Great colossi... of war

[Apollon]

Humans seem to be easily impressed by size. They tend to associate size with might, and it is only natural that they like to build colossal weapons.
In WWI the Germans built the infamous A7V tank and the paris gun. They were huge but they failed miserably.
In WWII the Soviets built the huge 3-turret tank. It proved useless in battle. The Germans tried to build the Maus tank; I doubt it would have fared any better. Germans, British, Americans and Japanese boasted with their gigantic battleships, but their role in actual war was greatly overshadowed by the submarines and naval airplanes. Often they were ignominiously defeated by them: think of the Yamato, the US battleships at Pearl, the Bismarck (defeated by a petty Swordfish torpedo plane).
History is full of failed colossi. Hannibal's elephants, the Swedish moose cavalry D), king Frederick William's giant grenadiers, the Death Star in Star Wars ...

So, do you know of any other failed colossi to complete the list?

 

[unmerged(11486)]

The US built a steam powered tank, the 'America.' It was huge, slow, underpowered, and very uncomfortable inside. However, it worked about as well as the British Mark Vs.

The Imperial Walkers in the second Star Wars movie, the big ones with the four legs... What are those called?

The Great Wall of China. Didn't really keep out any invading hordes...

The Dora and the Gustav. These were 30' guns built by Germany during WW2. The largest artillery pieces ever built, bigger than Muhammed's Great Gun, the Russian 'Tsar Cannon,' or Burgundy's 'Mad Margaret.' They weighed something like 1400 tons, took 5 entire trains to move, had essentially a brigade as a crew, and fired a twelve foot tall shell weighing 15,000 pounds more than 65 miles. Needless to say, these guns were not terribly effective, let alone cost-efficient.

EDIT: You already mentioned the Maus...

Steele

 

[Aetius]

What ever happened to the Russian Round ships?

 

[Apollon]

steele: the chinese wall is a wonderful example. i would never have thought of it.
the imperial walkers are called AT-ATs (all terrain attack transports). the two-legged ones are called AT-ST (all terrain scout transport) btw.
and how about darth vader's command ship, the executor? disgracefully defeated by a humble a-wing...

aetius: round ships? please explain!

 

[unmerged(11486)]

I thought of another one: The 'Russian B-52', the Myasishchyev Mya-4. It was almost the same size as the B-52, although she was underpowered, short-ranged, slow, and weak. Her only success was carrying the Soviet Kosmolyet space shuttle.

Didn't know that about the Imperial Walkers.

Steele

 

[Sire Philippe]

Don't forget our well known 'Maginot line', in the same though as chinese Great Wall...

Another 'colossus' in a certain way : spanish 'Armada'.

 

[Liu Bei]

Tsar Bomba. The largest nuclear weapon ever made.

From this website about it:

The Tsar Bomba (referred to as the Big Bomb by Sakharov in his Memoirs [Sakharov 1990]) was the largest nuclear weapon ever constructed or detonated. This three stage weapon was actually a 100 megaton bomb design, but the uranium fusion stage tamper of the tertiary (and possibly the secondary) stage(s) was replaced by one(s) made of lead. This reduced the yield by 50% by eliminating the fast fissioning of the uranium tamper by the fusion neutrons, and eliminated 97% of the fallout (1.5 megatons of fission, instead of 51.5), yet still proved the full yield design. The result was the "cleanest" weapon ever tested with 97% of the energy coming from fusion reactions. The effect of this bomb at full yield on global fallout would have been tremendous. It would have increased the world's total fission fallout since the invention of the atomic bomb by 25%.

The nickname Tsar Bomba is a reference to the Russian proclivity for making gigantic but useless artifacts for show. The world's largest bell (the Tsar Kolokol) and cannon (the Tsar Pushka), neither of which are actually useful for anything, are on display at the Kremlin [Kalinin 1994; pg. 33]. During its development, the bomb was actually nicknamed Ivan.

