Alternative History Armoured Fighting Vehicles Part 4

JWilly48519

It took at least two men to keep up with continuous fire from a deployed open-carriage Bofors L/60, assuming a cache of ammo clips not more than six feet away from the gun.

The gun inside that drum would be very hard to load. Way too tight a space. plus the entire space would be moving as the gun tracked the target. Loaders normally at least get a stable ground-surface on which to work. Not in this vehicle, though.

It seems to be an endemic problem, getting SPAAG engineers to provide enough working room for the loaders and the ammo cache. The Germans couldn't get it right, either, i.e. Wirbelwind, Ostwind, Kugelblitz.

As to using the vehicle in urban combat, the ball might provide splinter-and-bullet protection, but not more than that. It couldn't be thicker and still have room for the gunning process. So, you certainly wouldn't want to get anywhere near enemy infantry. A Molotov cocktail or any sort of HEAT device, or maybe even an HMG with AP ammo, would be the end.
 

JasTysoe

tomo pauk said:
What might be expected from a 'Chad M3' tank, with regard to the armor, firepower and mobility?
3-men turret, or the 2-men turret remains?
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Interesting question that will take some time to have even a stab at for me, although others (including you) may know better.

Given the enthusiastic reception the Honey got in North Africa, it may not take a vast improvement to make it a very competitive light/medium tank.
 

Hammerbolt

tomo pauk said:
What might be expected from a 'Chad M3' tank, with regard to the armor, firepower and mobility?
3-men turret, or the 2-men turret remains?
Click to expand...
The M3 was too small for much to be done with it. I think it's descendant, the M5, is pretty much everything it could be done with that hull, and it was allread stretching it; both the M5 and it's M8 variant topped at 15 tons, and the M8 had an open turret. Trying get a decent gun, speed and mobility gave us the M24...
 

Hammerbolt

wietze said:
can't be as bad as the belly ball turret gunner in a ww2 plane
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Fun fact: I once talked to a guy who'se grandfather had been a ball turret gunner on an B-24. Apparently he threw up all the way on the boat from the US, then constantly while being driven around in the UK, but not once in all his missions...
 

Bougnas

It must be noted that even OTL the US accepted to increase the weight limit of the medium tank to 18 and then 23 tons and that of the light tank to unknown values (13 tons by M2A4) even before 1940, and thus to accept whatever logistical compromises were needed. The question of making a sort of super-M3 at 18 tons to optimize prewar spending is not very important at that time since the problem is that the US wasn't spending enough on tanks, period, no matter the type.

The most advanced medium tank Ordnance could have devised before 1940 based on the technical proposals/works of its officers from 1933-34 would be a low rear-drive vehicle with the following features:
- Rarey's ideal flat diesel (likely with 12 cylinders for the medium and 6 for the light): best use of space, facilitates high torque operation, safer fuel, reduced fuel consumption, increased range or reduced fuel storage volume for the same range.
- automatic epicyclic gearbox or Caterpillar's Meritt-Brown-like gearbox (proposed by Colby: more efficient steering method, steering in place possible, reduced driver effort, more compact, easier to build than the big controlled differential), with or without a torque converter (further reduces effort and protects the engine in low speed conditions at the cost of power and increased fuel consumption)
- fluid flywheel/coupling (doesn't transmit vibrations and shocks from the engine to the gearbox and vice versa)
- torsion bars (noted by Colby, offers the same benefits as internal independent big wheel coilsprings such as reduced roadwheel wear and higher cross-country speed but without the width penalty and with minimal maintenance requirements, and possibly reduced weight).

The resulting tank would still retain the stepped hull front of prewar US tanks, but otherwise would have nearly the same form factor as the British Cromwell series or US T20 series. It's likely the medium could offer the same armor and armament (minus the sponson MGs) as the M2A1 Medium, but at less than 23 tons, or heavier armor at 23 tons. The light would already be close to the M24's form factor. It's worth noting the techical changes would further increase the reliability and ease of use of these tanks.
 

