How Bad Was The Maus? 

Imagine you're a tank designer, and how happy you get when you are being told "you must not cut the weight on this thing under any circumstances" 😂

the development history of the maus along with its peculiar design compared to the tanks that Germany fielded at that point makes it really intresting

"Maus rolls into battlefield" Every Allied Air Forces: *Oh look! Free target!!*

I think the grand thing a lot of people forget about the Maus is that it didn't really fit all the requirements needed of a tank versatile to change a battlefield: 1: 188 tons, a whole lot of man-hours, resources, assembly time, and maintenance going into a singular tank that could instead be used to make 3-4 Panthers or 2&1/2 Tiger IIs doesn't tend to be very good for supply lines or actual force projection. That one finished Maus can maybe get to one front after a lot of time in the logistics line, meanwhile a batch of Panzer 4s or Panthers could be divvied up among multiple locations where they were needed the most. 2: Combined arms. You know what the worst nightmare of a tank is? Being unsupported. You know what an air force loves? Enemy tanks and strategic targets that aren't supported. As far as I'm aware the German air force had been effectively wiped out by the end of the war, so the Maus probably would've been going into conflict zones where there would be no deterrents from American or Russian air attack, and seeing how fond the US was of their close air support and strike runs?...Only takes so many passes from a P-47 or P-51 before one of those bombs or rockets gets lucky. 3: Size matters. The Maus was big, heavy, and slow. Armor was fantastic, that's a fact, and it would've stopped Allied 75s, 76s, and maybe even the 90s dead in their tracks, but when this thing barely clears 10 KPH and can't go over most bridges due to the fact that it'll collapse them, you're looking at a tank which is very limited in combat and deployment capacity, and being a big, slow target not only means it'll be easy for the enemy to see coming and engage from range, but artillery and indirect fire weapons are probably going to love chewing it to pieces. Also don't forget the survivability onion, the Maus would definitely be seen, due to its large size, acquired, due to its slow speed, and hit, due to a lack of overall maneuverability, which means the only two layers it has left are 'Don't be penetrated' and 'Don't be killed'. 4: Numbers, if you have an unkillable super-tank that can beat everything it comes across, that's great, but if you only have one, your ace in the hole can only be in one place at a time, and it has to get re-sorted and travel between all the points on the front to really make a difference. For a Maus? Once one was in the theater, it'd probably be staying there, because trying to load it onto a train or use the roads to ferry it to another side of the front would be far too impractical. You're also fighting a war where hundreds of thousands of hostile troops and thousands upon thousands of hostile tanks and vehicles are pushing your frontline from all directions. Sure, a Sherman might not be able to fight a Maus in a head-on engagement, but the Sherman can outmanuever and outrun the Maus, and if it decides it wants to disengage, there's no way in hell the Maus is ever keeping up with it. I wouldn't be surprised if the actual tactic would've been to just keep slamming smoke rounds into its face while one was getting out of engagement range. 5: Last but not least, supply. Sure, the Maus was a big, intimidating battlestation on tracks, but even if it did manage to get produced and deployed in a capacity to potentially make a difference, every single one is a massive drain on fuel, ammunition, spare parts, and crew, both of the tanking and mechanic variety. Not to mention you'd have to ensure those crews assigned to it knew how to operate the behemoth and didn't wind up botching the transmission or fouling one of the important internal systems. This doesn't even get into the risks or time required to reload and resupply it after engagements, the potential hazard of it running out of fuel or breaking down en-route to the fight, or the fact that the second any Allied forward scouts got their eyes on one they'd be forwarding its coordinates to every artillery battery active in the theater or every available strike craft looking to earn another mark for tanks killed. I'm no history expert, but part of me is left to think pursuit of ordeals like the Panther II (If that's even what it might be called) and the E-75 would've been...Maybe not more practical, but more reasonable in implementation and returns. Even then, Germany still would've lost, as when one's this far on the backfoot and this far into the pit of no potential recovery...Even a wonder weapon probably isn't enough to make a difference.

2:38 What the hell was that kill? Now I get why I died in the past to that 75mm

Well, tanks are all about balance. If you make a tank super heavy and near invisible to armor penetration, it will have some major downsides that limit its use to specific scenarios. Transportation becomes a nightmare and so does maintenance and recovery. In the end the disadvantages outweigh the advantages heavily.

