Landship

Three types of landships. Top to bottom: sail, wheel and caterpillar types

A landship is a large vehicle that travels on land, as opposed to on water or in space where large vehicles are usually used. Because of their large size, their use on land is seen as impractical due to terrain obstacles, and soft ground that cannot support such large weight. Such problems are non-existent on water and in space. However, vehicles similar to the concept of landships have appeared in various forms in the real world, and more commonly in works of fiction.

Compare amphibious vehicles, which can drive on land and on water, and hovercrafts, which travel above the surface of both masses on an air cushion.

History

Land yachts appeared independently from Pharaonic Egypt, to Ancient China, to 16th Century Holland. These mated sailing rigs to a land vehicle with wheels or in the form of the ice yacht, skis and runners.

In the First World War, the British proposed building "landships" - large (300 tons or more) vehicles capable of crossing the trench systems of the Western Front, and the Landships Committee was formed to investigate these ideas for equipping the Naval Brigades. The impracticality of building such large vehicles and the needs of the British Army for more numerous smaller vehicles led to the much smaller first tanks. However, until after the Second World War, the British would continue to think of tanks in naval terms; e.g., the Cruiser tank operating like the ships of the same name.^{[citation needed]} Quickly proving impractical were the battleship-equivalent heavy tanks, such as the multi-turreted Vickers A1E1 Independent^{[citation needed]} and its assorted offspring. The Russian Tsar Tank, a super-heavy tricycle gun platform, was scrapped after a prototype proved difficult to maneuver and the vehicle was deemed vulnerable to ground fire.

The Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte, with size comparison to Maus tank and Tiger I

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Two super-heavy tanks, the Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte and Landkreuzer P. 1500 Monster, were the closest things ever to be designed that approaches the popular fictional conception of a landship. The Maus was the only super-heavy tank ever built by the Germans.

Bucket-wheel excavators are the biggest (externally-powered) land vehicles ever built by man, but do not fit into the popular conception of a landship. The largest self-powered land vehicles are NASA's two crawler-transporters.

The Mountbatten class hovercraft, is the largest civilian hovercraft ever built, and is capable of traveling over relatively smooth land in addition to water. It is capable of carrying 418 people, and 60 cars. Hovercraft are also used by the military for their amphibious landing capabilities. They are commonly referred to as air-cushioned landing craft. These vehicles are usually very large compared to other land vehicles, and commonly carry other land vehicles like jeeps and armored vehicles.

Fictional description

In fiction, a landship is a very large vessel or vehicle designed for travel over land. They can be of various sizes, shapes, made of different materials and have different methods of propulsion. Landships are differentiated from normal ground vehicles by their larger sizes and complexity.

Most depictions have landships travelling over fairly flat and stable surfaces such as roads, trails and plain fields, often able to easily ford normal streams and rivers. They tend to be depicted as slow and lumbering, due to an insinuated relatively poor power-to-weight ratio. Nevertheless, they remain a popular idea due to the visual impressiveness of their great size.

Landships are mostly used for exploration, trade, transport or war. They may or may not be armed, but armed ones tend to look like actual warships of old, with multiple weapon systems and gun turrets.

Methods of propulsion

Self-propelled

Self-powered real-life "landships" are usually powered by internal combustion engines with horsepower levels measured in thousands. They either mechanically propel the machine through a drivetrain (like most tanks), or ultimately end up running electric motors through intermediate generators (essentially being large electric vehicles).

An example of the latter is the NASA crawler-transporter: the 16 traction motors have their own power supply, consisting of two 2,750 hp Alco diesel engines driving four 1 megawatt generators. Two additional smaller-scale supplies are also onboard: one runs miscellanies like lighting and ventilation, the other provides power to the Mobile Launcher Platform when borne.

Power sources used in fiction tend to vary, ranging from large steam engines in steampunk to things like fusion reactors in science fiction.

The type of solid physical contact maintained with the ground usually comes in the form of large continuous track or wheel arrays. More imaginative ideas in fiction include anti-gravity systems and screw propulsion.

Externally-powered

In this type, the main power supply is not on the vehicle itself. For instance, while the Bagger 288's mechanical drives are onboard, the power needed to run them comes from an external source. Alternatively, a landship may be pushed or pulled by the land equivalent of a tugboat, or even run on sail power.

Fictional appearances

Due to their large sizes, landships are impractical in real life (except for tanks and other armored fighting vehicles). However, they are featured in works of fiction, as land-based counterparts of water ships and airships.

Books, comics & manga

File:Big Tray Class Land Battleship (Gundam).jpg

A Big Tray class land battleship.

Gundam features "land battleships" in nearly every series to date, typically bearing battleship-style artillery battery arrangements. While varying in size according to series (and sometimes even within a series), they tend to be treated as mobile headquarters by various factions.
H. G. Wells' The Land Ironclads (1904) predated and inspired the development of the tank (see Landships Committee).
Phillip Reeve's Mortal Engines Quartet features Traction Cities, mobile human settlements carrying up to entire city populations.
The Bolo science fiction stories involve powerful tanks, with larger models able to defend planets.

TV & film

Secret of Cerulean Sand and Now and Then, Here and There are examples of anime that feature landships.
Thunderbirds had two episodes featuring road-building landships called Roadlayers.
Star Wars' Sandcrawlers traverse the dunes of desert planet Tatooine.

Computer & video games

Heavy Gear has large factions who maintain entire navies of landships, ranging from the size of a tugboat to twice the volume of a Nimitz class aircraft carrier.
Supreme Commander features the UEF Fatboy mobile factory, a prime example of a landship.
Unreal Tournament 2004 and Unreal Tournament 3 have the Leviathan, a pilotable wheeled landship.
Super Mario Bros. 3 had large landships, hybrids of pirate ships with caterpillar tracks.
Metal Slug 2's fourth level boss is a tracked landship.
Command & Conquer features large vehicles prominently throughout, such as the Tiberium series' GDI "Mammoth" tanks.

Gallery

The Panzer VIII Maus, the largest tank ever built in WWII.
A BHC SR-N4, the world's second-largest hovercraft, is capable of traveling over smooth terrain. It has been superseded by the Russian Zubr class LCAC.
A crawler-transporter transporting a shuttle to the launchpad.
The Neoplan Jumbocruiser double-decker articulated bus, while not technically a landship, is one of the largest passenger-carrying wheeled vehicle in the world. As of 2007^[update], it has been superseded by the Chinese-made "Superliner"^[1] as the largest bus in the world, with a passenger capacity of up to 300 people.

References

^ World's Largest Bus?

[1] World's Largest Bus?

[1]