Can anyone tell what theater would be the most appropriate for Ken's A-13? France 1940, Greece, North Africa? I know next to nothing about British armo(u)r, especially the early war stuff, and I want to make sure I finish mine (what a lovely resin kit, BTW) in the proper colo(u)r scheme.

Thanks and cheers,

Miles T. (now living in Columbus, OH and looking forward to the IPMS Nats in August)

state that the A13 Mk II Cruiser Mk IV/IVA was issued to the 1st Armoured Division in France 1940 and to the 7th Armoured Division in 1940/41 in North Africa. Ken's model has the added external armor, and apparently not all the tanks in France had this modification. Here is a URL for a shot of a Cruiser Mk IV out of action in France: . I have the kit but haven't opened it, so I don't know if there is detail on the inner walls of the turret assembly that would allow you to leave off the applique armor and build an earlier version. Sorry I don't have more on this. Once again, I see the URL listing has pulled up the photo. There is a lot of nice detail on this example, and I may be getting another kit from Ken to try to do this one.

Whoops..... Went to another website..... The tank seen above is NOT the version done by Kengi; it is the earlier A13 Cruiser Mk III, with the smaller turret with no applique armor and a different gun mantlet arrangement. However, the same possibility exists that Ken's kit may have separate applique panels, allowing you to build this earlier turret and do a MK III for France 1940. On the other hand, Mk IVAs like those in Kengi's kit did serve in France, so if you can find pix with markings, go for it. They were better known for their early service in the desert.

easy come, easy go..... Google "A13 Cruiser Mk IV" and you'll find this shot eventually. It's in Henk's website on armor. Sorry about that; I didn't mean to pull the thing over here anyway.

Kens turret is cast with the applique armour integral, so it would not be easy to remove it. Being such a flat shape it would be pretty straightforward to build one from sheet plastic, however. I did start modelling it up in CAD sometime ago, so I could probably generate some 'unfolded' plate shapes if anyone is interested.

Tim

PS  there you go.....  http://www.kipperboxes.co.uk/a13turret.pdf

You will have to adjust these shapes depending on the thickness of plastick you use, these are the sizes the construction should end up measuring. And you will have to rivet and detail it as required of course.

www.fighting48th.com

Bruce, thanks for the info about the A13s in France and the desert, as well as what to search on google. I'm sure I can find the proper site.

Tim, thanks for your help, too and especially for the early turret template.

Cheers,

Miles T.

Use the URL: http://henk.fox3000.com/cruiser.htm> and that's the page with the cruiser models. The disappeared photo was a reference picture, and is on this page.

.

Bugger now I've got to buy another A13!!! Thanks Tim!

Hi Miles;

You may have this pic in your files, but others may not...



And a decent turret-to-rear view also...

I hadn't seen that photo before. Pretty clear shot, especially of the camo pattern.

Cheers,

Miles

that's the way the way to do it..... Neatness DOES count. Wrap up everything so Jerry can take it home in one package.

I'm trying to imagine how that track wound up like that. Given its weight, someone went to a hell of a lot of trouble. But, WHY???

and the track dropped between the first and second roadwheels, then got caught by the second roadwheel as the tank kept moving forward, and wrapped around the second wheel until the whole track was involved. It probably took only a few seconds, with a bit of a bumpy ride at the end as the tank came to a stop. The rear-mounted drive sprocket would have fed in the track until it was all wrapped around the wheel. The real fun, if the Germans had not captured this example, would have been the crew's efforts to untangle and reset the track.

...I'm so used to Shermans I forgot about that REAR drive sprocket.

I was wondering how the M4 could have been improved had they gone for a rear drive arrangement. I realize the hull was as high as it was because the original hull was designed to use a radial aircraft engine, but having a prop shaft running diagonally forward meant the turret had to be higher so its basket floor cleared the shaft.  See how much lower the Crusader is to the Sherman, for example, where the drive train is all in the rear, and the turret basket goes down almost to the floor of the hull.  The Challenger, which every one seems to think was waaaay too tall, was actually shorter in height than a Firefly, and had a lower gun axis. Also, what would a Sherman have looked like with Christie type suspension?

