>>12124502 (cont)With regards to the vehicle's height two factors become apparent. The first is it's ground clearance, a ground clearance of 2m means vehicles, including the panzer 1, could travel underneath the Ratte. What this means in city fighting is the Ratte does not restrict the movement of friendly infantry and motorized units.
The most stupidest thing people get wrong about the Ratte is it's "bridge crossing ability". Bridge crossing ability was an important design requirement on interwar tanks. It was anticipated that all permanent bridges would be destroyed as soon as they were threatened and thus the requirement for tanks to be able to use PONTOON bridges was a factor. The maximum weight allowance of a pontoon bridge at the time was 18t, this was later increased to 25 tonnes. By 1940 this requirement was completely abandoned as even a relatively light tank like the Crusader III or the Panzer III were more than 18t and much heavier tanks were needed for forced crossings. The the complaint that the Ratte could not "cross bridges" is utterly absurd, no useful tank could cross available pontoon bridges. In terms of concrete and stone bridges, they're designed to carry much larger loads and, assuming they are wide enough for the Ratte, would not have had a problem with it's weight.
More importants, at the specified size and weight the Ratte is BUOYANT. It floats on water. Subtract the turret and the ground clearance and the height of the hull propper is something around 6 meters, 35 meters long and 14 meters wide gives a submerged displacement of 2,940 tonnes, if the Ratte (at the specified 1000 tonnes) drives into deep water the waterline would be about 4m above the bottom of the tracks.
The suspensions would have almost certainly been hydro-pneumatic as Krupp was the world leader in the technology, which means it's possible the tracks could have been retracted into the hull thus providing a relatively hydrodynamic bottom for moving through water.
