Radschlepper Ost
type of Prime mover
Radschlepper Ost, literally "wheeled tractor east", also known as Škoda RSO or Porsche 175, was a German heavy four-wheel drive military tractor used during World War II. It was designed by Ferdinand Porsche in 1941 and produced by Škoda in Mladá Boleslav. Around 206 vehicles were produced between the years 1942–1944.
History
The idea of a heavy multipurpose tractor, intended for the prepared invasion of the Soviet Union supposedly came from Adolf Hitler. In 1941, Ferdinand Porsche prepared a design of a four-wheel drive tractor, distinguished by its large diameter - 1.50 m (4 ft 11 in) - steel cleated wheels. The vehicle was powered by Porsche's own design air-cooled, inline-four petrol engine of 6,023 cc (368 cu in) displacement. As a starter, a two-cylinder petrol engine (half of KdF-Wagen engine) was used.
Final development and production took place in the Škoda automobile plant in Mladá Boleslav, in what was then the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The RSO went through its first trials in 1942, but results were disappointing; high weight and narrow wheels caused high ground pressure, causing the tractor to get stuck easily even on a relatively solid surface. On icy surfaces, the vehicle was almost impossible to steer. Fuel consumption was also unfavourably high.
“Radschlepper Ost” enters the record as type of Prime mover. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Radschlepper, type and Prime can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Radschlepper Ost” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.