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Sturmpanzerwagen A7V-U

1918 WORLD WAR 1 X-TANK

History of the armored personnel carrier A7V-U

The A7V-U is an evolution of the bulky A7V assault tank. The A7V became Germany; it was the first locally designed and produced main battle tank, and although around 100 were ordered in early 1917, only 20 entered combat in World War I (1914-1918).

In service, armed primarily with a 57mm main gun and operated by no less than 18 personnel, these proved difficult to maneuver and unreliable, and were therefore not successful. Introduced as its successor, the A7V-U attempts to correct many of the flaws inherent in the original A7V.

The Germans did not turn a blind eye to their progress on the diamond-shaped British tanks. These steel behemoths are capable of traversing trenches, providing some protection on the battlefield, while also being able to fire from cannons and machine guns.

What they lacked was a real rotating turret to mount their main weapon (which was successfully used by Renault's French FT-17).

So the German engineers adopted the British diamond design for their own creation - the A7V-U. The tank keeps its track system out of the main centralized combat cab, running above and below the side structure. The A7V's Holt tractor chassis remains inside the animal. In place of the single 57mm guns, 2 x 57mm guns were installed, which were mounted on side-mounted fins like British tanks of war. A smaller superstructure with viewing slots was added above the fighting compartment to improve the crew's situational awareness in the heat of battle.

The entire building weighs about 40 tons.

A pilot vehicle was completed in June 1918 before the end of the war (arrival of the armistice in November 1918). However, the tank proved to have a heavy bow, an unusually high center of gravity (CoG) and overall weight issues, resulting in an unbalanced machine and an unrealistic combat platform.

Despite these problems, the German government committed in September 1918 to build 20 prototypes of this type, believing that these problems would be resolved when production began. However, all of this came at the end of the war in November of that year - effectively ending work on the A7V-U.