The word "tank" comes from English word tank, that is, “tank” or “tank”. The origin of the name is as follows: when the first tanks were sent to the front, British counterintelligence started a rumor that in England the tsarist government had ordered a batch of tanks for drinking water. And the tanks went by rail under the guise of tanks. It is interesting that in Russia the new combat vehicle was initially called “lokhan” (one translation of the word tank).
The first mechanical cart of this kind was probably invented in 1769 by the Frenchman Cugnot, who installed a steam engine on the cart. He managed to achieve a speed of 4 km, but he was forced to stop every 20 minutes to increase the steam pressure. When the inventor, showing his invention to representatives of the French government, knocked down a stone wall, he was put in prison.
The caterpillar propulsion device was invented by a native of the peasant class of the Saratov province, Fedor Abramovich Blinov (1827-1902).
In 1877, Blinov invented the “crawler car,” a kind of tracked trailer moved by a steam-horse team; a prototype was built in the summer of 1880 and tested, including in swampy areas. The effect was very, very promising, in particular, in a double-horse carriage, a “wagon” could transport cargo, which required at least ten horses to transport on a wheeled cart.
The first real step towards creating a tank was a steam-powered self-propelled carriage on endless caterpillar rails, invented by an American in 1888; in turn, the caterpillar was invented by the Englishman Richard Lovell Idgeworth, who patented it in 1770.
In 1888, the Samokhod was manufactured, which was essentially the first caterpillar tractor. The engine was two 12 hp steam engines. at 40 revolutions each, boiler at 6 atm. was with an oil furnace. The movement from the steam engines to the drive sprockets of the caterpillar tracks was transmitted by cast iron gears. Each caterpillar was driven separately. The rotation of the “self-propelled” was ensured by turning off or on the corresponding machine. The machine was demonstrated at the agricultural exhibition in Saratov in 1889, an improved model was presented at the Nizhny Novgorod exhibition in 1896, and the author received a certificate of commendation for his invention; nevertheless, the mass construction of crawler tractors in Russian Empire was not produced.
The predecessor of the tank in terms of many parts, especially the control mechanism, was the tractor with the creation of the internal combustion engine. Its further development was quite clear, since the combination of this engine with a caterpillar chain made it possible to construct a vehicle capable of moving without roads and on marshy ground due to the distribution of the weight of the vehicle over a large area.
But I would still recognize the final and irrevocable primacy of the machine made in England, 1910, in a single copy. This unit was intended for hauling cargo in Alaska - the roads there were bad, wheeled tractors did not have the necessary maneuverability, and horses and dogs could not carry large loads. However, the thermal power plant built in Yukon was in need of coal, and there was nothing to deliver it in winter when the river was frozen. Therefore, Hornsby, who by that time already had experience in building a slightly smaller-scale caterpillar steam tractor (10 tons of dead weight with an engine of only 20 hp) - created such a land locomotive, which was supposed to transport coal from the sea to the station all winter...
The giant's mass was 40 tons, and the steam engine developed 80 hp. On a flat road and without a load, the tractor could accelerate to 40 km/h, and the total weight of the train consisting of a tractor and eight (!) trailers weighing 12.5 tons each was, as is easy to calculate, 140 tons. The result for 1910 is not just good, it’s fantastic! With the dead weight of each trailer being about 5 tons, in one run the train delivered, as is easy to calculate, 60 tons of coal
Even before the world war War Department carried out various experiments with caterpillar tractors equipped with internal combustion engines, although it did not pursue direct combat goals, and in 1903 the writer G. Wells predicted and vividly described strange combat vehicles, similar to tanks.
In 1912, the Australian Mole proposed to the War Ministry a project for a crawling combat tracked vehicle. Thanks to the use of pins at the ends and flexible track chains for driving around curves, this vehicle apparently had advantages over tanks. However, this sensational proposal was soon forgotten, and Molay's project had no influence on the actual invention of the tank; the War Ministry did not take any part in it, and Molet's proposal was not known at all until the end of the war.
