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Tanks for the Memories

I don't understand why only some tanks have their driving wheels at the back, I would have thought that all tanks would do this because it ensures that the bottom track remains in tension, but there are some tanks & APCs which have the driving wheel at the front which instead tensions the top run of the track. Anyone?
 
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Smangus said:
Think we need an Urban day out in Bovingdon :cool:
Click to expand...

I did leave relief at Bovington.

Firstly, I have to explain that the Medical Corps were not terribly 'army barmy', and off duty were quite informal.

First night, I went over to the NAAFI. Walked in, barmaid asks 'Are you a private or an NCO?'. An NCO. 'You use the other bar'.

Go into other bar, three people waiting. Barmaid 'Are you a L/Cpl or a Cpl?'. Cpl. 'What would you like?'. These people are first. 'They are L/Cpls'.

Never went back.

Compare and contrast with the Summer Ball at Woolwich, the CO and Admin Officer are behind me in the queue at the bar, I see them, and wave them through. They decline. CO at Woolwich was a Brigadier, Admin Officer a Lt Col.
 
I can remember discussion of having on main battle tank which controlled a number of unmanned drone tanks. Nothing seems to have come of this though. yet.
 
Idris2002 said:
The slightly strange people at the Alternate History forum have a thread discussing how the ANZACs might have been better equipped for the Pacific war, and they've brought up this nifty little Australian number I'd never heard of:


en.wikipedia.org

Sentinel tank - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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350 horsepower from a 3 v twelve engines bodged together (called multibanking). This is usually a bad sign for a tank. It adds lots of complexities due to having duplicated parts so lots more to go wrong and having convoluted systems for things like power (the accelerator rod will have to go to 3 carburettors, they will be an utter pain to keep at the same power levels, it will be a horrible complex engine to repair, the transmissions will likely be a lot more junctions to connect the crank shafts etc.
It has been done successfully. The Vauxhall put two engines together for Churchill, and Chrysler put together a 5 inline engine into one big one while their factory was knocking out Shermans before Ford could deliver their big new engine for the tank, you can see it here:

multibanka57.jpgmultibank.jpg

(Chrysler A57)

Likely the Australian tank would have been horribly underpowered and difficult to maintain. Also it would have likely been buggy as hell. Everybody made lots of mistakes or compromised machines in their first few tanks. The idea that Australia could just knock it out the park sticking 3 truck engines together into their first tank is very unlikely. They seem to have had the advantage of using the M3 (Lee\Grant) drive train, so some of the usual problems would have been fixed. But its a lot of effort to produce something that was dated on arrival. And to what purpose? America was deluging the world with Shermans and offering them at 10% cost under Lend Lease. If you were using them for North Africa\Italy that made a whole load more sense than some expensive local built, much weaker tank. If you were building them for the Pacific Theatre of Operations, then tanks were not really needed except as assault guns. You would have been far better turning the chassis as a self propelled field gun or a big hitting assault gun to batter pill boxes and fox holes. In that case the Churchill was perfect for the job, masses of armour, excellent manoeuvrability and great hill climbing, if as slow as a glacier.

It looks like a politician dreamed up a solution and the Australian army was being asked to find a problem for it to fix.
 
If your air defence is so shit that drones are taking out your tanks then they are taking out your artillery and you no longer have an army.
Artillery is the biggest killer on the battlefield. It is there to break up attacks and to soften defences for your attacks. The battle space is possessed by the infinitary. Their job is to hold the front lines and to take strong points. Artillery does the killing, infinitary does the dying. Tanks have several roles but their most important ones are direct fire support of infinitary assaults\defences and exploitation when the boots on the ground have sucked in enough reserves and broken through enough defences that there is space to exploit, but even then they take the infinitary with them.

For about 2 years German armour was up against shittily prepared opposition in Poland, France the USSR etc. This is where the idea of the tank as this sweeping modern cavalry that fights tank on tank comes from.

For the most part a tank should be in well prepared cover, behind the infinitary in an overwatch position. Its a cog in a large integrated machine.

They also have other uses like being pretty tough for IEDs to kill so can get you places little else can. Wake me up when the infinitary say they no longer need tank support.
 
Sasaferrato said:
Really? Tell me why it wouldn't happen?
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Because the instances where tanks have been nakedly vunerable by to air power have been where two circumstances have been present: a) very poor siting with little or in the way of concealment, and b) when the enemy has been allowed at a minimum local air supremacy.