Hammerbolt

Bougnas said:
It must be noted that even OTL the US accepted to increase the weight limit of the medium tank to 18 and then 23 tons and that of the light tank to unknown values (13 tons by M2A4) even before 1940, and thus to accept whatever logistical compromises were needed. The question of making a sort of super-M3 at 18 tons to optimize prewar spending is not very important at that time since the problem is that the US wasn't spending enough on tanks, period, no matter the type.
Click to expand...
Ooo yeah... I remember seeing a note (wth didn't save it...) on how, late 1939, someone in the US army was still trying to build horse transports to use horses in the battlefield...
 
jotto

jotto

Hammerbolt said:
Ooo yeah... I remember seeing a note (wth didn't save it...) on how, late 1939, someone in the US army was still trying to build horse transports to use horses in the battlefield...
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As late as 1939 the US Army was still publishing Field Manuals on Animal Transport. (FM 25-5 dated 15 JUN 1939 - amended 30 SEP 1940 and 18 AUG 1942).
1710780853669.png

1710780880712.png
 

Hammerbolt

Tbh. still having horses around doesn't suprise me. It's not like they were the only ones *coff* germans russians french... *coff*. It's the idea that every one else is rapidly building tanks and armoured cars and the US... builds the M2 and the M3, while still trying to get horses to battle...
 

Hammerbolt

Driftless said:
Gen. John K Herr was an ardent advocate for the extensive use by the US Army of horse cavalry in the late '30s, and even into the early '40s.
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as late as November 1940 Herr and Chief of Infantry George A. Lynch opposed creation of a separate combat arm

Poland, Belgium, Netherlands & France swamped by Blitzkrieg, british and italians going at each other in the desert, and this guy... some people can't see reality if it hits them with a brick.
 

Merrick

dxe131 said:
Here's an article that says horses for at least one National Guard unit were used into 1942.

Loading…

njmilitiamuseum.org
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The US Army - or at least the National Guard - was still finishing the process of motorising its artillery in 1941. Wikipedia claims that the last horse tows were replaced in December, but doesn't say if that was before or after Pearl Harbor.

jotto said:
As late as 1939 the US Army was still publishing Field Manuals on Animal Transport. (FM 25-5 dated 15 JUN 1939 - amended 30 SEP 1940 and 18 AUG 1942).
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That manual also covers mule transport. Pack mules lasted longer than horses in US Army service, being able to go places trucks couldn't.
 
GrahamB

GrahamB

Not surprised in the slightest the army was still publishing manuals on animal transport, there are going to be LOADS of times when getting a train of mules through an area is a far more practical choice than trying to get trucks through.
 

Canuck Wingnut

Hammerbolt said:
Ooo yeah... I remember seeing a note (wth didn't save it...) on how, late 1939, someone in the US army was still trying to build horse transports to use horses in the battlefield...
Click to expand...
General John K. Herr was fighting Marshall to try to get his beloved portee cavalry into combat service all the way to the end of the war (though he left the Army thanks to reaching the mandatory retirement age in 1942; oddly enough, Marshall didn't feel the need to grant him an exemption). The linked article is fantastic for including his post-WW2 history of the US cavalry, which includes arguing for a reintroduction of horse cavalry into the US Army using the Korean War as his example of how cavalry could have solved America's military difficulties!
 

CaptainCalvert

JasTysoe said:
Interesting question that will take some time to have even a stab at for me, although others (including you) may know better.

Given the enthusiastic reception the Honey got in North Africa, it may not take a vast improvement to make it a very competitive light/medium tank.
Click to expand...
Better range would be the main one.
 

JWilly48519

JasTysoe said:
Given the enthusiastic reception the Honey got in North Africa, it may not take a vast improvement to make it a very competitive light/medium tank.
Click to expand...
The Honey/Stuart had excellent mobility and other automotive characteristics, for sure, and its gun was combat-competitive at the beginning of the war, but the M2/M3/M5 family never had sufficient armor to be combat-survivable against anything with a decent gun.

Its "enthusiastic reception" was only because at the beginning of the war, USA was so far ahead of England, Germany and France in regard to engineering the automatic characteristics (mobility, and powertrain/suspension reliability and maintainability) of military vehicles.

The Honey/Stuart could not have become a combat-survivable AFV, because its fundamental design could not handle the weight of enough armor thickness.

The 'light-tank'-with-tracks concept was fatally flawed from its inception because that concept so universally was perceived as a combat vehicle. It always made more sense to develop wheeled vehicles with similar-to-light-tanks armor, armament optimized for escaping engagements rather than fighting through them, and similar-to-light-tanks ground pressure and therefore greater road range and speed, with more reliability and requiring less maintenance, at lower cost...and without that critical "it looks like a tank, we call it a tank, so it's a tank" flaw.
 
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