There is also a well-known story about a plumber from Nottingham who presented a project for an all-terrain vehicle to the War Ministry several years before the World War. This plumber received several of the usual letters in such cases, but heard nothing further. A few years after the end of the war, the project was discovered in one of the dusty cabinets with the resolution: “This man is sick.”
The Germans can also lay claim to the invention of the tank, since in 1913 a certain Gebel designed an armored land cruiser, terrifying with its bristling guns. This cruiser crossed to Poznan through triangular obstacles 90 feet high. (about 27 m). In 1914, he made an attempt to repeat the display of his car in front of general public at the stadium in Berlin, but while overcoming a short climb of 30°, the car stopped, and no efforts of the inventor could make it start moving again. The public became tired of the long wait and began to protest and demand the entrance fee back; Even stones were thrown at the unfortunate inventor, and he no longer dared to show his invention publicly.
Long before the First World War, the Russian Ministry of War received a project for an extraordinary combat vehicle, developed by the son of the famous Russian chemist, Vasily Dmitrievich Mendeleev.
The Mendeleev combat machine project is a talented project super heavy tank, the design of which was a decade ahead of the entire development of tank technology. Many elements of the periodic machine look modern these days.
Mendeleev designed a tank weighing 170 tons, serviced by a team of 8 people. It was a huge armored box, with tracks necessary for movement, an engine and ammunition hidden inside.
During movement, the caterpillars, using compressed air, were supposed to lift the armored hull above the ground and ensure the movement of the tank at speeds of up to 24 km per hour.
In addition to the cannon, Mendeleev intended to arm the tank with a machine gun installed in a special retractable armored turret that allowed all-round firing.
All these preliminary attempts yielded no results because they lacked the terrible impulse of war, but the World War made the invention of the tank inevitable.
In October 1914, the regiment. Swinton - a man of great vision and imagination, working as a war correspondent for the British Expeditionary Army - came as an "eyewitness" to the recognition of the need for an armored vehicle that would be able to force its way through barbed wire, cross trenches and destroy or crush machine gun nests.
One of his friends wrote to him about an American Holt tractor that could climb steep slopes.
Swinton came up with the idea of using this machine, and on October 20, 1914, he sent a project for tracked machine gun fighters to the War Office. They had to be heavily armored, armed with cannons, machine guns, and be able to cross trenches and destroy barbed wire barriers.
Thus the idea of a tank was born. Its history (while this idea took shape and became a real tank 15 months later) is the story of a long struggle with bureaucracy. To develop a new chassis, I had to turn to W. Foster & Co. (Lincolnshire), which in those years was engaged in the assembly of Hornsby tractors. These vehicles were unique in that they were essentially tracked steam locomotives and were used as tractors for “land trains.” In addition, the company produced wheeled tractors for field artillery.
Testing of the prototype began on September 10, 1915 and did not end very well. The total length of the vehicle was 8 meters, weight - 14 tons. The tank had low maneuverability, and chassis turned out to be poorly suited for increased loads. However, the maximum speed of Lincoln Machine No.1 was 5.5 km/h, which was slightly higher than the required figure.
The length of the tractor chassis was not enough to overcome trenches and craters, so it was crossed with a wheel pair, attaching it to the rear of the body.
Two engineers, Tritton and Lieutenant Wilson, working day and night, completed the Little Willie project. Regiment. Swinton, having examined a life-size model of him in Lincoln, described it as follows in his letter to the General Staff:
“The sailors have produced the first copy of a tracked vehicle that is capable of crossing ditches 135 cm wide and rotating around its axis, like a dog with a flea on its back.”
During the war, the “neutral” United States became a real arsenal for the Entente countries, and the “technicians” knew about the needs caused by the world war, almost better than military observers. In addition, the United States had a developed mechanical engineering industry, the potential of which was further increased due to foreign orders. So the development of all-terrain combat vehicles was carried out regardless of the opinion of the military leadership.
One of the most technically advanced American developments in the field of tracked combat vehicles can be considered the Holt gas-electric tank.