Not to mention by that point the allied airforces had effectively green air so a super slow huge tank would be a free kill for any plane that could carry a bomb bigger than 50KG

ironically, with how costly the Maus was to build, it was probably cheaper to build multiple AT bunkers with the gun

Very By the time they could be fielded.. On both fronts all German airpower would be completely decimated leaving it nye unprotected against aerial attacks. And considering how large the silhouette is.. It would be hard to miss Not to mention the problems with transport, repair infrastructure

The reason I like the Maus is it seems so crazy and the fact the German's considered going even further with the Ratte. Same basic idea with the German proposed battleship plan that had ships double the weight of the Iowa class battleship.

While the electric transmission was referenced as having been used for tanks and busses, I think it's notable that the real sucess of such systems were on trains, which revolutionized that industry, difference being of course that they have all the space in the world to give adequate cooling and power generation, in addition to the obvious differences in traction type and load demand. What are the "superheavy" soviet tanks that supposedly brought about the Maus? I'm aware of WoT having the KV-4 and KV-5, but it seems to me like they lack any basis in reality.

I was waiting this video. Thanks Spookston!

It's like if a 12 year old designed a tank tbh

I remember watching a video about the maus and Why it would fail, one of the arguments was that, by the time the maus would've come out, it wouldn't have been able to do much because allied CAS were pretty much free to bomb it to hell since the luftwaffe was basically gone.

I literally just today finished researching the Maus. Perfect timing!

The problem with the Maus is its basic design. It would be completely ineffective and unusable in combat. It was extremely vulnerable to aircraft and would have been just a slow-moving artillery target. It honestly kinda seems like something someone with no real idea on how warfare works would design a tank, "Just put an absurd amount of armor and a really big gun on it, then it will kill everything." The Maus would have basically no strategic mobility and likely by the time it got to the front, the battle would be over.

In my opinion, the peak of heavy tank design was the IS-7, what a beast of engineering

You posting about the Maus just made me so happy

I love this series, will you ever do a plane version? How good was the mustang, the hurricane, so on so forth?

The Maus was basically a land battleship, and it would have failed for the same reason sea battleships did. Air power. While ground attack aircraft were not as effective against ground vehicles as is sometimes claimed, it would have been different for the Maus. That thing is so big, sliw and clumsy that it is almost impossible to miss. Sure, you might have to arm your ground attack aircraft with 250-500 pound bombs, so that even a not so near miss will take it out, at least track it, but that's easily worth it. That is, if it could get to the battlefield at all, due to it having a fuel consumption closer to a battleship than a regular tank....

The Maus would have been an awful heavy tank, but it was not designed as a heavy tank. It was designed as a "tracked bunker", and in that role it could have performed adequately. Attach 3-5 of these to an engineering section, roll them into prepared positions, and use them as bunkers. This would have allowed defensive positions to be more mobile while still giving better protection and firepower than could be provided by other vehicles. The Maus wasn't as good as some people claim, but it definitely wasn't as bad as some people claim either. It's still debatable if the resources were better spent on more assault guns, though.

The mouse is such a hillariously stupid tank and I love it simply because of that

In practice the Maus would be a half-hour distraction at best, and free food for whatever aircraft was carrying bombs got to it first at worst

I think the maus would have been scary but i dont think it would have changed anything about the wars outcome. Honestly i think hitler was way too obsessed with armor rather than providing better infantry equipment and bolstering materials for the luftwaffes planes to be repaired or replaced. There was immense pressure from hitler to produce more tanks that were heavier and heavier. I think this really hurt them in the long run.

Also the fact German fuel storages and you could hardly get the damn thing anywhere between the low speed and weight preventing it from crossing a lot of bridges in Germany.

I just want to say that Spookston still hasn't keybinded a separate button for firing the secondary, and possible tertiary weapons. He still fires both guns at the same time though he has a button for switching firing modes. I find it weird because it takes extra time select the secondary weapon and fire then.

Maus was a total clown project yet no fuel resources and enemy bombers easily able to kill it even if maus was able to survive from bombs still would broke down from heaviness and no spare parts as well

Hey Spookston, What are you thoughts on the VK30.01 (D) and VK30.02 (D). Outside of being able to be mistaken for the VK30.02(M) and Panther, do you think it would've been more viable/effective than the Panther?