 

[Classique]

Originally posted by Apollon
History is full of failed colossi. Hannibal's elephants, the Swedish moose cavalry D), king Frederick William's giant grenadiers, the Death Star in Star Wars ...

Why do you include the giant grenadiers, the Lange Kerls, as failures? They weren't kept around after his death, but since they were never put into combat, they never failed.

 

[unmerged(11486)]

I think he means that they were never used, thus being failures. They didn't fail to work, they failed to be used... I dunno.

The Germans planned a huge battleship, the Fuhrer. Actually, Hitler wanted it, but it couldn't have been built practically... it would have displaced 122,000 tons, and would have been armed with 8 21" guns. This would have been a tremendous white elephant.

The British came up with a design to build an aircraft carrier out of an iceberg. It would have displaced more than 2 million tons, and been able to carry at least a couple hundred fighters and bombers. It would also have been immune to German U-Boats.

Again, the British built a huge tank, amusingly called the 'Flying Elephant.' This was very similar to the German A7V, but it would have weighed up to 100 tons, and had a crew of 8.

PS: Apollon, what is it with you and colossi?

Steele

 

[Apollon]

Re: Re: Great colossi... of war

Originally posted by Classique
Why do you include the giant grenadiers, the Lange Kerls, as failures? They weren't kept around after his death, but since they were never put into combat, they never failed.

because they contributed nothing to their army or country, but damaged it greatly. they did not only cost a fortune to maintain and recruit, they also gave their king a bad reputation. frederick william was forced to often forcibly abduct recruits, using special "commando teams" from all over europe. the men were thus extremely unhappy, constantly got ill or committed suicide, when they were unable to desert.
this regiment convinced everybody who wasn't yet convinced that F.W. was a loon.
frederick II. disbanded them immediately after his father's death.

 

[Apollon]

Originally posted by steelehc
The Germans planned a huge battleship, the Fuhrer. Actually, Hitler wanted it, but it couldn't have been built practically...

The British came up with a design to build an aircraft carrier out of an iceberg. It would have displaced more than 2 million tons, and been able to carry at least a couple hundred fighters and bombers. It would also have been immune to German U-Boats.

PS: Apollon, what is it with you and colossi?

Steele

and i always thought hitler disliked battleships. so maybe he did because they were too small for him...

about the iceberg carrier: i'd love to see the engines that could move this little beast.

me and colossi? i just love spectacular things.
and i also like underdogs. and besides, you're just as guilty as i am in making this thread grow.

 

[stnylan]

The Great Wall of China might not be entirely fair.

Such large frontier works were probably not designed so much to stop people getting in as to stop them getting out. When you get down to it climbing over a wall is fairly easy. Climbing over a wall and trying to cart back the loot is considerably harder, especially when the guards have been alerted.

Oh, and don't forget that a huge wall like that means you canc ontrol movement fairly effectively, and collect custom duties very efficiently for an ancient society. And its final purpose was to impress.

Now, admittedly all that I said above I learned studying Hadrian's Wall, but from what I know there is a great deal of applicability between the two.



My contribution is however Maiden Castle, in Dorset, England. Huge great earthwork, built as a defensive structure, that failed miserably against a certain Vespasianus and the II Legion.

 

[Sire Philippe]

Originally posted by stnylan
My contribution is however Maiden Castle, in Dorset, England. Huge great earthwork, built as a defensive structure, that failed miserably against a certain Vespasianus and the II Legion.

In the same idea, Château-Gaillard, built in Normandy by Richard Lion-Heart to protect Rouen from King of France.

Taken in 8 month (very long, yes, but with him all Normandy...).

 

[stnylan]

I just thought of another

Krak de Chevaliers, took in 6 weeks I believe

Edit: Also the Armada, and the Santissima Trinadad (sp?)

 

[unmerged(11486)]

Several other ideas...

The Tarrant Tabor. An enormous triplane bomber. Built right after WW1, she was bigger than a B-17. Crashed on takeoff on her maiden flight.

The Barling Bomber. Similar to the Tabor, but not as big, and slightly more airworthy. Very slow and short-ranged, and built in 1923.