The recent Armenia/Azerbaijan conflict has seen this almost perfectly - Azerbaijani UCAV/Persistent Munitions wiped out Armenian armoured and artillery units, but they were allowed to to do so because the Armenian Army appears to have been on the piss when the 'you really must try to move your units off main roads and try to hide them with cover, or concealment nets - otherwise you're all going to die' module was being delivered at Staff College.

They deployed their armour/artillery in a way that was astonishingly easy to see from above, then failed to protect them with any ground based air defence systems or EW.

That's not how anyone in Europe operates, so while the lesson that if you don't hide stuff or protect it it's going to get blown up has been rammed home (again), it's a useful reminder, not an appalling revelation.
 
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I remember seeing a film about a tank crew, and watching the tank start and move I finally got over my hangups that tanks are somehow special, they are just as mechanical as a motorbike or car, the engine is linked to the tracks .. the film was about a Russian tank crew in Afghanistan, pretty awesome things tanks, but still mechanical. :( :)
 
ferrelhadley said:
350 horsepower from a 3 v twelve engines bodged together (called multibanking). This is usually a bad sign for a tank. It adds lots of complexities due to having duplicated parts so lots more to go wrong and having convoluted systems for things like power (the accelerator rod will have to go to 3 carburettors, they will be an utter pain to keep at the same power levels, it will be a horrible complex engine to repair, the transmissions will likely be a lot more junctions to connect the crank shafts etc.
It has been done successfully. The Vauxhall put two engines together for Churchill, and Chrysler put together a 5 inline engine into one big one while their factory was knocking out Shermans before Ford could deliver their big new engine for the tank, you can see it here:

View attachment 256464View attachment 256466

(Chrysler A57)

Likely the Australian tank would have been horribly underpowered and difficult to maintain. Also it would have likely been buggy as hell. Everybody made lots of mistakes or compromised machines in their first few tanks. The idea that Australia could just knock it out the park sticking 3 truck engines together into their first tank is very unlikely. They seem to have had the advantage of using the M3 (Lee\Grant) drive train, so some of the usual problems would have been fixed. But its a lot of effort to produce something that was dated on arrival. And to what purpose? America was deluging the world with Shermans and offering them at 10% cost under Lend Lease. If you were using them for North Africa\Italy that made a whole load more sense than some expensive local built, much weaker tank. If you were building them for the Pacific Theatre of Operations, then tanks were not really needed except as assault guns. You would have been far better turning the chassis as a self propelled field gun or a big hitting assault gun to batter pill boxes and fox holes. In that case the Churchill was perfect for the job, masses of armour, excellent manoeuvrability and great hill climbing, if as slow as a glacier.

It looks like a politician dreamed up a solution and the Australian army was being asked to find a problem for it to fix.
Click to expand...
I still think putting aircraft radial engines in tanks is even more bonkers. See certain Sherman variants, the Hellcat and the cancelled M6 Heavy that was equipped with a Wright Cyclone instead of the wussier stuff in the other two.
 
kebabking said:
Because the instances where tanks have been nakedly vunerable by to air power have been where two circumstances have been present: a) very poor siting with little or in the way of concealment, and b) when the enemy has been allowed at a minimum local air supremacy.

The recent Armenia/Azerbaijan conflict has seen this almost perfectly - Azerbaijani UCAV/Persistent Munitions wiped out Armenian armoured and artillery units, but they were allowed to to do so because the Armenian Army appears to have been on the piss when the 'you really must try to move your units off main roads and try to hide them with cover, or concealment nets - otherwise you're all going to die' module was being delivered at Staff College.

They deployed their armour/artillery in a way that was astonishingly easy to see from above, then failed to protect them with any ground based air defence systems or EW.

That's not how anyone in Europe operates, so while the lesson that if you don't hide stuff or protect it it's going to get blown up has been rammed home (again), it's a useful reminder, not an appalling revelation.
Click to expand...

What you say is, of course, absolutely correct.

However, with surveillance drones picking up your heat signature from 60,000 feet...
 
Chz said:
I still think putting aircraft radial engines in tanks is even more bonkers. See certain Sherman variants, the Hellcat and the cancelled M6 Heavy that was equipped with a Wright Cyclone instead of the wussier stuff in the other two.
Click to expand...
I thought the M1 Abrams had a gas turbine which required special fuel, with implications for supply lines.
 
Sasaferrato said:
Debatable point whether tanks have a role in modern warfare. A squadron of drones would take them out.
Click to expand...