Dude for 200,000 subscribers you should do a Q&A

I really apricate your content for my learning and history also by watching you i can win internet arguments

This is my best performing tank in WT, had many triple aces on city maps which i cant do in other tanks,the amount of shells u can take and keep going...

3:45 obviously this video is overlooking the Maus’ real purpose: high intensity anti-air.

This thing was too heavy to transport effectively. It was too difficult to repair reliably. It would have been bombed or artillery'd to death. A very poorly conceptualized tank design. (Edit) I see a lot of individuals have a great many misconceptions about the Maus. Dare I say delusions, even. I can only imagine what spook is dealing with right now. Metal fatigue, no matter how thick the armor is, will cause it to break. It would run out of fuel before it could make any significant progress with germany's supply lines in shambles. Even if it wasn't taken out by allied ordnance or its massive fuel consumption, it was more likely to break it's own parts due to the stress exerted on its components from such extreme weight. To say nothing of it getting potentially stuck in the terrain. A problem even far lighter tanks suffer from. I realize some individuals will continue to be delusional about the Maus, but I ask anyone who's read this far that has even the faintest glimmer of wisdom to not listen to the deluded, and look at the Maus objectively, with everything surrounding it in mind. Thanks for trying to help spread knowledge, Spook.

Not to mention transport, no bridge or train was strong enough to carry 188 tons

That just hurts me internally 2:33.

There were two Maus projects aswell Tank encyclopedia has some articles about that and I think at some point ferdinant wanted to mount an AA turret on it too

the fact they even built as many as they did is astounding 24 hulls completed there was 12 turrets ready for mounting but it was such a waste of resources that could've gone to better use.

BRO NO SHOT THE FIRST CLIP WAS YOU KILLING ME LMAO

Yay. New sportstime upload

Oh, it was absolutely awesome... from technical standpoint. As a series of really great components that should have stayed separate:D P.S.: so, apparently you don't use Maus's 75mm as glorified smoke launcher? Why?

Yoooo spooks im struggling in tier 4 germany and im constantly getting uptiered is there any tips you can give me on how to take out things like the t-55 or m103 with the tiger 2

One thing a lot of people I think seem to overlook is that the Maus would have been an easy target for allied air power, and during the end of the war, Germany didn't have the production to be able to make enough individual Maus tanks as well as supporting anti-aircraft to change anything. It's like when people look at the P.1000 Ratte and think "That could have changed the entire war for Germany." Yeah, it could have, because it would have likely sped up the war significantly if Germany wasted their time, manpower and resources on something that would be a literal bomb-magnet. Sure, it had anti-air built onto it, but it would have been so slow and such a large target that even high-altitude-bombing would hit it, with alrge bombs at the very least destroying the tracks nad immobilizing it, allowing other bombs to hit it. Imagine how hard it'd be to change the tracks on a thousand-tonne tank.

Hey man, could you talk about APCR. Apparently it’s underperforming than it’s irl counterpart. It said that it has the same penetration capabilities than regular AP

Even if the Maus was constructed today with modern materials and methods it still wouldn't work. And even if it did, the "mobile bunker" concept can be achieved in better ways. Like making bunkers.... or design a tank purely for defense, like the Swedish S-tank.

hi will you make a How bad was the E-100 or all E series?

If it was used in combat then one T-34 would drive under it to stop it and also act as a slope for the another T-34 that would drive onto the Maus's hull to block its turret in the sideways position and then the third T-34 would shoot into Maus's radiators from the high ground

Using the electric motor as the transmission also was done on diesel electric subs and even on some ww2 steam turbine ships. Drachinifiel had discussed this in a video.

3:36 that shot was just.. Damn.

The maus had such a primitive design philosophy its hilarious

wouldn't be surprised if 5 guys with 1 anti tank mine a single frag and handgun could solo a Maus

The kill at 3:45 is insane. Imagine your just chillin in a helicopter and a 128mm round just smacks you.

can you do one for the churchill heavy tank?

0:25 even if germany had started production i doubt it would´ve changed the war. Firstly, its a big target, and considering its sheer size, the fuel consumption would be quite severe, likewise with the lack of resources. Even if they had it in the 1930s i doubt it would win them the war.

