In our quest to obliterate fellow humans, humans have attempted some pretty whacky and ghoulish ideas, from the pain ray and Greek Fire to firing the corpses of plague victims at the enemy using a catapult. One suitably stupid (and short-lived) invention was the flying tank, dreamed up by the Soviet Union during World War II. 

Tanks, even the small ones, are pretty hefty, making transporting them to battlefields a bit of an issue. Driving them the whole way leaves them exposed to enemy fire, and so the Soviet Union began experimenting with ways to airlift them to their destinations. For a time, they tried strapping T-27 tankettes to the underside of bombers and landing them on airfields, but the tanks were not capable of doing enough damage to justify risking their expensive aircraft. Other methods involved simply dropping tanks from aircraft into water, or from a very low height, while the crew parachuted down before climbing in and hoping the enemy had not got there first.

But then, during the Second World War, the Soviets came up with another idea; attaching a tank to a glider and allowing it to swoop into battle. The result was the Antonov A-40 Krylya Tanka, roughly translating to “tank wings”. 

In 1940, designer Oleg Antonov attempted to create the gliding tank, essentially bolting biplane wings and a long tail boom onto a small, lighter tank. The idea was that the tank plane would be towed by a larger aircraft and released, and simply glide down to the battlefield before ditching its wings and tail. 

It took several years before a prototype of the flying tank was built and taken for a spin.

“To test fly it, they have to leave the ammunition out and most of the fuel to save weight,” aviation journalist Jim Winchester explained to BBC Future. “The concept was that as the tank’s turret turned, you moved the controls on the wings. You just move the gun left or right.”

In 1942, test pilot Sergei Anokhin had the honor of riding in the tank as it was towed by a Tupolev TB-3 bomber into the air. Quickly, it became apparent that the idea was not a great one, as the drag of the tank plane was too much for the bomber to handle. The tank was released early, but Anokhin was able to glide it down and land safely in a field, before driving it back to the base. 

Though Japan and the UK both attempted to make their own versions of flying tanks, they too failed to make it aerodynamical, and like the Soviets, they quickly abandoned the idea.