Japan's Super Battleship——Yamato

Yamato,named after the ancient Japanese Yamato Province, was the lead ship of the Yamato class of battleships that served with the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II. She and her sister ship, Musashi, were the heaviest and most powerfully armed battleships ever constructed, displacing 72,800 tonnes at full load and armed with nine 46 cm (18.1 inch) main guns. Neither ship survived the war.

1/10 Yamato Model

Laid down in 1937 and formally commissioned a week after the Pearl Harbor attack in late 1941, Yamato was designed to counter the numerically superior battleship fleet of the United States, Japan's main rival in the Pacific. Throughout 1942 she served as the flagship of the Japanese Combined Fleet, and in June 1942 Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto directed the fleet from her bridge during the Battle of Midway, a disastrous defeat for Japan. Musashi took over as the Combined Fleet flagship in early 1943, and Yamato spent the rest of the year, and much of 1944, moving between the major Japanese naval bases of Truk and Kure in response to American threats. Although she was present at the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944, Yamato played no part in the battle.
The only time she fired her main guns at enemy surface targets was in October 1944, when she was sent to engage American forces invading the Philippines during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. The Japanese were unaware that Admiral Halsey's entire massive fast carrier task force with battleships had been successfully lured away by a feint. Left behind was only a slow escort carrier task force armed against ground forces with no hope of protecting vulnerable troop transports from the Yamato. But as the American light ships resembled larger cruisers and carriers, the Japanese believed they were fighting the main fleet. The massive guns of Yamato would not be turned against battleships, but in the Battle off Samar would instead be a seemingly mismatched showdown against the industrial production of small and inexpensive light ships and carriers. Nevertheless desperate sailors and aviators delivered accurate 5 in shellfire and torpedoes from ships as small as destroyer escorts. These attacks wrought enough havoc on the Japanese surface force to turn them back, but only after inflicting losses comparable in ships and men to the Battle of Midway.
During 1944, the balance of naval power in the Pacific decisively turned against Japan and, by early 1945, the Japanese fleet was much depleted and critically short of fuel stocks in the home islands, limiting its usefulness. In April 1945, in a desperate attempt to slow the Allied advance, Yamato was dispatched on a one way voyage to Okinawa, where it was intended that she should protect the island from invasion and fight until destroyed. The task force was spotted south of Kyushu by US submarines and aircraft, and on 7 April 1945 she was sunk by American carrier-based bombers and torpedo bombers with the loss of most of her crew.

A New Generation——Gerald R. Ford-Class Aircraft Carrier

 
^{The Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier (or Ford-class) is a supercarrier currently being built to replace some of the United States Navy's existing Nimitz-class carriers. The new vessels will have a hull similar to the Nimitz carriers, but will introduce technologies developed since the initial design of the previous class (such as the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System), as well as other design features intended to improve efficiency and running costs, including reduced crew requirement. The first ship of the class, the Gerald R. Ford, has hull number CVN-78.}

<sup>Carriers of the Ford-class will incorporate design features including:
    Advanced arresting gear.
    Automation, which reduces crew requirements by several hundred from the Nimitz-class carrier.
    The updated RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrow missile system.
    AN/SPY-3 dual-band radar (DBR), as developed for Zumwalt-class destroyers.
    An Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) in place of traditional steam catapults for    launching aircraft.
    A new nuclear reactor design (the A1B reactor) for greater power generation.
    Stealth features to help reduce radar profile.
    The ability to carry up to 90 aircraft, including the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, Boeing EA-18G Growler, Grumman C-2 Greyhound, Northrop Grumman E-2 Hawkeye, and Lockheed Martin F-35C Lightning II, Sikorsky SH-60 Seahawk helicopters, and unmanned combat air vehicles such as the Northrop Grumman X-47B.

The navy believes that with the addition of the most modern equipment and extensive use of automation, it will be able to reduce the crew requirement and the total cost of future aircraft carriers. The primary recognition feature compared to earlier supercarriers will be the more aft location of the navigation island to make aircraft movements more efficient.  The Ford class are intended to sustain 160 sorties per day for 30+ days, with a surge capability of 270 sorties/day, but the Director of Operational Testing Michael Gilmore has criticised the unrealistic assumptions used in these forecasts and has indicated sortie rates similar to the 120/240 per day of the Nimitz class would be acceptable.</sup>

