Books Read #4: "My tank is fight: deranged inventions of World War II" by Zack Parsons

[jeffreyab]

An account of some of the more extreme ideas that were at least mapped out on paper. They are mainly German as the Germans had the research facilities but not the capacity to build them. They range from the ridiculous, a tank the size of a naval destroyer ie 2,000 tons, to the inspiring, Von Braun's orbital space station, to the scary, a 1 kiloton nuclear bomb that may have been tested. Most of the other ideas range in between.

They all have a fiction component linking all the articles together with recurring characters. It also shows how much damage the Germans would have done to themselves if they had spent the effort to actually build the weapon. The nuclear bomb would not have been ready until 1945 when the Germans were staring defeat in the face and having it would only mean killing more Allies before they still lost the war.

The book only has one Allied project in it, a giant aircraft carrier made out of ice. The Allies had other projects equally wacky but not as cool looking in hypothetical pictures. The Great Panjandrum was a rocket propelled wheel designed to carry explosives up to the Atlantic Wall like it was an actual wall to be breached and not what it was, a series of strong points with linked fields of fire.

This book is recommended for anyone who likes interesting off the mainstream ideas.

Comments

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

A scale model of the aricraft carrier, code named Habbakuk, was built in a lake near Jasper, Alberta. I wrote an article on Geoffrey Pyke, its inventor. What a weird-beard.

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

Great idea, spend years and much money building an aircraft carrier that will melt and has a top speed of 6 knots.

I am surprised they got as far as the scale model.

Anyone ever do a game about Nazi space stations and nuclear ballistic missle launching submersable barges?

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

Well, the idea was that it wouldn't melt and that it would be towed into position in the mid-atlantic, where it would use its engines to remain on station.

I can send you the article if you like. An article in The Beaver was one of my sources.

Someone designed a game called "Space Nazis from Hell!" that featured the Space Fortress Grossdeutschland. Not very interesting; I recently traded it away on boardgamegeek.com.

[benet.livejournal.com]

Could you comment on where the title comes from? I've been wanting to know ever since I saw it on the shelf (but not, apparently, enough to track it down and read it..)