Not sure if this was posted before, but if so it must have been a long, long time ago. This is so unusual it deserves repeating though. "One of the final developments in German bunker design was the creation of the Kugelbunker or spherical bunker. Similar in appearance to the Finnish ball bunker, its construction method was different. Few details are available about it beside a post-war report made by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency in 1945, which identified one variant. According to this document, in late 1944 Dr Hubert Rusch of the engineering firm Dyckerhoff and Widmann created most of the designs for these bunkers. The army quickly adopted them and ordered several thousand. Production was to be done at about twenty concrete plants in Germany, but the only production centre identified was a Dornbirn, near Lake Constance, where two to three dozen men in each of five concrete plants built them. The largest factory produced six a day. Since production only began in April 1945, all twenty to thirty Kugelbunkers made at Dornbirn went into positions close to the nearby Swiss border. These bunkers consisted of six segments cast in concrete, the top one of which was different since it included a neckpiece that served as an entrance as well as a fighting position. The other five sections were similar, but side entrances could be chiselled into one or two of them after all the segments were cemented together. When the bunker was assembled, its diameter was about 2.1m and its neck was about 37cm high. The interior included a place for four sleeping slabs, although it would not be practical for all four men to stand up at the same time. The man on duty stood on a platform allowing him to occupy the open neck. The wall thickness was 4cm, but the interior was designed for metal reinforcements although none was actually used. The entire bunker weighed less than 2 tons, which facilitated its transportation because several specimens could be placed on a trailer, hauled to the site, and rolled into their excavated position. Since Dornbirn was near the Swiss border, all the bunkers produced there were installed nearby, which made them part of the fictitious National Redoubt." The Kugelbunker
...interesting.....seems like that would be inefficient regarding labor to build it vs something bigger ......also, it adds to the defense ''syndrome''/Maginot Line ...production April 1945--a little late there...goes to show you how out of tune some of the Germans were regarding the war's outcome
That's why I wasn't joking about the septic tank - they'd have building works already set up to produce those.
I think I saw here on the forum a old Scientific American or Popular Mechanics a contemporary article of either a American or English ball shaped tank.
You see, the images posted by ARWR are from The Electrical Experimenter published by Hugo Gernsback (namesake of the above award). The magazine combined science with a good dose of imagination, fiction shall we say, to give some rather interesting reading. The two posted tanks were just many of his numerous ideas. Others were - Land Battleships, yes...old US battleships fitted with gigantic wheels. Radium death rays which would instantly vaporize anything. Homing torpedoes. Radio controlled torpedoes. Automated/Robot soldiers or at least pillboxes. That's just for starters, you can see some here: The superweapon and the Anglo-American imagination — III – Airminded Some more of his wartime and post-wartime ideas can be seen here: Hugo Gernsback Archives - cyberneticzoo.com As you can see, some of his ideas were decades ahead of his time & technology, and some were just a good imagination at work - although in another couple decades who knows.
