Winged tank - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Tanks with glider wings were the subject of several unsuccessful experiments in the twentieth century. It was intended that these could be towed behind; or carried under an airplane, to glide into a battlefield, in support of infantry

Infantry

Infantrymen are soldiers who are specifically trained for the role of fighting on foot to engage the enemy face to face and have historically borne the brunt of the casualties of combat in wars. As the oldest branch of combat arms, they are the backbone of armies...

forces.

In war, airborne forces

Airborne forces

Airborne forces are military units, usually light infantry, set up to be moved by aircraft and 'dropped' into battle. Thus they can be placed behind enemy lines, and have an ability to deploy almost anywhere with little warning...

use parachutes to drop soldiers behind enemy lines to capture and hold important objectives until more heavily-equipped friendly troops can arrive. Military planners have always sought ways to provide airborne troops with combat support equipment in the form of light armoured vehicles or artillery

Artillery

Originally applied to any group of infantry primarily armed with projectile weapons, artillery has over time become limited in meaning to refer only to those engines of war that operate by projection of munitions far beyond the range of effect of personal weapons...

which can be dropped by parachute or military glider

Military glider

Military gliders have been used by the military of various countries for carrying troops and heavy equipment to a combat zone, mainly during the Second World War. These engineless aircraft were towed into the air and most of the way to their target by military transport planes, e.g...

.

The biggest problem with air-dropping vehicles is that their crews drop separately, and may be delayed or prevented from bringing them into action. Military glider

Military glider

s allow crews to arrive at the drop zone along with their vehicles. They also minimize exposure of the valuable towing aircraft, which needn't appear over the battlefield. An improvement would be a tank

Tank

A tank is a tracked, armoured fighting vehicle designed for front-line combat which combines operational mobility, tactical offensive, and defensive capabilities...

which could glide into the battlefield, drop its wings, and be ready to fight within minutes.

Development

In the early 1930s, American engineer Walter Christie experimented with flying tanks.

Soviet experiments

In the early twentieth century, parachute silk

Silk

Silk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be woven into textiles. The best-known type of silk is obtained from the cocoons of the larvae of the mulberry silkworm Bombyx mori reared in captivity...

was rare in the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

, so the military conducted dubious experiments with air-dropping soldiers into deep snow without parachutes. In 1930, the Grokhovskiy Special Design Bureau experimented with dropping "air buses" full of troops: the bicycle-wheeled G-45 onto land, and the amphibious

Amphibious vehicle

An amphibious vehicle , is a vehicle or craft, that is a means of transport, viable on land as well as on water – just like an amphibian....

"hydro bus" into water. When the hydro bus disintegrated on landing, the chief designer and his assistant were strapped into the G-45 for a test drop; they survived, but the project was cancelled (Zaloga 1984:192).

Later, the Soviets used heavy bombers to land on the battlefield carrying T-27 tankettes and T-37 tank

T-37 tank

The T-37A was a Soviet amphibious light tank. The tank is often referred to as the T-37, although that designation was used by a different tank which never left the prototype stage.The T-37A was the first series of mass-produced fully amphibious tanks in the world.The tank was first created in...

light tanks, and experimented with air-dropping light tanks (both with and without parachutes). In 1941, airborne units were issued T-40 amphibious tanks.

None of these was completely satisfactory, so in 1942 the Soviet Air Force

Soviet Air Force

The Soviet Air Force, officially known in Russian as Военно-воздушные силы or Voenno-Vozdushnye Sily and often abbreviated VVS was the official designation of one of the air forces of the Soviet Union. The other was the Soviet Air Defence Forces...

ordered Oleg Antonov

Oleg Antonov

Oleg Konstantinovich Antonov was a Soviet aircraft designer, the founder of Antonov ASTC, a world-famous aircraft company in Ukraine, later named in his honour.-Early life:...

to design a glider for landing tanks. Antonov was more ambitious, and instead added a detachable cradle to a lightened T-60

T-60

The T-60 scout tank was a light tank produced by the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1942. In this time over 6,292 were built. The tank was designed to replace the obsolete T-38 amphibious scout tank.-Design:...

light tank, bearing large wood and fabric biplane

Biplane

A biplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with two superimposed main wings. The Wright brothers' Wright Flyer used a biplane design, as did most aircraft in the early years of aviation. While a biplane wing structure has a structural advantage, it produces more drag than a similar monoplane wing...

wings and twin tail

Twin tail

A twin tail is a specific type of vertical stabilizer arrangement found on the empennage of some aircraft. Two vertical stabilizers — often smaller on their own than a single conventional tail would be — are mounted at the outside of the aircraft's horizontal stabilizer...

. Although one semi-successful test flight was completed, due to the lack of sufficiently-powerful aircraft to tow it at the required 160 km/h, the project was abandoned.

Japanese projects

The Imperial Japanese Army's experimental Special No. 3 Flying Tank So-Ra or Ku-Ro, was developed in 1943. Like the Soviet models, it had detachable wings, but it could also be transported by heavy gliders, namely the Kokusai Ku-7

Kokusai Ku-7

-References:NotesBibliography* Francillon, Ph.D., René J. Japanese Aircraft of the Pacific War. London: Putnam & Company Ltd., 1970 . ISBN 0-370-30251-6.-External links:* via http://www.dws.xip.pl, accessdate 30 April 2007...

"Buzzard" and Kokusai Ku-8

Kokusai Ku-8

-References:**...

I "Gander". These could be towed by aircraft such as the Mitsubishi Ki-21

Mitsubishi Ki-21

The was a Japanese bomber during World War II. It began operations during the Second Sino-Japanese War participating in the Nomonhan Incident, and in the first stages of the Pacific War, including the Malayan, Burmese, Dutch East Indies and New Guinea Campaigns...

"Sally" heavy bomber. However, the Japanese Flying Tank project was abandoned before it went into production. The tank transport gliders were deployed to the Philippines during 1944. Another prototype was Maeda Ku-6 Flying Tank, but not advanced to experimental phases also.

United Kingdom

In 1941, L.E. Baynes produced a design for a 100 ft wingspan "Carrier Wing Glider", a large tailess wing to carry a tank. A reduced scale experimental glider - the Baynes Bat

Baynes Bat

|-See also:-References:* *...

- was tested. It was satisfactory but the project was dropped and work on gliders that could carry vehicles internally was taken up. This led to the Airspeed Horsa

Airspeed Horsa

The Airspeed AS.51 Horsa was a British World War II troop-carrying glider built by Airspeed Limited and subcontractors and used for air assault by British and Allied armed forces...

and General Aircraft Hamilcar

General Aircraft Hamilcar

The General Aircraft Limited GAL. 49 Hamilcar or Hamilcar Mark I was a large British military glider produced during the Second World War, which was designed to carry heavy cargo, such as the Tetrarch or M22 Locust light tank...

that could carry a Jeep and a light tank respectively.

After World War II

The Soviet Union continued to develop methods to efficiently deploy airborne

Airborne forces

vehicles. By the mid-1970s they were able to drop BMD-1 fighting vehicles with crew members aboard, using a combination of parachutes and retrorocket

Retrorocket

A retrorocket is a rocket engine providing thrust opposing the motion of a spacecraft, thereby causing it to decelerate.-History:...