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The T28 Super Heavy Tank was an American heavily armored tank/self-propelled gun designed for the
United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...
during
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. It was originally designed to break through
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defenses of the
Siegfried Line The Siegfried Line, known in German as the ''Westwall'', was a German defensive line built during the 1930s (started 1936) opposite the French Maginot Line. It stretched more than ; from Kleve on the border with the Netherlands, along the west ...
, and was later considered as a possible participant in the planned invasion of the
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mainland. The near 100-ton vehicle was initially designated a heavy tank. It was re-designated as the 105 mm Gun Motor Carriage T95 in 1945, and then renamed in 1946 as the Super Heavy Tank T28. Only two prototypes were built before the project was terminated.


Name

Initially named Heavy Tank T28 when construction was authorized in 1944, the design did not fit in the usual categories of vehicles leading to reclassification.Hunnicutt p. 61 As it did not have its armament in a revolving turret, Ordnance requested a name change to 105 mm Gun Motor Carriage T95, the change becoming official in March 1945.Hunnicutt p. 62 However, due to its heavy armor and armament—while self-propelled guns in United States service were lightly armored—it was renamed Super Heavy Tank T28 in June 1946 by OCM 37058.Hunnicutt p. 65


Development

The T28/T95 was designed to be used for attacking the heavy defenses expected of the
Siegfried Line The Siegfried Line, known in German as the ''Westwall'', was a German defensive line built during the 1930s (started 1936) opposite the French Maginot Line. It stretched more than ; from Kleve on the border with the Netherlands, along the west ...
along the western borders of Germany. The 105mm T5E1 gun selected was known to have very good performance against concrete and "expected to be extremely effective at reducing heavy fortifications". By the time the vehicle passed trials, the German Siegfried Line had already been infiltrated and overwhelmed by the Allied forces, so the designers decided to send the T28/T95 tanks to fight on the Japanese mainland later in the war. Japan surrendered before the tank was transported overseas. The need for an assault tank was first identified in 1943, Ordnance proposing that 25 vehicles could be ready for operations. A conference in March 1944 between Ordnance Department and Army Ground Forces resulted in agreement to build five. The
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were supplied with the design in March 1945, completed final design and had the first hull welded by August. By the time the first tank was completed and ready for combat, the war was over. The plan for five was reduced to two. As it did not have a turret, but a fixed
casemate A casemate is a fortified gun emplacement or armored structure from which artillery, guns are fired, in a fortification, warship, or armoured fighting vehicle.Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary When referring to Ancient history, antiquity, th ...
mount instead for its main armament (as German ''
Jagdpanzer ''Jagdpanzer'' (JgPz) is the name given in German to a heavily-armoured, tracked tank destroyer, although it may also be used for other kinds of self-propelled guns. Literally translated from German, ''Jagdpanzer'' is "hunting tank". It typi ...
s'' and Soviet '' Samokhodnaya Ustanovka''-designation combat vehicles did), and the 105 mm gun fitted could only elevate from 19.5° to −5° and traverse from 10° right to 11° left of the centerline, the T28/T95 more closely resembled an
assault gun Assault gun (from german: Sturmgeschütz - "storm gun", as in "storming/assaulting") is a type of self-propelled artillery which uses an infantry support gun mounted on a motorized chassis, normally an armored fighting vehicle, which are designed ...
, and was redesignated as "T95 Gun Motor Carriage" in 1945, but in June 1946, the vehicle was redesignated again as "Super Heavy Tank T28". Two prototypes of the T28 were built. They underwent evaluation at the
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and
Fort Knox Fort Knox is a United States Army installation in Kentucky, south of Louisville and north of Elizabethtown. It is adjacent to the United States Bullion Depository, which is used to house a large portion of the United States' official gold res ...
facilities until 1947. In 1947, one of the T28s was heavily damaged by an engine fire during trials at
Yuma Proving Ground Yuma Proving Ground (YPG) is a United States Army series of environmentally specific test centers with its Yuma Test Center being one of the largest military installations in the world. It is subordinate to the U.S. Army Test and Evaluation ...
and was broken up and sold for scrap. The T28 never went into service due to the obsolete design, high maintenance costs, and the heavy weight, which prevented it from being transported across seas, but was retained to test the "durability of components on such a heavy vehicle". Work on it ended before completion as the War Department decided to stop the development of vehicles of that sort of weight and the T28 program terminated in October 1947. By that point, the T29 and T30 turreted heavy tank designs had been built. The T29 mounted the same gun as the T28 in a conventional rotating turret. The T30 was developed with a larger-caliber gun and more powerful engine. The T29 program was used to test mechanical components for future tank designs