The tank had a compartment for infantry and a separate door for its disembarkation.
The tractor itself was the well-known Holt 75 model of 1909, produced by C.L.Best under license. The tractor turned out to be so successful that it was widely used in the American and British armies until 1919 inclusive, and during Civil War Holt 75 was supplied to the Russian “white” armies. The last examples of these vehicles, although no longer army ones, were decommissioned only in 1945!
The fate of this tank, called the Best 75 Tracklayer, remains quite vague. Only one thing was clear - american army after examining a prototype made of non-armored steel, they came to the conclusion that they absolutely did not need such a monster.
The next ones were again the Americans from the Holt company, who developed their own wheeled tank project at the end of 1916. The work was carried out with the direct participation of the Army Corps of Engineers and with the assistance of Stanley Steamer. The tank received a massive hull, in the bow of which they decided to place two 2-cylinder steam engines of the Double system with a power of 75 hp each. Each of the engines had an individual drive to one wheel with a diameter of 2.4 meters, made entirely of steel, and was installed vertically. Since both wheels were unsteerable, a third “drum” type wheel was provided for turning the tank, mounted on a rotating bracket in the rear of the hull.
The construction of the first prototype was delayed and was completed only in the winter of 1918. The tank was sent to a training ground in Aberdeen, where the military began testing the tank, which... ended just before it began. The American vehicle suffered the same fate as Lebedenko's wheeled tank - barely moving, the Steam Wheeled Tank drove about 50 feet (15 meters) and became firmly stuck in the ground. It was obvious that the power of the steam engines was clearly not enough to get the tank out of this “trap.” Representatives from the army who were present were very upset by this fact and refused further work by Steam Wheeled Tank.
Another miracle of American technology.
Alas, during the First World War, our country was not part of the elite club of great tank powers. The fact that Germany, our main enemy, was also not a member of this club is little consolation (the Germans produced 21 (twenty-one) during the entire war serial tank own construction).
But several prototypes of different designs were produced. At the very beginning of the war, in August 1914, the master of the Russian-Baltic Engineering Plant in Riga, Porokhovshchikov, approached the headquarters of the Supreme High Command of the Russian Army with a proposal original project high-speed combat tracked vehicle for off-road driving. At the same time, he turned to the Special Committee for Strengthening the Fleet, promising to create an all-terrain tracked armored vehicle. Porokhovshchikov did not provide any significant documents at that time, and only on January 9, 1915, after long delays at a reception with the chief of supplies of the North-Western Front, General Danilov, the inventor already had ready-made drawings and estimates for the construction of a combat vehicle called the “All-terrain vehicle.”
Apparently, Porokhovshchikov’s preliminary calculations pleased the top military leadership: in addition to high maneuverability, Porokhovshchikov also promised the vehicle’s buoyancy. The project was approved - permission to build the “All-terrain vehicle” was received on January 13, 1915, 9660 rubles 72 kopecks were allocated, and the design data were specified in special report No. 8101. The construction of the vehicle was supervised by the head of the Riga department for housing allowances for troops, military engineer Colonel Poklevsky-Kozello. On February 1, in the Riga auto repair shops of the Russo-Balt plant, which were located at the barracks of the Nizhny Novgorod Infantry Regiment, 25 soldier-craftsmen and the same number of hired skilled workers began manufacturing a prototype of the world's first tank, developed by the famous pilot and designer Alexander Aleksandrovich Porokhovshchikov ( in the photo it is on the left).
On May 18, 1915, Porokhovshchikov tested his car on a good road on a caterpillar track, without switching to wheels. When tested, its speed reached 25 km/h (neither the English nor French first tanks). After minor modifications, they decided to hold an official demonstration of the “All-terrain vehicle”, which took place on July 20, 1915. Contrary to Porokhovshchikov’s calculations, the capabilities of his vehicle were very far from combat ones. Even worse, the turning mechanism on the move turned out to be extremely unreliable and during testing, in a number of cases, the driver had to use a pole. The design of the chassis was considered imperfect, since the caterpillar often jumped off the drums. Already during the testing process, Porokhovshchikov tried to eliminate this drawback by making three annular guide grooves, and on inner surface caterpillars - respectively, three centering protrusions.
