The Rat

thingiverse

Hitler's fantasies sometimes shift into gigantic proportions - Heinz Guderian, 1943 This is a 1:100 scale model of the Krupp Ratte Tank. Huge thanks to Buchnerb , http://www.thingiverse.com/Buchnerb/about, not only did he commit over 120 hours of printing time and about six pounds of plastic to test print but also offered lots of advice for improving the turret design. The 128mm turret and 20mm flak guns are from bergmans packs. Most of the details pertaining to this tank are pure speculation. Thus, I took some creative liberties when creating the model. I designed two turrets - one, the Ausf A, represents the planned prototype turret that would have been taken directly from the battleship Gneisenau, while the second turret, Ausf B, represents a theoretical newly produced turret. I put two dowel holes in the hull: 1/4" diameter by 10 inches long (+tolerance). This should help align the parts properly. History: The development history of the Ratte originated with a strategic study of Soviet heavy tanks conducted by Krupp in 1941, which also gave birth to the Panzer VIII Maus super-heavy tank. The study led to a suggestion from Krupp's director (Grotte), a special officer for submarine construction, who proposed to Hitler on June 23, 1942, a 1,000-tonne tank named "Landkreuzer". It was to be armed with naval artillery and armored with 25 centimeters of hardened steel, so heavy that only similar weapons could hope to damage it. Hitler became enamored with Grotte's concept and ordered Krupp to begin development in 1942. As of December 29, 1942, a few preliminary drawings had been completed, by which time the concept had been named "Ratte" (Rat) by Hitler himself. These submitted designs went under the titles OKH Auftrag Nr. 30404 and E-30404/1. Albert Speer saw no reasonable use of the tank and canceled the project in 1943 before any prototype could be manufactured. I've been working on this as a side project for a while now, and I just recently completed it. I decided to release it as a thank you for reaching 100 followers. Print Settings Printer: Not specified Rafts: Doesn't matter Supports: Yes Resolution: .1mm Infill: 5% Notes: The hull parts should be printed track down, and the turret horizontal with the bed. Buchnerb found that printing the hull flat side down with tracks vertical resulted in weird bubbling at the wheels.