Design

The mechanical superstructure was taken from a T23. The original plan was to build five prototype vehicles, with a production total of 25. Its total weight when fully equipped would have reached 95
short ton The short ton (symbol tn) is a measurement unit equal to . It is commonly used in the United States, where it is known simply as a ton, although the term is ambiguous, the single word being variously used for short, long, and metric ton. The vari ...
s (86
tonne The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1000  kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the short ton ( United State ...
s). To lower ground pressure, instead of two tracks, it used four tracks that projected forward of the hull, each 23 inches (584 mm) wide. The outer tracks could be detached within two hours for rail transport: After removal, they could be fixed together to make a unit that could be towed behind the tank. Due to its extreme weight and low engine power, the T28 had extremely limited obstacle-crossing ability and could not cross any of the portable bridges available at the time, and so was considered impractical in the field and not suitable for production. The T28 had no conventional turret, with a
casemate A casemate is a fortified gun emplacement or armored structure from which artillery, guns are fired, in a fortification, warship, or armoured fighting vehicle.Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary When referring to Ancient history, antiquity, th ...
style hull instead, giving it a comparatively low profile, as the later examples of the fully enclosed ''
Jagdpanzer ''Jagdpanzer'' (JgPz) is the name given in German to a heavily-armoured, tracked tank destroyer, although it may also be used for other kinds of self-propelled guns. Literally translated from German, ''Jagdpanzer'' is "hunting tank". It typi ...
''-family of German tank destroyers, not entirely dissimilar to the 50 short-ton weight German
Jagdpanther The ''Jagdpanther'' (German: "hunting Panther"), Sd.Kfz. 173, was a tank destroyer (''Jagdpanzer'', a self-propelled anti-tank gun) built by Germany during World War II. The ''Jagdpanther'' combined the 8.8 cm Pak 43 anti-tank gun, similar to th ...
. Its main armament was a 105 mm T5E1 gun, in a ball-shaped
gun mantlet A gun mantlet is an armour plate or shield attached to an armoured fighting vehicle's gun, protecting the opening through which the weapon's barrel projects from the hull or turret armour and, in many cases, ensuring the vulnerable warhead of a ...
set into the vertical hull front. The traverse was limited to 10° right and 11° left, and elevation from 19.5° to −5°. When traveling, the gun was locked at the maximum elevation. The only other armament was a .50 cal. (12.7 mm)
M2 Browning The M2 machine gun or Browning .50 caliber machine gun (informally, "Ma Deuce") is a heavy machine gun that was designed towards the end of World War I by John Browning. Its design is similar to Browning's earlier M1919 Browning machine gun, w ...
machine gun on a ring mount above the commander's hatch for anti-aircraft use. The main gun—65 calibres long—had a muzzle velocity of 3,700 feet per second (1,130 m/s), with a range of up to 12 miles (19 km). The armor was very thick compared to other tanks of the time, up to 12 inches (305 mm) thick on the front. This was considered heavy enough to provide protection from the German 88 mm gun used as tank and anti-tank guns. The lower hull front had 5.25 in (130 mm) of armor, and the sides 2.5 in (64 mm). The suspension system and lower hull were covered with 4-in (100 mm) thick steel skirts. The engine was a
gasoline Gasoline (; ) or petrol (; ) (see ) is a transparent, petroleum-derived flammable liquid that is used primarily as a fuel in most spark-ignited internal combustion engines (also known as petrol engines). It consists mostly of organic co ...
-powered
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GAF V-8, delivering 500 hp, at 2600 rpm through the Torqmatic transmission; which left the vehicle underpowered, geared down to a top speed of about 8 mph (13 km/h) and greatly limited its obstacle-climbing capability.


