Weapons

This Russian Howitzer Had a Bigger Gun Than Iowa-Class Battleships

During the early years of the Cold War, American and Soviet strategic thinking firmly believed that the opening hours of the next major European war would involve incredibly devastating salvos of nuclear weapons. This assumption dominated strategic thinking in the 1950s, and planners developed a wild array of prototype tanks, turboprops, and jets that would be able to survive these crucial first hours by either avoiding nuclear explosions all together, or by being impervious to nuclear weapons thanks to excellent armor protection.

During the early Cold War years, the primary means of delivering nuclear payload was via the air from bombers, or from land—by artillery. And not just any artillery, massively large artillery. The 2B1 Oka is a prime example of huge nuclear-capable artillery that thankfully never made it past the prototype stage.

2B1 Oka

The Oka gets its name from the Oka River, in central Russia. It was a self-propelled howitzer, essentially an armored tank hull without a turret that had an artillery piece mated to the top. The Oka used a T-10 heavy tank hull as a chassis. The T-10 was equipped with a diesel engine with a respectable 750 horsepower output. Since the Oka used an actual tank hull for movement rather than a specially-built hull, it had better protection, at a higher weight cost. This higher weight combined with the impossibly large cannon on top severely hindered mobility.