Land battleships?

[seadude]

What does everyone think about the idea of "land battleships"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landship
Such land battleships, or "landships" as they are called, are only found in comics or anime such as Gundam, "Big Wars" anime movie, or other sci-fi shows. Has anyone here ever built something similar or maybe have plans to build something in the future?
I don't have any plans right now to build one, but I got the idea while recently browsing the Net during a boring evening. I've got a M1A2 Abrams tank that I might modify into a armored landship in the future. But I want to know which is better for building any type of land battleship: Having it tracked, wheeled, or anti-grav (hover)?

[nev]

Having seen the awesome one Sisko built a few years back, I think they're ace

[Jschmus]

This isn't exactly a land battleship, but it's in the neighborhood, I think.  Spotted at the '08 Nats.  Kitbashed from a 1/72 tank and 1/350 ship parts.

[NARSES2]

When I think of land battle ships my mind always goes to Victorian Sci Fi. Kind of land dreadnoughts, steam powered of course 

[coops213]

I have a funny book called "My Tank Is Fight!" all about some WWII inventions that never left the drawing board. One of the inventions is a massive German tank called the Landkreuzer P.1000 Ratte. It was planned to be at least 1000tons, have a crew of 20+ and be powereb by 8 20-cylinder marine diesel engines. Development was cancelled in 1943.

Chris

[famvburg]

      Similar to this, ISTR an ad years ago for a conversion for a 1/35 german tank into a 1/72 "Hitler's Mobile Bunker" or something. I don't recall anything else & don't know what it looked like.

I have a funny book called "My Tank Is Fight!" all about some WWII inventions that never left the drawing board. One of the inventions is a massive German tank called the Landkreuzer P.1000 Ratte. It was planned to be at least 1000tons, have a crew of 20+ and be powereb by 8 20-cylinder marine diesel engines. Development was cancelled in 1943.

Chris

[Doc Yo]

 The idea has stirred the minds of great writers and bad engineers for more than a century now, if you count
H. G. Wells' The Land Ironclads as its first appearance. ( Rifle-armed though it was, it satifies the
battleship definition because it was HUGE! )

Apart from the (largely ) experimental 'multi-turret' experiments of the 1930's, the closest anyone's gotten to
a real land battleship, at least in terms of scale, are the 'big wheel' projects out of Britan, and a similar
Russian project, which actually got prototyped, the so-called 'Tsar' tank. The problem that has dogged
just about every physical incarnation of the concept has been armor too thin to make a difference for the
kind of attention such a machine would receive: heavy artillery.

So to address your question, tracks, wheels, fans, or anti-gravity? The last is tremendously attractive
if you have some built-in constraints on the system, otherwise you wind up with an Aerial Battleship,
and the flyboys have quite enough glory, thenk-yew! Wheels have possiblities, but you'll probably want a
lot of them to even the load out a bit, and a really, really good road network to make them mobile in
any useful fashion. Hovercraft...well, if you can have a revolution in physics hand you anti-gravity, you
can have a similar revolution in materials science produce an armor that gives you fabulous* levels of
protection for precious little weight-the great old board gameOgre had something called "bi-phase
carbide armor" that allowed fast hovercraft to carry the same level of protection as a current MBT...
though the game's 'Landships', the AI Ogres, were still tracked. ( They just carried meters of armor-
and were able to shrug off tactical nukes )
Tracks are still fine, as long as you plan on rebuilding whatever the thing drives over... Probably
the most aestheticly pleasing as well.

Much info on a lot of the 'Big Wheel' designs can be found at the "landships" site, devoted to WW1 armor.
I'll have a link for you in a bit.

Righto- heres the link t othe main articles page- http://www.landships.freeservers.com/tank_articles.htm

and one you might find particularly useful-150 and 200 ton 'Landships'

[KJ_Lesnick]

Simple, it could be easily taken out with a nuclear anti-personnel mine.

They have developed those...

[pyro-manic]

I started building a superheavy tank for my Warhammer 40,000 Imperial Guard army a few years ago. I've since lost all interest in the game, but I do plan to complete the vehicle to a slightly modified design. It's based on two cut-and-shut KV-1 hulls, with a large superstructure, a big twin-gun main turret, and six (count 'em) secondary turrets mounting anti-personnel/anti-aircraft guns.

[martinbayer]

The NASA KSC Crawler Transporter http://www.launchcomplexmodels.com/Crawler.html might make a nice basis for a conversion...

Martin

[philp]

There is a Landships GB proposal http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,22344.0.html
If AnthonyP ever returns (anyone heard from him?) I think it will be on the ballot.

[frank2056]

There's a free card model of the H.G. wells Land Ironclad at Currell Graphics
Here's the direct link

It could me made from paper (that would be ironic...) or the pattern could be traced onto plastic (less ironic) or galvanized steel (not ironic at all)

[Mossie]

Tales of Future Past is a site well worth having a look through, but the section on Future War has some real land battleships.  I mean ships with wheels coming out of the sea to fight on land.  These were ideas people were really touting at the turn of the twentieth century, wonderfull!

http://davidszondy.com/future/futurepast.htm

[anthonyp]

There is a Landships GB proposal http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,22344.0.html
If AnthonyP ever returns (anyone heard from him?) I think it will be on the ballot.

Oh, I've been back, just been really lazy (and wrapped up in real life).  But I'm on vacation for two weeks now, so I have nothing but free time.

And I saw this topic and thought "Buick Roadmaster?  Cadillac Fleetwood?"  I do like the idea of the shuttle crawler decked out in weapons.

[Doc Yo]

And I saw this topic and thought "Buick Roadmaster?  Cadillac Fleetwood?"

I like the '49 Bulgemobile, myself....