Surviving vehicle

In 1974, the last prototype was discovered abandoned in a field at
Fort Belvoir Fort Belvoir is a United States Army installation and a census-designated place (CDP) in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. It was developed on the site of the former Belvoir plantation, seat of the prominent Fairfax family for whom Fair ...
, Virginia. Camouflaged in the middle of some bushes, it is unknown where it spent the intervening 27 years. It is the sole remaining example of these tanks and was exhibited at the
Patton Museum of Cavalry and Armor The General George Patton Museum of Leadership is a publicly accessible museum on Fort Knox, Kentucky, dedicated to the memory and life lessons of General George S. Patton, Jr., and the continuing education of Junior Army leaders in the U.S. ...
in Kentucky. In 2011, it was shipped to its new home at Fort Benning, Georgia. It was placed in the new Patton Park, which is a plot of 30 acres where nine of the tanks being stored at Fort Benning are now displayed. The vehicle was damaged in January 2017 during transit to another facility for external refurbishment when it broke loose from the M1070 HET carrying it. The transporter failed to negotiate a downhill slope and subsequent turn at a safe speed, causing the securing chains to break and allowing the T28 to slide off the trailer. Despite then rolling into a ditch, only minor repairable damage was sustained to two
bogies A bogie ( ) (in some senses called a truck in North American English) is a chassis or framework that carries a wheelset, attached to a vehicle—a modular subassembly of wheels and axles. Bogies take various forms in various modes of transp ...
. The outer track units had been removed.


Photos

File:Closeup T28 Super Heavy Tank.jpg, Closeup of T28 Super Heavy Tank showing the double tracks. File:T28 Super Heavy Tank Gun Mantlet.jpg, T28 Super Heavy Tank Gun Mantlet. File:T28 Super Heavy Tank DoubleTracks Closeup.jpg, Closeup of T28 Super Heavy Tank showing the double tracks.


See also

*
List of U.S. military vehicles by model number The following is a (partial) listing of vehicle model numbers or M-numbers assigned by the United States Army. Some of these designations are also used by other agencies, services, and nationalities, although these various end users usually assig ...
*
Tank classification Tank classification is a taxonomy of identifying either the intended role or weight class of tanks. The classification by role was used primarily during the developmental stage of the national armoured forces, and referred to the doctrinal an ...
*
Jagdtiger The ''Jagdtiger'' ("Hunting Tiger"; officially designated ''Panzerjäger Tiger Ausf. B'') is a German casemate-type heavy tank destroyer (''Jagdpanzer'') of World War II. It was built upon the slightly lengthened chassis of a Tiger II. Its or ...
– a comparable German vehicle for anti-tank use. Entered limited production. *
Tortoise heavy assault tank The Tortoise heavy assault tank (A39) was a British heavy assault gun design developed during the Second World War, but never put into mass production. It was developed for the task of clearing heavily fortified areas such as the Siegfried Li ...
– a comparable British vehicle for attacking fortifications; only six built. *
SU-100Y Self-Propelled Gun The SU-100Y was a Soviet prototype self-propelled gun, developed from the prototype T-100 tank. It was developed during the Winter War with Finland to include a 130 mm gun to destroy concrete defensive structures like bunkers and anti-tan ...
- a comparable Soviet vehicle for attacking fortified bunkers; only one built.


Notes

* Hunnicutt R. P., ''Firepower: A History of the American Heavy Tank.'' Presidio.


External links


"This Lumbering Monster Is Newest Antique", January 1946, Popular ScienceT28 Super Heavy Tank (Gun Motor Carriage T95) Self-Propelled Gun / Heavy Tank (1945)
*Reassembling the Last U.S. T28 Super Heavy Tank. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0a5oMl2fX8 {{Use dmy dates, date=June 2017 Abandoned military projects of the United States Super-heavy tanks World War II tank destroyers of the United States World War II tanks of the United States History of the tank Trial and research tanks of the United States