Henry Brown wrote:It is not as silly a notion as you think. There have already been threads on steam tanks. Furthermore, it has been awhile but from what I recall RFC commented favorably on the subject of steam tanks in the old thread.
Yes there has, but overall the idea is very much a "well, maybe" thing.
Yes it´s doable, but steam has too many negatives for any steamtanks to be "good", and they would likely be logistical nightmares.
There´s plenty good reason why steamcars and steamtanks etc never caught on in real world history.
And in this case i believe RFC is overly optimistic, as his focus on the Doble steam engine looks heavily on the best sides while not giving its flaws enough attention.
For example, if the driver was careless while starting a Doble steam car, it could go backwards instead of forwards...
Its minimal water tank system works great, as long as all valves, piping and seals remain in perfect mint condition. Something they do at most hours or days after first use.
After that point, water loss during operation is going to be more and more noticeable.
Even at best, the Doble car was twice the weight and fuel economy of a similar car at the time, before water/steam loss becomes an issue, or water is even counted as part of the supply needed.
So, even with an optimised steam setup, a steam tank would need to use about twice the weight and four times the size of a primitive petrol engine, and at least 3 times minimum the fuel/water.
And the big kiler in that comparison is actually the size one, if you have a massive supply train you can definitely handle the fuel/water deliveries needed, a much heavier engine is bad but can be overcome by making the tank less capable...
But the increased size of the engine, and the need for water tankage(water isn´t very high density, so you probably need at least a small bathtub worth to assure enough operational range), that means you´re forced into making the tank overall bigger to accommodate, and every time you make a tank bigger, you make the armour of the tank MUCH heavier.
And to that there adds of course the trouble that is the fact that it´s much easier to build an antitank gun, than it is to make a tank heavily armoured enough to be able to resist said antitank gun.
And the extra size of the engine compounds this problem badly.
And of course, it´s going to be damned hard to have a steam tank that is quick to respond to a driver, making it easier for AT guns to kill it.
Overall, yes a steam tank is 100% possible, even potentially realistic, but the logistics to support them, probably isnt. And their effectiveness would be severely limited except under perfect conditions(which of course MIGHT stilla actually make them good enough to be worth their cost to build and use on a rare few occasions).
The series from what i get is heading towards something that might be compared to the ACW era, and not even the union forces at that time could realistically be called capable of supporting more than a handful or two of steamtanks, even if they built them(which they could have). And then only as long as they stay relatively close to a functional railroad for supplies.
