At that meeting, Krupp presented a conceptual design for their 150-tonne vehicle, but it was short of a full proposal and a decision on whether to accept Krupp’s design or the one from Porsche for the 150-tonne class Panzer was delayed after the 17th November meeting until the end of the year. This gave Krupp 4 weeks to develop their own rival 150-tonne Panzer concept. Promised that a 1,000 to 1,200 hp version of the HL 230 P30 (this would be known as the HL 234) was possible by supercharging*, Krupp’s idea was delayed for four weeks to a meeting of the Panzerkommission in 17th November 1942. In order to do this though, they needed information on engines and transmissions. Woelfert) expressed that Krupp was interested in making its own conceptual rival design for a 150-tonne vehicle. Here, the representative from Krupp (Obering. Porsche) which took place on 11th September 1942. The vehicle which would later form the foundation of the E100 started life in a conversation about the 150-tonne tank ‘Mäuschen’ project (another rival to the Maus from Dr. Porsche’s design would eventually win out over Krupp’s, the Krupp design is arguably a better design and far more practical for production, as it reused off-the-shelf components being used in the Tiger II and Panther. Porsche’s design would eventually weigh-in at around 200 tonnes, but Krupp’s was a smaller vehicle, with removable side armor and nearly 70 tonnes lighter. Krupp had some very different ideas to Porsche on how a heavy tank should look and be protected and, whilst they worked together on the Maus, they were also rivals over whose design would better suit the needs of the military and get into production.

Although Porsche was the overall design lead for the Maus (Typ 205), he was not responsible for the turret or armor, which were Krupp projects. An understanding of what is a very complicated picture of German heavy tank development in WW2 is incomplete without consideration of the program by Krupp as a rival design to the Maus from Dr.

German modern maus tank