Ratte P1000

This is a P 1000.  It was a WWII German design study.  This is a copy of the original blueprints for the vehicle.  It is often referred to as the Ratte.  In many games like WoT they often have extra guns on them.

Sometimes they have large cannons in the front hull.  Sometimes the turret has a third smaller gun in the middle of the other two.  Often they have two or four turrets on the rear, usually anti-aircraft guns.  The AA guns are frequently a Whirbelwind or a Maus twin AA gun.  Sometimes even a pair of Maus tank turrets on the back.

People try to say this was a giant tank.  It was not intended as a tank.  It was intended as a coast defense artillery gun.  It was to take the place of a coast defense bunker.  The concept was these turrets could fire at ships fifteen or twenty miles away.  The Ratte would drive only on specially prepared roadways, perhaps gravel roads. 

In the event of an invasion, the Ratte could drive ten or twenty miles in a night to avoid Allied aircraft.  This would allow the Ratte to effectively cover fifty to one hundred miles of coastline with heavy guns.  The Ratte was determined to be impractical and only this design study was done.  It took only a few months of work to be relegated to the ashcan of history.