Later, Porokhovshchikov improved his car, making it a wheeled-tracked vehicle: on the roads the car moved on wheels and the rear drum of the caterpillar, when it encountered an obstacle on its way - the “all-terrain vehicle” lay down on the caterpillar and “crawled” over it. This was several years ahead of tank building at that time. Porokhovshchikov made the tank's hull waterproof, as a result of which it could easily overcome water obstacles.
At the same time (in the spring of 1915) Porokhovshchikov proposed armor of his own design: “The armor is a combination of elastic and rigid layers of metal and special viscous and elastic gaskets.” The boiler iron was annealed “according to a method that is the secret of the inventor,” and as a gasket “after an enormous number of experiments,” he chose dried and pressed sea grass. The author especially emphasized the cheapness of “iron armor” and the ability to bend and weld it.
In 1916, he conducted tests in Petrograd - on December 29, 1916 he reached a speed of 40 versts/hour, which was an exceptionally high figure.
Most interesting development Porokhovshchikov was the shape of the hull and the design of the armor: it was made multi-layered. However, in the winter of 1916, the military stopped funding the work. And tanks with spaced multi-layer armor appeared only in the early 70s of the 20th century... There is also a version that Porokhovshchikov’s drawings were used by British engineers for their developments.
But no one will dispute the fact that it was in Russia during the First World War that the world’s largest tank was created - 17 meters long, 9 meters high, 60 tons of weight!
The idea of building such an unusual machine came from the captain Russian army Nikolai Nikolaevich Lebedenko during his service in the Caucasus, even before the war. He appreciated the cart - vehicle local residents. There were no roads in the usual sense of the word in the Caucasus at that time, but the cart, a cart with two wheels with high rims, easily overcame all the bumps and potholes on what were considered roads there.
On August 27, 1915, the first sea trials of the giant tank took place near Dmitrov. The first and the last. The car walked ten meters along the road, but instantly got stuck on soft ground - the rear guide truck was stuck in a ditch. The large wheels were unable to pull it out, even despite the use of a powerful propulsion system, which consisted of two captured Maybach engines of 250 hp each. With. each taken from a downed German airship.
The first production tank was already Soviet. And traditionally seamless.
Russian "Renault"(Also "Renault Russian", "Tank M", "Tank KS" (Krasnoe Sormovo); in a number of sources it is called “Tank “Freedom Fighter Comrade” Lenin"", after the proper name of the first tank of the series) - the first soviet tank and the first Russian tank put into mass production. Classified as light tanks for direct infantry support. It was an almost complete copy of the French Renault FT-17 light tank. Produced in 1920-1921 at the Sormovo plant ( Nizhny Novgorod) in a small series of 15 cars. Despite the official adoption by the Red Army in 1920, the Renault-Russians did not take part in any military operations. They were in service until 1930. It is also interesting that its machine gun armament was made on the basis of the Fedorov universal assault rifle.
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First in the world battle tanks appeared on September 15, 1916. during the First World War.
On this day, the Germans collided with British vehicles. The first meeting showed that iron machines are invulnerable to bullets. The first tanks were these bulky and slow vehicles that could cross ditches and wire fences.
In 1914 E. O. Swinton asked the War Office for such a machine. In September 1915 The first English combat vehicle, “Little Willie,” was tested. It was an armored tractor. On September 28, another variant, “Big Willie,” was tested. He was activated on January 30, 1916. It was put into service under the MkI brand.
The idea of creating the first tank belongs to the Russian designer V. D. Mendeleev (1886-1922). Its version weighed 170 tons, was armed with a 120 mm cannon and protected by 150 mm armor. But this project, proposed in 1911, was not approved technical committee royal army.
The MkI tank was slow. MkII and MkIII did not have tail wheels and their control was very difficult. The tank was serviced by the driver, commander and transmission workers. In April 1917 MkIV tanks began to appear with more powerful armor. By that time the Germans had armor-piercing bullets.
