The Panzer VIII Maus was the heaviest tank ever built. It measured about 33 feet long, 12 feet wide, 12 feet high, and weighed almost 200 tons. Its secondary armament was a 75mm coaxial gun instead of a machine gun.
Its main gun was a 128mm monster capable of destroying any Allied tank at ranges of up to 2.2 miles. Even that was not enough for Hitler, who thought that the 128mm looked like a toy gun on the Maus. So he ordered the gun increased to 150mm.
A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.
I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.
A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.
