Okay, a new whatziss for you!

XBradTC got it correct when he called it for the T-28.  I figured someone from the tracked combat vehicle fraternity was going to get it.  Hard to take a pic of that thing where it wasn't going to be obvious to anyone who ever saw the lone survivor.



The T28 sitting in front of the Patton Museum of Cavalry and Armor is the lone survivor of two prototype vehicles.  She was designed to be used to break through the German bunker defenses of the Siegfried Line.

Built like a German tank destroyer, it had no turret, which lowered the profile, and saved the weight and developmental complexity of the turret - the weight savings being tossed to give it more armor.  Its total weight when fully equipped was 95 tons, making it the heaviest armored vehicle we ever built.  She was also designed to use existing M4-series Sherman parts where possible, to save development and production time.

Not having anything spiffy like the composite armor of today, the T28 relied on brute force, with the armor in the frontal aspect being up to twelve inches thick.  This was believed to be proof against the German 88mm cannon mounted on the Tigers.   Her dual-track system was intended to give her a ground-pressure similar to the Sherman for cross-country mobility.  In fact, she actually had a slightly lighter ground-pressure.

Heh. 

Then, the geniuses in charge put in a puny gas-burning Ford GAF V-8, delivering all of 410 hp, Given the low gearing required to get the thing moving, that powerplant gave it a top speed of a whopping 8 mph. A scorcher.   The low power also means she wasn't able to climb over very much, and going uphill was a wheeze-inducing activity, too. Then her width and weight also meant she wasn't going to get over many bridges... and at the same time, as mentioned, her obstacle crossing ability was meager, and you begin to understand why only two were built and only one survives.

To get past the bridge (and transportability) problem, her outer set of tracks was removeable, and could be towed behind the beast as a trailer.  This facilitated bridge crossing and fitting it onto a trank transporter or train.  Heh.  With a top speed of 8 mph with a requirement to disassemble and assemble them at bridges, if they'd landed on D-Day they might not have made it to the Siegfried Line before the war was over anyway... 

Her main armament was a 105 mm T5E1 gun and she carried a .50 caliber M2 machine gun, operated by the tank commander.  She would have fought as a component of a team consisting of regular armor and infantry - the latter to defend her while she went about her business, as a lumbering behemoth like this was not nimble enough to fight a mobile battle.  She's a frontal assault vehicle, pure and simple.  An irresistable force to be applied to immovable objects, to answer that age-old question.

The original plan was for a production run of 25 vehicles.  In the event, only two were ever built, and neither of them saw combat.  One was damaged by an engine fire during trials and was scrapped.  The other one vanished from sight and memory (both having been recorded as having been scrapped.

Then someone found her in a field at... Fort Belvoir, Virginia.  Just sitting there, unlovely and unloved.

So, here's a new whatziss for you -



These things - those two things that look somewhat like power plant cooling towers - what are they for?  Any ideas?