The world's first dentist appeared in the world's most ancient civilization 7,500 years ago in the Sumerian civilization. During excavations in Nippur, cuneiform tablets with prescriptions for medicines for dentistry were discovered, found →
The iron in its recognizable form appeared in the 14th century, and throughout previous history, humanity used improvised means to look neat.
The ancient Greeks and later the ancient Romans →
The first tanks were based on the design of the Englishman John Cowan, who in 1855 received a patent for an armored vehicle with steam engine, who looked like a turtle. This building I was poorly suited for military operations. Everything changed with the advent of the internal combustion engine. The prototype of a modern tank with all-wheel drive, a rotating turret and a built-in machine gun was created in 1906 at the Austro-Daimler plant in Vienna. The military authorities did not agree to adopt it, since the armored mass could only move on paved roads. Then the Austrian Ponter Burshtyn designed a small combat vehicle capable of moving quickly on tracks - closed belts made of hinged metal links; the tapes were put on the sides of the car on two wheels. But the General Staff rejected this development as well.
Combat test in world war
The British were the first to use battle tanks at the Battle of the Somme in 1916.
The design of the motorized, iron-plated machine goes back to a design by Ernest Swinton. The tank weighed 27 tons, and its speed was aimed at accompanying infantry. It was capable of protecting against massive shelling and crushing enemy positions. Although engine construction for heavy vehicles was still in its infancy, and tracks were made on the model of American tractors, British infantry tanks broke through difficult sections of the front. However, they did not play a decisive role in the First World War.
- 3000 BC: The Sumerians designed a four-wheeled war chariot that crushed the enemy.
- 1482: Leonardo da Vinci invented an enclosed fighting machine that was driven by a crankshaft.
- 1934: The German Wehrmacht begins production of the Panzer 1 tank.
- 1940: The production of the T-34 tank began in the Soviet Union.
- 1944: The Allies used amphibious tanks during the Normandy landings.
In modern wars, tanks are one of the main types of combat vehicles, and until recently they were generally the most common mechanized weapons on the planet.
But how did people even come up with the idea to climb into a huge metal box on tracks and go kill each other? Let's try to figure it out.
Leonardo da Vinci tank and armored train on tracks
The idea of creating mobile fortresses has come to people's minds since the days of the first mass wars. At first they were chariots, then battle towers on elephants, and later the famous Wagenburgs appeared, effectively used in the Hussite wars. But all these carts were driven by horses or elephants, which were extremely vulnerable and unpredictable.
Already in those days, people began to think about self-propelled fire fortifications, and the famous Renaissance inventor Leonardo da Vinci also could not ignore this topic. He created a design for a machine made of wood and steel, moving on muscular traction. It looked like a mushroom cap, bristling with guns. Of course, it was impossible to create something like this with the technology of the 15th century, and the project remained only in the form of the author’s imagination. By the way, in 2009, American engineers created a working tank Leonadro da Vinci.
Armored train Buyena
The next stage before the appearance of tanks was the tracked armored train of the Frenchman Edouard Bouyen, who in 1874 proposed putting several cars connected to each other not on rails, but on a common track, arming this monster with guns and providing a crew of two hundred people. And although the project was rejected, the author himself believed that his invention would change the course of wars. Later this happened, although not with his combat vehicle.
The First World War and the first British tanks
With the advent of the first cars, the idea of using them in wars became obvious to everyone. Therefore, already before the First World War, almost all the armies of the leading powers had their own fleet of armored vehicles, and real armored trains were also in use.
The disadvantages of these combat vehicles were natural. For armored vehicles, it is impossible to drive over rough terrain and overcome obstacles and trenches, and for armored trains, they are tied to the rails. Therefore, when, during protracted battles, the armies of the opposing countries increasingly began to dig in, build many kilometers of anti-personnel barriers from mines and barbed wire, use machine guns and shrapnel shells that literally mow down the advancing infantry, it became clear to the engineers that something had to be done.
