Outside The Chieftain's Hatch. Maus

We have been presented with a dilemma. Ordinarily on Inside the Hatch we’ll find good, intact vehicles, and show you the inside and outside. We’ve kept that rule until now. However, we’re in Kubinka and… well… There is no inside to this vehicle. So as a result I guess we’ll just have to show you the outside and we’re going to have a slightly modified version of the show. Let’s call it ‘Outside the Hatch.’ This tank is ridiculously awesome. Mere words cannot express how huge it is. Compared to “Adam” to our left, the Karl Gerat, it doesn’t look that big, but to put it in some sort of perspective, we could not drive this out of the building if it had a door and if the tank had an engine because it is just too big. The building had to be built around the tank. The vehicle itself was prototype hull number 1, merged with the turret of destroyed vehicle #2. The turret had serial number #1, so what you actually have is the prototype hull and the prototype turret now married together. All the impact marks you see on it, they are almost entirely from German testing in Kummersdorf, the one exception you will see right there on the very front slope is apparently from a 122mm shell, or so I am told. To give you an impression of the scale, look at how thick the armor joint is here. Compare it to my little Samsung, it’s absolutely massive. This goes on to the track guards which are well protected, and just for good measure you can also place spare track links on the front. It gets even worse if you go around the side. As you come around the side, the next thing you see are the massive sideskirts, and as a tanker the first thing of course which comes to my mind is “how the hell do you do track maintenance?” There’s no access ports, you can’t swing the sideskirts off. In fact, the only track maintenance you can routinely do is if you come back around to the front, you can tension the track. The track is tensioned, the idler wheel moved forward, by use of the large screw bolt there. And that’s all you can do. Forwards and backwards, any other track maintenance, you have a problem. And so we move to the suspension. A vertical volute suspension system. Where have you heard that before? The difference, though, is in this case it’s mounted on double-arm cranks. So there are four wheels per bogie, but if you look at the drawings of them you’ll see that there is a hinge here that the bogie system works on. You’ll see the hammer and sickle on the side here. Now, what this was was a bit of cunning German subterfuge. They painted this, and you’ll see it on the proving ground photographs, during testing. The theory was, apparently, that if an allied spy saw this huge monstrosity being tested, they would think, because it had a hammer and sickle on the side, that it was a captured Soviet vehicle, and they wouldn’t think it was German. I’m not sure they were going to be successful. Moving further up you’re going to see a welded over port for a pistol port, they tried using it with an MP40 it was, “epic fail” according to the local historian, so they decided ‘to hell with that idea’, they welded it over and off they went. One thing I forgot to mention, by the way, is there are actually mounting points on the side to lift up the entire side of the vehicle if you wanted to change a wheel or something like that, and there are photographs of this being done. Personally I think it’s easier just to dig a big hole, get the wheel to fall into it and you’ll change it that way. Moving around to the back of the vehicle, a couple of points. Firstly, of course, you’ve got the big, wide tracks, 56 links per side, to spread out the monstrous weight of the vehicle. And again you can see visually the thickness of the armor skirt, so again, to lift up the entire tank you’d have the jacks on the skirt. This little device up here would have been a flamethrower because…why not? Again you look at the armour joints on the side of the turret, you can see how thick the turret is, and even the rear turret face is not insignificant. There is a port there so you don’t have to lug your 128mm rounds all the way to the top. The rest of the vehicle, fairly sparse, nothing of any great note. The next step is to figure out how to get up on it. You’ll notice complete slab sides. Ordinarily you might stand on the sprocket wheel and climb up, or you’d find a handhold on the front. There’s nothing. You almost need a ladder. This is where you start to realize the tragedy that is Maus. I am inside the cooling system. In here, that’s the fuel tank. The engine should be under there, and there’s another cooling system and fuel tank on the far side. The radioman and driver are located in a compartment to the front, and there is an access door that swings open to allow them to reach the engine compartment. In fact, there is so much nothing in this tank that the easiest way to get into the turret is actually to go through the engine and you come into the turret from the front, so we’ll do that now. So this is now the engine compartment where the big BMW 44 litre engine used to be. 1200 horsepower, apparently taken off a Schnellboot. To the front is the compartment where the driver on the left and the radioman on the right would side. They have an escape hatch on the floor, and this door that opens and closes it allows access to the engine for basic maintenance. So the next stop, let’s go into the turret. So I’ve come now from the engine, to this is where the generator would have been to create the elecity which is then passed through the two rear ports to the individual motors. I’m under the turret, the basket would have been about here, so I’m substantially further under the 128mm than I ordinarily would be. I guess I’ll stand up and see what’s left of the vehicle. I still fit under the 128. OK, as you’re scanning around, I guess I’ll stand up here on the 75mm side of the vehicle, you’ll note that the gun is being held in place by a chain or wire. The internal explosion destroyed a significant portion of the vehicle. There is a ready rack to the right hand side for the 75, I count, oh.. about 18 rounds. 75mm is to the right, nice big 128, the ammunition for which is stowed to the rear of the turret. You’ll be able to see the large rollers scattered around, there’s a couple of these bogies upon which the massive weight of the turret is resting to traverse it around the hull. As we’re on the gunner’s side, the first thing is the very large cog used to turn the turret. I would hate to think about having to manually traverse this turret. “Conqueror” was bad enough, and that was only something like a 30 ton turret. Further forward, coaxial machinegun. It’s coaxial, but independent in elevation. There was a wonderful idea put forward to place a fixed 20mm anti-aircraft cannon, slightly up in elevation, the idea was that you’d aim the turret and wait for the airplane to fly over you. Gunner’s primary sight would have gone here, up through the roof, and it looks like there would have been a secondary here. No direct vision. And as I’m looking at it, I see a very large block of wood holding the gun up as well. And of course the last thing in here is the 128mm cannon with its massive breech. I’d be kindof curious to know what the recoil is. I mean, it’s a big gun, but it’s also a big tank. Do you think the tank would notice? Anyway. There is not much else in this tank. Because of the turret detonation, and because of the fact that nobody tried to restore it, sadly, this is all the inside that we can get on Inside the Hatch, so time to go back out and close up. So that’s it. According to Hilary Doyle, Maus is the only vehicle to have had its production stopped by the strategic bombing effort. They hit the factory at Alkett apparently, and that was the only one that could make the vehicle. It is a bit of a shame that there is no more left of Maus, but I guess it was a war, and you take what you can get. Hope you found it informative, and we’ll see you on the next one. Now, how do you get off this thing? This should be fun.