A7V/U Tank

[David]

The very inferior cross-country performance of the A7V was apparent at an early stage: the capture of British Mark IV tanks at Cambrai in Novem­ber 1917 enabled the German engineers to examine the British machines in detail and better appreciate the good points of their design as well as their weaknesses. The great feature of the British tanks was their ability to move across shell-torn and entrenched ground - a feature owing much to the overall tracks and low centre of gravity helped by the armament being placed in side sponsons. The British machines were designed only for a short life and for ease of production, however, and lacked refinements and did not even have sprung tracks.

It was at first proposed that an exact copy of the British Tank, Mark IV should be put into production in Germany where drawings could have been made up from dimensions taken from captured vehicles. This suggestion was impracticable, first because of the difficulty in many cases of manufacturing identical components and, secondly, would have been wasteful of effort in that most if not all of the materials already in production for the A7V could not continue to be used.

The best solution for the A7V committee was to design a new tank on the lines of the British tanks, but utilizing as many of the original A7V components as possible. The result was known as A7V/U - the suffix denoting “umlaufende Ketten”, or “tracks going all around”. This tank, the prototype of which appeared in June 1918, was generally similar to the British tanks in appearance, although the side sponsons necessitated by the use of overall tracks were placed rather further to the rear. The fact that the tracks were sprung and the relatively high power of the twin Daimler engines uprated to a total of 300 h.p. gave the A7V/U on trials a maximum speed of about 12 km/h ­ around twice that of the British heavy tanks. Its suspension was based on Holt tractor (just as A7V) and was 8.5m long. Improvements over the A7V included increased armour protection and better ventilation. Armament consisted of two Nordenfeld 57mm guns mounted in side sponsons along with four to six 7.92mm Maxim 08/15 machine guns. Armor protection ranged from 20mm to 30mm and entire tank weighted 39.6 tons. A7V/U was operated by the crew of 7 men.

The trials of the A7V/U showed that its heavier weight (as mentioned, nearly 40 tons) made it clumsy in action and limited its tactical employment and, furthermore, the track was liable to be shed by the design of the guide rails. These faults could be overcome, however, and twenty A7V/U’s were ordered on 12 September 1918 although the end of the war put a stop to their production.

There were also plans to make two variants: A7V/U2 was to be a version with smaller sponsons and machine gun mounted in a cupola, while A7V/U3 was to be armed only with machine guns. These projects never materialised.