When in 1915, British Colonel Ernest Swinton proposed using an armored vehicle on a tracked tractor to overcome trenches, Winston Churchill seized on this idea and created the Land Ship Committee, which urgently began development.
Hetherington machine
The most curious thing is that the same Churchill almost buried the future of tanks when he wanted to implement the idea of Major Thomas Hetherington, who proposed creating a thousand-ton monster on huge wheels, fourteen meters high and armed ship's cannons. Experienced engineers explained to Minister Churchill that this colossus would immediately be shot out of cannons, so the developers turned to Swinton’s idea of creating a machine based on the American Holt-Caterpillar tracked tractor, which had long been used in the army as a tractor.
The so-called “Swinton tank” was developed in strict secrecy, and already on September 9, 1915, a prototype called “Lincoln Machine Number One” passed the first field tests, where a bunch of design flaws were discovered, after eliminating which the first working prototype of the tank appeared - Little Willie. named after developer Walter Wilson. The vehicle also had many shortcomings, and when it was redesigned to meet the requirements of the combat situation, Big Willie was created, which was adopted and sent to war under the name Mark I.
The Battle of the Somme and the debut of British tanks
What was Big Willie like? It was a thirty-ton steel box on diamond-shaped tracks, eight meters long and two and a half meters high. It did not have the usual rotating turret, as it was believed that it would make the tank too noticeable, so the weapons were installed in sponsons on the sides of the vehicle.
The first English tanks were divided into “male” and “female”. The “males” had two 57-mm cannons, while the “females” had only machine guns. The armor was bulletproof and reached ten millimeters. Well, the tank’s speed was simply “racing” - 6.4 km per hour on the highway.
But their sluggishness and low armor did not stop the tanks from scaring the hell out of German soldiers at the Battle of the Somme on September 15, 1916, when 32 combat vehicles attacked enemy fortifications, tearing through barbed wire, rumbling terribly, and shooting enemy soldiers with cannons and machine guns.
Although the disadvantages of quickly putting tanks into operation immediately became clear - after all, initially there were 49 of them, but 17 broke down even before the start of the battle. And out of 32 that went on the attack, 5 got stuck in the swamp, and 9 simply broke down without the participation of the enemy. Nevertheless, the debut was considered excellent, and a total of 3,177 Mark tanks of various modifications were created during the war.
Tank toilet and pigeon post
Little Willie
The first tanks were not models of comfort. As one of the commanders said English tank During the First World War, a former sailor, such a tank rocked as it moved, like a combat boat in a storm. Moreover, during the battle the temperature inside rose to 50 and sometimes 70 degrees Celsius, so heatstroke and hallucinations haunted the crews at every turn. And the observation windows were often broken, and the tank crews were injured in their eyes by shrapnel.
Communication was also carried out specifically - for this purpose, cells with carrier pigeons, however, the birds often died from the heat, and then they used infantry messengers, which of course was very inconvenient and dangerous.
The very name “tank” appeared due to the fact that the development of the combat vehicle was carried out in the strictest secrecy, and the equipment was transported by railways under the guise of self-propelled fuel tanks intended for the Russian army. They were even written in Cyrillic, although with the error “be careful Petrograa.” One of the original names for combat vehicles was “water carrier” - “water tank” or “water carrier”, which fully reflected the camouflage legend. But then it turned out that the abbreviation “WC” in English language corresponds to the commonly used expression “water closet” - that is, a water-flush toilet.
Nobody wanted to sit in an office under such a sign and constantly fight off those who wanted to relieve themselves, and then the word “tank” appeared.
German tanks and the first oncoming tank battle
At first, the Germans did not take seriously the idea of fighting with tanks, but when they realized it, they began to urgently rivet their vehicles. And everything would have been fine, but there was just too little time and money, so the end result was an extremely strange metal monster - A7V, a huge steel box, a three-meter high car on tracks, seven meters long and weighing thirty tons, with 57 mm a cannon sticking out of the nose and five machine guns. There were 18 people in the crew!