Largest-Calibre Rifled Weapon——Schwerer Gustav

Schwerer Gustav (English: Heavy Gustaf, or Great Gustaf) and Dora were the names of two German 80 cm K (E) railway guns. They were developed in the late 1930s by Krupp as siege artillery for the explicit purpose of destroying the main forts of the French Maginot Line, the strongest fortifications then in existence. The fully assembled guns weighed nearly 1,350 tonnes, and could fire shells weighing seven tonnes to a range of 47 kilometres (29 mi). The guns were designed in preparation for the Battle of France, but were not ready for action when the battle began, and in any case the Wehrmacht's Blitzkrieg offensive through Belgium rapidly outflanked and isolated the Maginot Line's World War I-era static defenses, forcing them to surrender uneventfully and making their destruction unnecessary. Gustav was later employed in the Soviet Union at the siege of Sevastopol during Operation Barbarossa, where among other things, it destroyed a munitions depot buried in the bedrock under a bay. The guns were moved to Leningrad, and may have been intended to be used in the Warsaw Uprising like other German heavy siege pieces, but the rebellion was crushed before they could be prepared to fire. Gustav was later captured by US troops and cut up, whilst Dora was destroyed near the end of the war in 1945 to avoid capture by the Red Army.

Dora's shell

 

It was the largest-calibre rifled weapon ever used in combat, the heaviest mobile artillery piece ever built in terms of overall weight, and fired the heaviest shells of any artillery piece. It is only surpassed in calibre by the British Mallet's Mortar and the American Little David mortar (both 36 inch; 914 mm).

Biggest Bomber——Tupolev Tu-160

Tupolev Tu-160

The Tupolev Tu-160 (Russian: Туполев Ту-160, NATO reporting name: Blackjack) is a supersonic, variable-sweep wing heavy strategic bomber designed by the Tupolev Design Bureau in the Soviet Union. Although several civil and military transport aircraft are larger in overall dimensions, the Tu-160 is currently the world's largest combat aircraft, largest supersonic aircraft, and largest variable-sweep aircraft built. Only the North American XB-70 Valkyrie had higher empty weight and maximum speed. In addition, the Tu-160 has the heaviest takeoff weight of any military aircraft besides transports.

Entering service in 1987, the Tu-160 was the last strategic bomber designed for the Soviet Union. 16 aircraft are in use with the Russian Air Force. A planned modernisation of 10 aircraft to Tu-160M standard has been announced.

 Statistics
Role     Supersonic strategic bomber and missile carrier
National origin     Soviet Union
Design group     Tupolev
Built by     Kazan Aircraft Production Association
First flight     19 December 1981
Introduction     30 December 2005 (IOC in 1987)
Status     In service
Primary user     Russian Air Force
Produced     1984–1992, 2000, 2008
Number built     36

But unfortunately, for the Russia's finanial problems, only 36 of this type was produced.

Panzer VIII Maus——Nazi's Land Monster

 

Panzerkampfwagen VIII Maus (Mouse) was a German World War II super-heavy tank completed in late 1944. It is the heaviest fully enclosed armoured fighting vehicle ever built. Only two hulls and one turret were completed before the testing grounds were captured by the advancing Soviet forces.

These two prototypes – one with, one without turret – underwent trials in late 1944. The complete vehicle was 10.2 metres (33 ft 6 in) long, 3.71 metres (12 ft 2 in) wide and 3.63 metres (11.9 ft) high. Weighing 200 metric tons, the Maus's main armament was a 128 mm KwK 44 L/55 gun (55 calibers long barrel), based on the 12.8 cm Pak 44 anti-tank artillery piece also used in the casemate-type Jagdtiger tank destroyer, with an added coaxial 75 mm gun. The 128 mm gun was powerful enough to destroy all enemy armored fighting vehicles at close or medium ranges, and even some at ranges exceeding 3,500 metres (3,800 yd).[2]

The principal problem in the development of the Maus was finding a powerful enough engine for its weight that could be carried in the tank.[clarification needed] Though the specification called for a maximum speed of 20 kilometres per hour (12 mph), no engine was found that could propel the prototype at more than 13 kilometres per hour (8.1 mph) under ideal conditions. The weight also made it impossible to cross most bridges; it was intended to ford or submerge and use a snorkel to cross rivers.

It was intended to punch holes through enemy defences whilst taking almost no damage to any components. Five were ordered, but only two hulls and one turret were completed before the advancing allies found them. Very few of Hitler's generals thought that the Maus would have been any use.

But according to the history, it was proved that this kind of special design was much more inefficient than the mass production, such as T-34, M4 Sherman and Pz.IV.