in the arsenal, plus it suffered from the same problems as the G7a - leaving a trail of bubbles. NSWE engineers soon modified the Modell 35 by flushing the nitrogen and trace elements from the tank with carbon dioxide, chosen primarily for it's high solubility in water, helping the bubble trail to dissolve. It wasn't a great leap from this point - having introduced a controlled atmosphere into the torpedo - to modify it to a more oxygen-rich environment, resulting in the Modell 36, almost doubling it's range by using 40% oxygen - NSWE engineers suffered the loss of several costly prototypes experimenting with 100% oxygen and quickly backed away from this as a step too far. Modell 35 and Modell 36 torpedoes, fairly indistinguishable to the eye, are painted with stripes denoting approximate composition - by this point the Modell 35s have been in production for two years and are widespread throughout the fleet - red for 20% oxygen, black for 20% carbon dioxide, blue for 20% nitrogen (so the Modell 36 gets two red stripes and 3 black ones). The Modell 36's performance is a definite improvement over the Modell 35 and the G7a - with the same 490kg warhead, the Modell 36 offers three presets: 19,000m@33kt; 10,500m@44kt; 6,000m@55kt, managing the same range as the G7a's fastest setting with an 11-knot speed advantage, or comparable speed to the G7a's longest-range setting with an additional 5km range. NSWE's final pre-WWII torpedo, the Modell 38, is an incremental upgrade - try as they might, NSWE's engineers are unable to progress much beyond 40% oxygen in the tank without suffering increased risks. The Modell 38 "Ulan Spitzer" is pushing the limit of NSWE's engineers to safely store the oxygen, itself using 60% oxygen in the tanks, along with a more hydrodynamic nose and tail assembly. Unable to significantly improve the speed of the torpedo, NSWE engineers settle for an approximate 50% improvement to the range with more oxidizer to burn, the hydrodynamic improvements increasing the speed by approximately 2 knots across all three presets, and the torpedo transitions from the custom decalin-burning engine inherited from the G7a to a kerosene plant derived from the by-now ubiquitous Modula-series engine, in this case a three-cylinder radial specified to fit within the casing.

Alongside the 610mm Ulan, a lighter-weight 450mm torpedo was designed to permit carriage by aircraft - compared to the 610mm weapon, the weight, warhead and range are dramatically reduced, from 2,700kg to 984kg weight, from 490kg to 313kg warhead, from 19,000m to 1,500m range. This follows more-or-less the same upgrade cycle as the bigger 610mm weapon, with the exception of the Modell 38 "Spitzer", which on the 610mm also marks a change to a Modula-derived kerosene engine, however, this doesn't fit inside the 450mm weapon, forcing it to retain a decalin-burning engine. This does, however, mean that 450mm weapons can be upgraded from Modell 35 to Modell 38 standard fairly easily - the engine regulator requires changing, as does the warhead and casing to change to a Modell 38. Due to the comparative inaccuracy of air-launched torpedoes improvements in power obtained by enriching the oxygen content of the oxidiser are used to increase the torpedo's speed, maintaining a 1,500-2,000m "short" range and a 5,000m-6,000m "long" range, "short" speeds ranging from 30-40 knots and "long" speeds ranging from 20-28 knots.

The G7a is off the parts sheets and is credited as "various shipbucket artists", so I'm not entirely sure how to credit that one, or even if it's necessary to. Can anybody advise?

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