The Flying Tank
From a gallant success to a crippling mistake, let’s discuss the flying tank. Yet another name that suggest one of the coolest ideas of all time, but has its execution turn out to be an utter letdown. During WWII, with all nations trying to come up with the one idea that would win the war. The Russians decided that an opportunity they were hugely missing out on was the ability to get tanks into combat efficiently. So they began toying with the notion of fixing up a tank so that it could actually glide into battle after being airdropped.
To test the concept, a pair of glider wings was fixed to a simple light tank, as seen in the photograph. The name of Antonin-V was given to the model. The first problem designers ran into was the fact that it would be nearly impossible to actually find a motor that could fit on the tank and actually generate enough lift to keep it airborne long enough to glide.
There was also the issue that with the enormous wingspan, nobody was able to actually fit it in any plane. Because it would require the design and construction of a series of aircraft that this thing could actually fit in, the Russians decided to just drop the concept altogether.