A Hind or other heavily-armed helo might, but a drone, even a big fucker, can't carry enough payload, not even if you're using a real cunt of an explosive like RDX. Tank-busting is still mainly done w/ artillery or mines, or from substantial airborne platforms, not stuff more suited for delivering Amazon parcels.
 
ferrelhadley said:
350 horsepower from a 3 v twelve engines bodged together (called multibanking). This is usually a bad sign for a tank. It adds lots of complexities due to having duplicated parts so lots more to go wrong and having convoluted systems for things like power (the accelerator rod will have to go to 3 carburettors, they will be an utter pain to keep at the same power levels, it will be a horrible complex engine to repair, the transmissions will likely be a lot more junctions to connect the crank shafts etc.
It has been done successfully. The Vauxhall put two engines together for Churchill, and Chrysler put together a 5 inline engine into one big one while their factory was knocking out Shermans before Ford could deliver their big new engine for the tank, you can see it here:

View attachment 256464View attachment 256466

(Chrysler A57)

Likely the Australian tank would have been horribly underpowered and difficult to maintain. Also it would have likely been buggy as hell. Everybody made lots of mistakes or compromised machines in their first few tanks. The idea that Australia could just knock it out the park sticking 3 truck engines together into their first tank is very unlikely. They seem to have had the advantage of using the M3 (Lee\Grant) drive train, so some of the usual problems would have been fixed. But its a lot of effort to produce something that was dated on arrival. And to what purpose? America was deluging the world with Shermans and offering them at 10% cost under Lend Lease. If you were using them for North Africa\Italy that made a whole load more sense than some expensive local built, much weaker tank. If you were building them for the Pacific Theatre of Operations, then tanks were not really needed except as assault guns. You would have been far better turning the chassis as a self propelled field gun or a big hitting assault gun to batter pill boxes and fox holes. In that case the Churchill was perfect for the job, masses of armour, excellent manoeuvrability and great hill climbing, if as slow as a glacier.

It looks like a politician dreamed up a solution and the Australian army was being asked to find a problem for it to fix.
Click to expand...

Triumph stuck two straight fours together, to get a V8 for the Triumph Stag. Not the worst engine in the world, but absolute shite compared to its contemporary Rover's V8, which was a venerable "short" Buick design. Sticking available tech together may be a good stopgap, but it rarely beats the drawing board.
 
kebabking said:
Because the instances where tanks have been nakedly vunerable by to air power have been where two circumstances have been present: a) very poor siting with little or in the way of concealment, and b) when the enemy has been allowed at a minimum local air supremacy.

The recent Armenia/Azerbaijan conflict has seen this almost perfectly - Azerbaijani UCAV/Persistent Munitions wiped out Armenian armoured and artillery units, but they were allowed to to do so because the Armenian Army appears to have been on the piss when the 'you really must try to move your units off main roads and try to hide them with cover, or concealment nets - otherwise you're all going to die' module was being delivered at Staff College.

They deployed their armour/artillery in a way that was astonishingly easy to see from above, then failed to protect them with any ground based air defence systems or EW.

That's not how anyone in Europe operates, so while the lesson that if you don't hide stuff or protect it it's going to get blown up has been rammed home (again), it's a useful reminder, not an appalling revelation.
Click to expand...

Sounds like the Armenians attended Sandhurst, to be fair. :p
 
I can recommend the TV drama, Valley of Tears on HBO Max (probably on Sky in the UK or whatever)

It's about the Yom Kippur War, especially the tank battles. They took Sho't tanks out of museums and fitted them with new engines for the filming, and fired actual rounds.
 
weltweit said:
I thought the M1 Abrams had a gas turbine which required special fuel, with implications for supply lines.
Click to expand...
Turbine can burn a wide range of fuels. But they tend to burn shitloads when idling so do take a lot of fuel supply to keep going. But they have now auxiliary power units to run instead of idling. Swedes has turbines in their S Tanks. The US will trade the long lines of fuel supply trucks for the acceleration of a turbine. They stuck with it for 40 years and many upgrades of Abrams, 1500 shp is a brutal amount of power.
 
I was interested to read that the M1 Abrams started life with a British gun, and UK developed Chobham armour. :)
 
ViolentPanda said:
Triumph stuck two straight fours together, to get a V8 for the Triumph Stag. Not the worst engine in the world, but absolute shite compared to its contemporary Rover's V8, which was a venerable "short" Buick design. Sticking available tech together may be a good stopgap, but it rarely beats the drawing board.
Click to expand...
And Triumph carefully designed the front end of the Stag so that the Rover V8 wouldn’t physically fit.

Now, where’s that British motor industry we used to have, I’m sure it was arround here somewhere.
 
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