The most interesting thing is that the colossus had thirty-millimeter armor and speed on the highway - as much as 12 km per hour. German soldiers nicknamed their tank “heavy camp kitchen” for huge size, terrible heat inside and constant smoke from all the cracks.
But it was these creepy self-propelled pans that took the first comer tank battle in history, which occurred on April 24, 1918 at Villers-Bretonneux, when three German tank The A7Vs encountered three British Mark IV heavy aircraft and seven light tanks"Whippet".
For both sides, the battle was completely unexpected, and the British suddenly discovered that the machine gun armament of the two “females” and all the light tanks could not do anything with the German armor. Therefore, having received several holes, the “females” retreated, and the “male” - the only one with cannon weapons - rushed into battle.
Here the experience and maneuverability of the English tank was already evident, which with a successful shot was able to damage one German vehicle, which was then abandoned by the crew, and force the rest to retreat, so, formally, victory remained with the British.
The German tanks were not bad, but here’s the problem - by the end of the war, 21 of them were produced, while the British had 3177 tanks, as we wrote above. And this is not counting the tanks of France.
This is how the formidable fighting machines of our time began their journey - like funny and at the same time terrible rattling metal boxes, crawling across the battlefield at a snail's pace and communicating with each other using carrier pigeons.
The Porokhovshchikov tank can be considered not only the first Russian tank, but also the first tank in general, since its idea arose and was implemented earlier than in other countries. In addition, Porokhovshchikov largely anticipated the development of tanks in the future. And if we started the history of the tank with an English vehicle, and not with Porokhovshchikov’s tank, it is only because his tank was not used in the Russian army. Porokhovshchikov's tank was forgotten, and was remembered only many years later, when tanks were already widely used in all armies.
At the very beginning of the First World War, in August 1914, the master of the Russian-Baltic Engineering Plant in Riga, Porokhovshchikov, approached the headquarters of the Supreme High Command of the Russian Army with a proposal for an original design for a high-speed combat tracked vehicle for off-road driving. At the same time, he turned to the Special Committee for Strengthening the Fleet, promising to create an all-terrain tracked armored vehicle. Porokhovshchikov did not provide any significant documents at that time, and only on January 9, 1915, after long delays at a reception with the chief of supplies of the North-Western Front, General Danilov, the inventor already had ready-made drawings and estimates for the construction of a combat vehicle called the All-terrain vehicle.
Apparently, Porokhovshchikov’s preliminary calculations pleased the top military leadership: in addition to high maneuverability, Porokhovshchikov also promised the vehicle’s buoyancy. The project was approved - permission to build the all-terrain vehicle was received on January 13, 1915, 9660 rubles 72 kopecks were allocated, and the design data were specified in special report No. 8101. The construction of the vehicle was monitored by the head of the Riga department for housing allowances for troops, military engineer Colonel Poklevsky -Cosello. On February 1, in the Riga auto repair shops of the Russo-Balt plant, which were located at the barracks of the Nizhny Novgorod Infantry Regiment, 25 soldier-craftsmen and the same number of hired skilled workers began manufacturing a prototype of the world's first tank, developed by the famous pilot and designer Alexander Aleksandrovich Porokhovshchikov.
The design of the All-terrain vehicle was unusual. The welded frame rested on one wide track made of rubberized fabric, stretched on four drums, and the front drum was noticeably raised above the supporting surface. The fifth drum pressed the caterpillar from above. The rear drum was the driving one, rotation was transmitted to it through a gearbox and driveshaft from a 10 hp carburetor engine. The specific pressure on the ground should have been only about 0.05 kg/sq.cm. On the sides of the caterpillar there were two columns with small wheels, which the driver controlled using a steering wheel - thus turning the entire body.
The car was equipped with a streamlined body with an air intake niche in front. Interestingly, the armor of the All-terrain vehicle was multi-layered: it consisted of a front cemented 2-mm steel sheet, a shock-absorbing pad made of hair and algae, and another steel sheet with a total thickness of 8 mm.
