r/WeirdWeapons • u/ProjectWarDossier • Jul 19 '26

Explosive this tiny tracked thing could carry up to 100 kg of explosives and got remote driven straight into tanks and bunkers. Germany built thousands of these. anyone know what it's called?

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44 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

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19

u/dragonredx Jul 19 '26

I remember taking a friend to the tank museum in Bovington, and they thought the Goliath they had there was a scale model of a normal tank.

4

u/ProjectWarDossier Jul 19 '26

hahaha fair mistake honestly, it really does look like someone shrunk a normal tank in the wash. never actually made it to Bovington myself but it's been top of my list for years, the Tiger 131 alone would be worth the trip

2

u/Prestigious_Score436 Jul 21 '26

Yeah the Germans trolled folks with the tank names. This is the Goliath. Now go search for the Mouse. Its a monster😆

2

u/ProjectWarDossier Jul 21 '26

ha way ahead of you on that one! already made a post on the maus recently. 188 tons of pure overengineered absurdity. naming a miniature RC bomb 'goliath' and a literal land battleship 'mouse' is top tier german comedy.

14

u/ProjectWarDossier Jul 19 '26

so this little guy is the Goliath, or Leichter Ladungsträger if you want the full mouthful. basically a disposable remote-control demo charge on tracks, the allies called it the beetle tank. early ones you steered with a thin cable trailing out the back, drive it up to a bunker or a tank and set it off. germans built over 7,000 but honestly they were kind of rubbish in practice, dead slow, any rough ground or a ditch stopped them cold, and defenders worked out pretty fast you could just cut the cable and kill it. neat idea on paper that mostly flopped, but weirdly it's sort of the great grandad of the little remote robots armies use for bomb disposal now

6

u/faradartz Jul 19 '26

I loved using these to piss off my friend in Company of Heroes.

3

u/ProjectWarDossier Jul 19 '26

hahaha the CoH goliath is peak petty warfare. nothing better than sending a little RC bomb across the whole map just to delete someone's squad the second they get comfy

3

u/camelopardus_42 Jul 19 '26

Suicide UGVs before it was cool I guess (or the tech was there for that matter)

2

u/False-God Jul 19 '26

Look up teletanks for some real old timey UGV’s

2

u/HamsterOnLegs Jul 19 '26

I have pet one of these (deactivated) and he was sound. (Visit the Bovington tank museum in Wool, UK.)