The Tupolev Ant-20 Maksim Gorkii. The largest plane ever built in 1934, with 206 foot wingspan, and 108 feet long. Powered by 8 engines, it carried a bar, a buffet, a 16-line phone interchange, a film development lab, a movie theater, a laundry, a pharmacy, and a printing press. A very severe example of the Russian's tendency to build big useless things. During WW2 it was used as a transport plane in rear areas, ans was designed as a bomber.

Steele

 

[Apollon]

i discovered what aetius was talking about when he said "round ships"!

Novgorod was completed in 1874 at Nikolaiev Dockyard, though most of her parts had been pre-assembled at St. Petersburg. As she began trials near the river Dniepr, it became immediately obvious that the entire concept was flawed: the ship often went into uncontrollable spins, driven by the water currents. In lieu of this abysmal failure, gunnery trials were cancelled and the ship was brought back to Nikolaiev for modifications. Two of her engines and the two inner shafts were removed, hoping to achieve a more balanced propulsion that would prevent the vessel from spinning. The maximum speed dropped from 6.7 knots to 5.5 but despite some improvement in the handling of the ship, the modifications didn't work enough to make the vessel fully controllable. Novgorod was then anchored near the coast and for some time she was used as a floating coastal battery. Fortunately for the Russians, she never fired a single shot in anger. She might have been an effective weapon though: as she started going into a spin after the first salvo, the enemy could have died from...too much laughing.

Still convinced that the idea could be salvaged, Admiral Popov ordered the building of a second similar vessel, which, oddly enough, he named after himself. Popov thought that by making the new round ship larger and heavier, the spinning problem could be solved. It can be shocking for us men of the XXI century to see a high-ranking naval officer so unfamiliar with Archimedes' Principle (the basis of shipbuilding), whereby any floating object receives the SAME amount of lift as the water it displaces, therefore making the weight of the vessel not an issue in the matter. The whole thing becomes clearer when we think that in Czarist Russia being related to the Royal Family, as Popov was, greatly helped anyone's career, even that of a person lacking any talent. On the other hand, I guess that a more illuminated naval engineer in such an environment would have never dared to question the admiral's choices. That is, of course, if he intended to keep his head on his shoulders...

The Popov was completed in 1877. Slightly larger, she displaced 3,590 tons and had a larger diameter of 36.6 meters (118' 1".) Unlike with Novgorod, her main guns could completely retract and disappear into the central superstructure. Needless to say, she did not prove any more successful than her predecessor. She therefore followed her near-sister fate as a floating coastal battery. After about a decade of service and due to high operational costs, both ships were disarmed and towed into the river Dniepr, where they were used as floating depots, while their 11" guns were emplaced on the nearby coast. In 1900 both were formally decommissioned, although their hulks would remain moored on the river for over 40 years. As Germany invaded Russia in 1941, Novgorod and Popov were quickly demolished to provide metal and parts for the war effort.

 

[Arilou]

Sveaborg. Possibly one of the strongest fortresses in Europe.

Taken in a few months by treachery.

 

[Dinsdale]

If we're including fortifications, how about the Atlantic Wall. 2 years in the making, 8 hours to breach.

Artilery: Atomic Annie

1950's howitzer which fired a tactical nuclear warhead. Took hours to set up the gun and the crew's first duty was to dig an entrenchment to survive the blast.

 

[Nikolai II]

A few points:

Krac de Chevalier - was gutted for troops earlier and for practical purposes empty. Idiotic to empty it however, so it might qualify.

Sveaborg - taken not as much by treachery as by a result of idiocy in construction, possibly coupled with stupidity in the commander. The fortress was built in a way that allowed direct line of sight (and artillery fire) from nearby hills into the compound.
Commander under siege then allowed (as usual under articles of war) that if no relief would be seen in a month or two he would surrender, treasonously or stupidly not taking into account that by that time ice would still (usually) prevent all shipping (even relief expeditions).