The design of this tank already included all the basic elements of modern combat vehicles - an armored hull, weapons in a rotating turret, an internal combustion engine, and a tracked propulsion system. The car was equipped with a streamlined body with an air intake niche in front. On a good road, the all-terrain vehicle had to move on the rear drum and wheels, and on loose soil rest on the caterpillar. Such a scheme, despite its relative simplicity, had one global drawback - in fact, the All-terrain Vehicle could only move in a straight line, since turning the guide wheels left and right could lead to their complete breakdown.
The supporting structure of the tank was a welded frame with four hollow rotating drums, around which one wide caterpillar belt was rewound. The belt tension was adjusted using a tension device and a tension drum. The vehicle was controlled using two rotary steering wheels located at the sides. In Porokhovshchikov's tank, side clutches were used for turning for the first time - mechanisms that later began to be installed on most tanks; on some machines they have been preserved to this day.
When moving on hard ground, the tank rested on these wheels and on the drive drum, and on soft ground it “lay down” on the caterpillar track. The length of the vehicle was 3.6 meters, width - 2 meters, height (without turret) - 1.5 meters, final weight was assumed to be 3.5-4.0 tons, crew - 1 person, machine gun armament, bulletproof armor. A 15 kW engine, a planetary transmission, and a combined wheel-track propulsion system (one track and two steered wheels) provided maximum speed 25 km/h..
On May 18, 1915, Porokhovshchikov tested his car on a good road on a caterpillar track, without switching to wheels. When tested, its speed reached 25 km/h (neither the first British nor French tanks had such a speed). After minor modifications, they decided to hold an official demonstration of the All-terrain vehicle, which took place on July 20, 1915
Later, Porokhovshchikov improved his vehicle, making it a wheeled-tracked vehicle: on the roads the vehicle moved on wheels and the rear drum of the caterpillar, when it encountered an obstacle on its way - the all-terrain vehicle lay down on the caterpillar and “crawled” over it. This was several years ahead of tank building at that time. Porokhovshchikov made the tank's hull waterproof, as a result of which it could easily overcome water obstacles.
At the same time (in the spring of 1915) Porokhovshchikov proposed armor of his own design: “The armor is a combination of elastic and rigid layers of metal and special viscous and elastic gaskets.” The boiler iron was annealed “according to a method that is the secret of the inventor,” and as a gasket “after an enormous number of experiments,” he chose dried and pressed sea grass. The author especially emphasized the cheapness of “iron armor” and the ability to bend and weld it.
In 1916, he conducted tests in Petrograd - on December 29, 1916, he reached a speed of 40 versts per hour, which was an exceptionally high figure.
Porokhovshchikov’s most interesting development was the shape of the hull and the design of the armor: it was made multi-layered. However, in the winter of 1916, the military stopped funding the work. And tanks with spaced multi-layer armor appeared only in the early 70s of the 20th century... There is also a version that Porokhovshchikov’s drawings were used by British engineers for their developments.
The experimental vehicle continued to be tested, intermittently, until December 1915, after which a corresponding report was sent to Lieutenant General Kovalenko. In particular, it was stated that “the built copy of the All-Terrain Vehicle did not show all those qualities that are stipulated by report No. 8101, for example, it could not walk on loose snow depth of about 1 foot (30 cm), and no testing of movement on water was made ... "
Meanwhile, Porokhovshchikov’s vehicle was not considered a combat vehicle, due to the lack of armor and weapons on it, and in the documents it appeared as a “self-propelled gun” - that is, a car. According to the designer himself, the first sample of the “Russian tank” he created did have a number of shortcomings, but all of them were reasons for the departure from the project. In his opinion, much could be achieved best results, if the all-terrain vehicle had a larger distance between the drums, a more powerful engine and a grooved track.
They decided to abandon further work on the All-Terrain Vehicle, especially since 18,090 rubles were spent during this time. The military department ordered Porokhovshchikov to return the money allocated for the construction of the vehicle to the treasury, and send the all-terrain vehicle itself to the State Technical University.
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