Such a large vehicle would require the use of a bevy of specially trained personnel to manage the gears, maintain the engines, manage the cannon and machine guns and direct the crew. No fewer than 22 to 27 personnel were part of the tank's standard operating crew. The communications suite was based on the U-Boat submarine systems. Armor protection ranged from 10mm to 30mm in thickness across the various facings.
The original design called for a vehicle of 165 tons but this was inevitably deemed too heavy for even the most basic of functions. As such, the requested weight was brought down to a more manageable 120 tons. This allowed the engineers to work with a shortened, "lighter" hull. However, size was still a major concern and the design soon evolved into a modular-based one, being able to break down into four major sections for railway transport due to the fact that, when whole, the design could not fit atop a standard German railway flatcar.
On June 28th, 1917, the formal Vollmer and Weger design was presented and approved by the German War Ministry for serial production as the "K Grosskampfwagen" - better known today as the "K-Wagen" for short. Initial numbers called for ten tanks to be built, with their construction split between Wegman and Company out of Kassel and Riebe-Kugellager of Berlin for expediency. However, the requests came much too late for Germany was forced into surrender in November of 1918. By this time, only two near-complete prototypes existed, never to see combat action - done in by both the end of the war and a shortage of needed construction material. Both examples were studied by the victors and eventually scrapped.
The K-Wagen concept inevitably suffered from the limitations of all super heavy tank concepts revisited in the upcoming World War 2. She was simply too large and heavy for basic transport, her having to be broken down, loaded, transported to a location, unloaded and reconstructed before she could function. The twin engine design was loud, noisy and underpowered despite the combined horsepower output. The arrangement managed a measly 4.7 miles per hour in ideal conditions - of which World War 1 battlefields lacked. The 77mm cannons were held in limited-traverse sponsons which limited the K-Wagen in a tactical sense. Crew comforts were horrendous to say the least, 27 personnel working in confined spaces full of smoke and lethal fumes. The K-Wagen structure itself was a tempting target to awaiting enemy artillerymen - measuring 43 feet long with a 20 foot width and some 9.8 feet tall.
If the K-Wagen holds some sort of favorable mention in history it is that the system became the first true attempt at designing and constructing a combat-capable super heavy tank. It also remains the second largest tank to see completion behind only the World War 2-era German Panzer VII "Maus" system.
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