I'm also intrigued by other 'weird' limits, such as railway gauges have had on AFV development. Imagine if the British had stuck to I K Brunels original 7 foot railway gauge instead of abandoning it for the cheaper, but technically much inferior 4 ft 8 1/4 inch one, which became the model for most of the rest of the world.  Tanks could have been several feet wider, therefore much bigger turret rings and therefore armaments, much earlier in their development. The Tiger for example had to have a special set of tracks, remove the outer wheels and track guards, before it would JUST fit on a railway wagon.

Just a thought, but maybe an idea for a 'what-if' competition some time?

Tim

www.fighting48th.com

It's amazing that something as insignificant as a railway gauge has on tank development. You think of a tank as some great lumbering monstrosity but back then they were actually quite small. Tanks like the M26, German heavies and the IS series must have been fantastic feats of engineering.

I used to think the shearing strenght of tempered metal gearings were the limit of a tank's weight, when pulling all that weight up an incline, but now I'm wondering if the size of the transmission vs internal space could be the real issue.

German tanks were disadvantaged in this by the square-cut gear they used, but still the Jagdtiger is quoted as having similar or better cross-country ability, if at a slower speed, to their other tanks!

Despite spiral-cut synchromesh gears, the M-26 Pershing did poorly in the steep Korean hills terrain, the M-47 Patton being a little better, but not much. The tank of choice for hill climbing became the old Sherman!

Even today I get the impression a steep incline is a refuge from tanks... Ie; Afghanistan.

The track width issue vs rails is a valid point, except I though that the main concern was curving tunnels in Germany. Perhaps passing another train in a curve also?

Another limit to tank size is less commented on, but probably the most serious of all; the ratio of lenght to width. Beyond a certain lenght compared to the width, the amount of track "side slipping" when maneuvering the tank puts a much greater strain on the running gear and transmission. Besides track fragility and engine durability issues, this was the major cause of the reliability problems of the Jagdtiger, because its limited-traverse gun relied so heavily on the entire vehicle being turned.

I learned from Malcom that the Jagdtiger's hull was stretched by as much as 19 inches compared to the KT, which made it even more difficult to spin the vehicle on itself from under cover; it would soon break down from this "abuse". This is why I think the King Tiger, and even perhaps the "Maus"(!) were far more useable tanks by virtue of their turrets. Note that post-war the large turret-less tanks practically disappeared, with the lone exception of the compact-sized Swedish "S".

Despite this, I am quite taken by the German project of the P-1000 "Ratte", and I may in the distant future attempt a "practical" interpretation of this, just on paper probably, that would be seriously downsized...

It would have to be a heavily modular thing assembled near the battlefield or something...

Even the Brits did build something called the "Tortoise", I think four of them! Now THAT would be a great subject for resin!

Gaston.

It's called a Pershing

Sorry, had to make that joke. There actually were incremental development models and concept studies leading from one to the other, but at some point it became a new tank.

Oh, and for the record, am I seeing things or is that DAK Landser next to the KO'd A13 about 5 feet tall and 130 pounds. Great pictures - thanks George.

Konrad

Hi Konrad;

... and let's not forget that the WW2 American M6 heavy tank DID have rear drive sprockets, and was being developed in the same time period as your M4 Sherman.

George Bradford

was the limits on shipping and bridging width set by the availability of military bridges in the 1930s. Interestingly enough, the M10 GMC was as wide as the M4A3E8 with HVSS, but that width didn't seem to matter. I suspect the catch as the width of the tracks on bridge roadways and railcars. Later in the war, such limits were obviously eased, with EECs, and T66/T80 tracks in use by the end of 1944.

As for the rear powertrains, these were the true technical achievements. As you pointed out, the British cruisers tended to be much lower than the American tanks, as both the standard US light and medium tank families suffered from the use of radial aircraft engines and the need for a diagonal drive shaft. The diagonal shaft, however, was used to save money. If the Army had wanted to, it could have developed a gearbox to lower the drive shaft down to the tank floor, and the hull silhouettes for both the M3 light tank and M3/M4 medium tanks could have been much lower. The Italians re-engined their post-war M10s with the Wright J5 Whirlwinds used in the M3/M4/M4A1 medium tanks during the war, and they fit fine, except for the drive shaft, which required a tunnel that split the floor under the turret. But in the M10, there was no turret basket so the drive shaft tunnel didn't foul anything.