Maus: Enters Battlefield M1931 (B-4) "Stalin's Sledgehammer": So, You have chosen Death

Even if by a miracle for the germans, they had produced a whole divistion of Maus, shipped them to the front without breaking bridges, and have them and their crew ready to roll out into battle, they would either run out of fuel/break down very quickly or get decimated by allied/soviet air supremacy before any meaningful breakthrough in allied lines xD

something i like to say is, if your tank requires a ladder to get into, all the enemy needs to be able to destroy is a ladder. this pertains to any aspect of a vehicle needing to be supported heavily by something else

i've noticed in your video you seem to fire both the 75 and main cannon. do you do this on purpose? or just too lazy for that extra keybind for the like. 3 tanks that have multiple main cannons?

How come both of your cannons are firing in the background gameplay? You can make individual bindings in controls

I did a project on the Maus on why it failed for one of my college engineering classes. This is why the Maus is my favourite tank, such a cool failure.

I looked up the oxiclean commercial, and this was the 2nd video 😭😭😭

name’s the more frightening part honestly. they were most aware of their madness yet embraced it anyway. that said next to everyone tried to build phat af tanks so i would not mock them. somehow their shortcomings were not obvious enough to always stop at the drawing board.

man back in times i played wot like 6-7 years ago, maus and e-100 was the only ones i was going for everywhere

idea for tanks that should be added to wt: tanks of the German "E series", which the E100 was a part of. This series includes the E25, E50, E75, and tank destroyer modifications of the E100.

What people actually still think this could have changed something? I thought it was universally considered impractical and a massive target to planes.

2:39 how did that kill him?

I guess you could say the disadvantages of a super heavy tank outweigh the advantages... super heavily

Even if the logistical issues of the Maus were completely ignored, the Maus as a tank simply could not be used effectively in most combat situations. The horrid mobility and practically nonexistent visibility would render the Maus completely useless against and at the mercy of spread out infantry and other tanks, which perhaps could not destroy it, but could easily disable it, at which point repairing it in the field would be literally impossible. The Maus is little more than a nearly immobile, impenetrable steel cube with a gun at the end of it. It’s sole advantage would be against enemy tanks in open areas that it could somehow see and shoot at despite the horrible visibility.

It makes my little brain go crazy when I see spookston shoot both guns Simultaneously

Maus: **exists** Allied bombers: om-nom-nom.

One reason that E100 was canned off the gate was the width. Maus, for all her size and mass, was still narrow enough to fit on a rail car and be transported. Where as E100, tried to reduce ground pressure and leave more space for fuel by having even wider tracks, and had the side skirts to help protect the slightly thinner sides. As a result, to transport it by rail, you'd have to take off all the side skirts, break track, and replace them with much more narrow tracks, then find somewhere to store those modules. Then reverse all that once you were there. And I remember hearing from somewhere(Not sure where), that one of the heads of the German armor board felt the proposed power train and engine would be inadequate in every measure for a tank of that mass. Say what you want about Porsche, but he did have good ideas to make very flawed concepts mostly work.

Woah good job!

I can't even imagine something this heavy moving in a normal pace on land

"originally called Mammoth"... me, looking at Command and Conquer, sipping tea "interesting, very interesting..."

The maus: invincible to almost every allied gun. P 47s: *heavy breathing intensifies*

could you do a video on the Tortoise? i've heard that it wasnt actually all that bad, by super-heavy standards anyways.

Great video as always. Some notes: The Ferdinand actually used the already produced Porsche Tiger hulls as a basis, thats why only a few of them were made.

How do you raise the redical like that

The way I view heavy tanks is that their advantages could help win some battles, but their disadvantages would help you lose the war.

How do you do this may I ask 3:37

3:40 lmao what a shot on that heli

The impressive thing is the overall growth of armament on tanks... the new German Panther has a 130mm gun, slightly larger than the 12.8cm behemoth shipped on the Maus.

Just wanted to highlight that the kill at 3:45 is AMAZING hahah

With it's 160km range and 4~5km range Gun....you don't need to fight it. just go AROUND it, it's not going to pursue you because it will run out of fuel. So just go around it and cut the supply line.

