We already told you about the maus, the e-100, the lowe and the t28/95 , but today we will talk about a super-heavy tank that would have put devastating amounts of fears into the hearts of people prior to world war II-- too bad it was built during world war II -_-.
Today we are talking about a British super-heavy tank project , which obviously reflected their archaic concept of "trench warfare" in an era of fast movement and air superiority. Starting back in early 1941, the Tog II super heavy tank was ordered by numerous branches of allied armed forces (following the success *cough* of the tog I).
The tog II was designed to literally topple all enemy tanks in length , although the width was rather average. In fact, the tog was the 4th largest tank prototype ever built in history. The only other competitors were the Russian twin turreted prototype (forgot if it was kv220 or something else) , the maus , the e100 and the Objekt 730.
Unfortunately, it was pretty much just a heavy figure, the armor and guns didn't exactly have the capability to even go head to head with panther tanks.Not to mention rear and side armor were seriously neglected.
Tog II at Bovington Tank Museum compared to human
This tank is classified as super heavy solely on the obvious fact that it weighs so much that it can only move at less than 10 miles per hour. The entire behemoth was intended to charge trenches, which was never the case. The tank was also known to have severe weakspots , vulnerable to small arms fire, in it's frontal armour. This monster would have had shock value based on it's size, but any other tank could probably have blasted it to shreds from a distance.
The name and appearance are iconic, but the true super-heavy tank of the British armed forces wouldn't exactly arrive until the first Tortiose prototype (almost like the t28). This tank had around 65 mm of frontal armour, and far less rear and side (which compared to the t28's 300 is very thin). The tank would be armed with a 73mm cannon , which would have been pretty decent because it was close the same gun being used on the sherman m4.
Nevertheless, the idea fell apart due to complications and the tiger tank's powerful 88mm cannon (capable of destroying a tog from over a mile away). But the tog is still historically huge and therefore it deserves an article on our website :)
The mystery of the tog II's length has been solved!