The development of reliable rear mounted powertrains allowed the reduction in height we see in all the late-war prototypes and limited use tanks: T44 from Russia, Centurion from Great Britain, and the T26 Pershing from the US. All of these tanks had "space engineered" hulls in which the room needed to house the powertrain, gun, ammo, and other equipment was carefully laid out and arranged for best use of the space, instead of just putting equipment into the vehicle after the powertrain was set. With the entire powertrain out of the fighting compartment, there was enough room for the gun, ammo, and crew while still reducing height and making the hull more compact. That in turn allowed heavier armor within the design weight restrictions, so the vehicle and crew were better protected. A "win-win" situation.....

Tim, experimental models of the Sherman were built with torsion bar suspensions (to test the concept for the T20 series that led to the Pershing), and I'd guess even rear powertrains might have been considered. The advanced "space engineered" hull for the T20 family dates from 1942, so the US realized pretty early what was needed to build a better tank. If only AGF had listened to reason.....

Konrad, the average size for a German soldier in WW2 was 5'7" tall and 130 lbs. Maybe that cruiser is a bit taller than it appears.....

...the reason I drive an old guy's car (Crown Vic...damn near bulletproof as LAPD and Yellow Cab can testify). Of course, when the snow flies here in Colorado I tend to either stay home and sulk or cadge my daughter's 4-door Wrangler. As for those 7-foot rail tracks, Tim, if that's all they had we'd still be traversing our Rockies by stagecoach and horseback. (Maybe not such a bad idea ;-)at that.)

Thanks for the remarks on the history of US tank evolution - dad used to share pix he had found of some of those developmental models with me as they were de-classified, and to me they got to look more and more like a Pershing, so I think this interpretaion, while a bit -gasp- revisionist, is not too far off the mark, all joking aside. The Pershing turret design is definitely an evolution of the Sherman turret.

Oh, and I still think that German guy is just not that tall. And I think they lied about their height. No Superman wants to admit that he is 5'4" and 115 lbs. Remember that their uniform was carefully designed to make a short guy look taller (check out the German Uniforms site for details on that). Looking at the other picture you can see that an 113 is just a tiny tank - put four Tommies in the shot and it neary dissapears.

At least that's how I see it

Konrad

next to a Vickers Mk VIB light tank..... How could anyone send men into battle in things like that and still sleep at night? Of course, I do want to build one.....

Ordnance tried all sorts of stuff. Did your dad show you the shot of the T24 Chaffee prototype with the entire suspension of a SdKfz 8 12-ton German artillery tractor? I mean they tried EVERYTHING..... I am convinced that if we had had a decent armor battle doctrine, we would have had a good MBT by 1944, and a very good interim type would have been to make the M10 hull in Sherman armor thicknesses: 2.5" glacis, 1.5" sides, and a T23 type turret, or even a welded up M10 type, again with Sherman armor thicknesses. If the final type of HVSS had been available in 1943, we could have put 23" tracks on the beast and had a good cross-country tank.

And, we would have found a much better gun. We had the dumb bad luck to design our AT ammo so it hit the target right in the middle of the velocity range that produced the "shatter shot" effect, which is why so many of our rounds either bounced off or broke up. The faster German stuff and 17 pdr shells hit the targets fast enough that they penetrated more reliably. Sometimes being good is fine, but being lucky is better. We should have adopted the 17 pdr. When you look at it dispassionately, the Panther was a very BIG tank to carry a 75mm main gun. The French took the same gun after the war and put it on the AMX-13, a LIGHT tank.....

I am really looking forward to seeing you and Gar at the IPMS Nats in August. Too bad I'm going to the Air Force Museum on Thursday, but that was the day for the IPMS sponsored trip. I'd rather hang around with you guys.....