As a tank, your main threats aren't even other tanks. Artillery, CAS and infantry have always been the primary threats to a tank. A super heavy tank only makes it easier for those threats to kill you. It's almost like everybody realized this hence the nearly universal adoption of MBTs.

Can you do the Aluminum/Steel Wheels of the Panhard EBR and its effects on mobility off-road?

What about that other thing that is said , that the Maus wasn't capable of "moving more than a metre" without running out of fuel . True , false or something in between ?

The few Maus that would've been built would've find an end like the Bismarck. Air and artillery superiority would've made this beast irrelevant.

The Maus, in my opinion (and most superweapons in general, really) is the kind of project that should've only really been undertaken by a nation not at war looking for a defensive superweapon to act as a deterrent. And, further, such an expenditure would essentially depend on some form of technological plateau that has not been observed to my knowledge in the past century in order for it to provide any return on investment. Ultimately, the reality with superheavy tanks was that armaments were simply advancing too quickly for them to ever have been of value, even in an optimal use case. Outside of the realms of fiction, the situations in which they would be useful are few, and not enough to offset the ridiculous development, production, and operational costs they incur. And all of this is ignoring the same elephant in the room that slew the super-battleship-air power. Again, barring some flight of fancy in fiction, these things would be sitting ducks for dive bombers, which would render all of that expensive production and maintenance work moot in moments. In short, superheavy tanks should be confined to the realms of speculative fiction-where they are often quite beloved for their cool factor, I will grant (like Warhammer 40k's Baneblade, which... appears to have had its spec-sheet written-up by someone who merely checked the Maus for reference without any concept that armor had already advanced massively in the decades after its design, let alone in the 38 millennia that would transpire to arrive at the setting in question, even with the way it handles technology). However, taking a realistic approach to their limitations and justifications is important. In 40k's case, the Baneblade is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to ridiculously over-the-top equipment that the Imperium needs just to have a chance in the galaxy it inhabits. Even then it plays fast and loose with a great deal, of course, and different settings might need radically different methods to justify their own superheavies, but the point stands that you can concoct scenarios (confined to the reaches of speculative or fantastical fiction, granted) in which a superheavy is not just feasible, but actively a good idea. I suppose, then, this is a bit more of a writer's perspective than a more technical one, at this point, but I find that side particularly interesting as I work on my own material.

2:38 how tf did that puny little HEAT one shot the entire crew right there?

When it comes to WW2 super vehicles in general, I think people often over look the importance of aircraft. When you look at battles like Normandy, where the Germans had a clear advantage in armor, the tanks that seemed unstoppable to the Sherman's became easy targets to the strike aircrafts.

I never really thought how bad the maus would have been till I saw this video so thx

the people who made this machine had a impossible project and they did it and your teaching it too the world thank you spooky boy

the engine tech of these monsters always interests me. 1000 horsepower back then was the witchcraft inside a 30 liter engine, and now 1000 horsepower is a 3 liter whirly boy with some funny gas up the intake. And yet most of our tanks still only use 1500 or so at most. I know of course torque is the real factor to be measured here, but still. we never really made engines more powerful, just quieter, smaller, more efficient

I wonder how many Panthers or Panzer varieties the steel could be used for

How did he lift the turret like that while keeping the crosshairs still @ 3:35?

Awesome 😎

Man I can't wait to have this puppy out in the battlefield... Sinks seconds after leaving the concrete assembly line in a mud puddle, can't tow because of weight, already used all the fuel in the region starting, bombers pick it up miles away, exhaust turns the factory into an oven, breaks down with no access to crucial components. Luckily the blast from the bombs relocated the factory around it allowing use to disassemble it for repairs. Realize there is nothing left but tons on tons of scrap metal. Muh "German engineering"

Name of the video: how bad was maus The video: preceds to kill any tank with maus

Lol @ that cent at 2:20. A scoped in maus not exactly what you wanna see around a corner

the weight was the main issue it didnt go in to manufacturing - during a demonstration,it sank 1.5 meters down in mud in a field,and the gemans barley got it out - wook them over a week And there wasn't any bridges that coud hold the weight,so a sorkel-system was developed..dont remember the exact depths,but i belive the intention was to manage depths up to 12 meters.. - crawling at the bottom of rivers and such