The mighty Maus - a size comparison

[Guest]

For an upcoming "What if?" build I've started to collect pieces of fact and fiction and I couldn't stop looking at these two items next to each other.

To the left you have the upper hull of a Jagdpanzer IV/70 and to the right the Maus turret. Just the turret...
In fact the Maus turret is about the same height as the whole completed Jagdpanzer IV!




The engineering must've been a nightmare to work out since you can't get around the laws of physics. Not to mention the design for the Landkreuzer P1000 Ratte, or the proposed suggestion that they could build the even bigger P1500?!
The whole "What if?" scenario if things had progressed into 1946 and beyond and not going down the toilet - like it luckily did - is an interesting subject for research, how desperation led to the outright bizarre...

For now it's fun enough just to compare these two pieces of plastic and wondering what it must've been like working as a tank builder back in late 1944 with weirder and weirder orders coming from above...

[Robert1968]

Good job the British invented the Tall boy / grand slam then
Put a nasty dent in the V2 programme and with the 8th Airfirce too nothing on the ground or below was really safe eh

[tr1ckey66]

The Maus is certainly impressive in size. I'll be interested to see your 'What If' build, I think it was Patrick who built a series of 'paper' panzers - E100 etc a while back.
The Maus was pretty impractical though more or less a mobile gun emplacement.

It's funny but I've got 'Wolfenstein the New Order' under way on the PS4 - always reminds me of the paper panzer and 'Nazi what if aircraft' etc. Not really a gamer but just thought it was topical.

Have fun with the panzer monsters!

Cheers
P

[Snowman]

To put the Maus turret into perspective, it weighs as much as a modern MBT if not more in some cases.

[BBdave]

We're there some other germam plans to build a huge tank using a battleship turret?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1000_Ratte

Dave

[Thorbrand]

I wonder how long it would have taken to reload the Maus?

[Guest]

We're there some other germam plans to build a huge tank using a battleship turret?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1000_Ratte

Dave

Yes, sporting a dual 280 mm SK C/28 gun in the same turret as the Gneisenau but with "only" two barrels.
Someone apparently thought these cannons weren't powerful enough so they planned for even bigger ones, but sadly I can't remember which ones right now.
Have been reading up quite a bit on this subject in order to have some sort of understanding for all Wunderwaffe.

What's even worse is that Uncle Hitler felt he needed to order designs for the P.1500 almost immediately?! Makes you think...

[Guest]

I wonder how long it would have taken to reload the Maus?

Not too bad. It was the main gun in the Jagdtiger and there would be more space for the loaders in a Maus for sure - but that won't change the fact that just the projectile of the 2-piece ammunition still weighed 28.3 kg each!

[Guest]

The Maus is certainly impressive in size. I'll be interested to see your 'What If' build, I think it was Patrick who built a series of 'paper' panzers - E100 etc a while back.
The Maus was pretty impractical though more or less a mobile gun emplacement.

It's funny but I've got 'Wolfenstein the New Order' under way on the PS4 - always reminds me of the paper panzer and 'Nazi what if aircraft' etc. Not really a gamer but just thought it was topical.

Have fun with the panzer monsters!

Cheers
P

I've not yet decided which paint scheme I'm going for but I've got some ideas of what could've been sported on many of the gigantic ideas they had. It's more than one vehicle that's being built for this little project and they're all going to go with the same theme so in due time we shall see? I've got some unorthodox bits planned for this as well that will fit in that fictional world - if it had gone totally t*ts up?!
It'll consist of both armoured vehicles and flying contraptions.

Regarding the remake of Wolfenstein (The New Order, The Old Blood and the soon to be released The New Colossus) I can't deny that they've been influential on this project and in fact this idea started many years ago. In 1992 to be exact.
They are truly horrific suggestions (in a twisted and unnatural game world) on what the world, and more precisely USA, could've been like in the 1960's under Nazi rule.
Ok, a lot of it is totally whacked and based on the fact that they made Haunebu II working and used that anti-gravity method to power other stuff, but Nazis in rule is real enough that it makes it a pure joy to kill as many of them in the game!

If you have the slightest interest in a FPS "shoot 'em up game" and don't mind raw and blunt humour - whilst killing as many nazis and robots as possible, I can really recommend that you pick up Wolfenstein - The New Order.

Cheers!

[Guest]

The mighty Maus decided to cook up some fudge last night... sigh.

Was building the working tracks to the Maus whilst watching some random youtube stuff, i.e. a perfect therapy session!
Building tracks is an activity where you pretty much can disconnect the brain and just do the same thing over and over again, not like building my Takom King Tiger - which requires full concentration the whole time!

I'd just done the first track, which consisted of 165 plastic parts and I'd more or less just started the second. I was about 1/3 in.
Earlier that evening I'd just opened a new bottle of Tamiya extra thin cement.
Normally I close the bottle properly after each item I glue since I've had an incident in the past, but when doing repetitive gluing, quite fiddly too, I didn't - and that's when I sneezed! FFFFF.....



Almost 2/3 of the cement jar poured out on my tray - over the track and over quite a few loose track pieces that I was about to assemble!!!

I tried to rescue the loose parts first and then the piece of track I was building, but I knew it was a lost cause...
Luckily the tray confined the spillage and the instruction booklet soaked up some of the cement, but what a mess.

I was however slightly lucky that the flooded track was more or less exactly the length that was needed for the bottom end, i.e. the part that are on the ground, so I'm still going to be able to use the track - but working it ain't no more

I've now glued the jar to a plate in order to make it somewhat resistant to falling over - but it's obvious that I'm not alone doing my modelling because Mr. Murphy seems to be there with me way too often...

It's embarrassing, sure, and telling you all doesn't exactly make it any easier - but perhaps I can now learn to screw the cork back on - every time!?!?!

Now 24 hours later I'm going to resume the track assembly to get it over with but the smell is still rather noticeable in this part of the house and trust me - it's much worse than when I spilled a similar quantity of cellulose thinner in the bed earlier this summer... Bummer