At the height of the First World War, Russian designers began work on a new egg-shaped "tank" measuring 960 by 605 meters, capable, according to their plan, to crush any enemies in its path.
In March 1915, the situation on the Russian-German front, which in Western literature is usually denoted by the term "Eastern Front", was extremely unstable and not particularly favorable for the Russian Empire. The German offensive led to the encirclement of the Russian army in Galicia (now western Ukraine) and Poland.
It was from there that a letter was sent to St. Petersburg marked "personally for His Imperial Majesty", in which the details of the project of a new, truly colossal in size, weapon were set out. The letter was titled: "Project of a machine for the destruction of trenches and enemy fortresses, or" Epicycloid "Oboi".
“Thanks to the large, armored, motor-driven roller or barrel, we can simply drive through the enemy's fortifications. This is the essence of my project”, - wrote the author, designer Ivan Semchishin to Tsar Nicholas I.
Semchishin proposed to build a giant metal "city" of an ellipsoid, or ovoid, shape, which could move forward unhindered, crushing the enemy. The futuristic egg was supposed to be made so large that heavy artillery, workshops, sleeping quarters, sewerage, ventilation, gas supply stores, and even telephone networks could be placed inside.
According to the author of the project, his epicycloid did not need wheels in the classical sense of the word. Instead, it was supposed to be a wheel in itself, driven by a complex system of steam engines, pendulums and dynamos of unprecedented power. This system will allow the moving fortress to move through fields and forests at speeds up to 321 kilometers per hour, literally sweeping away everything in its path.
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“This rotating fortress, hundreds of meters high, will move freely through the valleys and hills. She will be able to roll over hills, forests, rivers, swamps, cities and villages. "Oboi" will be completely invulnerable to guns and small arms and mines, it will not be obstructed by trenches, anti-tank ditches, barbed wire fences, as well as bombs and incendiary mixtures. He will easily crush any military equipment of the enemy,”Semchishin wrote to the tsar.
However, the Russian army in 1915 did not even have enough ammunition for conventional guns, so the construction of a giant "egg of death", of course, was postponed indefinitely. To this day, "Wallpaper" remains one of the most futuristic and incredible projects in the history of military design thought.
Igor Abramov