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Inhapi

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Everything posted by Inhapi

  1. T-34-57 was was "Tank-hunting tank" by Soviet definition, something pretty similar to the US concept of TDs. It was not approved since 76mm was enough vs any tank in 1941 and 57mm was 4 times more expensive to produce than 76mm. In the end 122mm was actually chosen due the higher practical armor penetration (2500m vs Panther glacis vs 1600m for 100mm) even if theoretical penetration was lower, it was easier to retool to produce it and a fact that AP ammo was already in mass production while 100mm was not (delays with 100mm AP would delay introduction of SU-100 for about 4 months). Okay, thanks for the corrections. One is always happy to learn something new.
  2. By the time of the invasion of Vichy France when a rather large number of French warships could have been captured, Germany was already scraping the bottom of the available manpower to replace losses on the eastern front where infantry units were by that time almost always severely under strength. Also the German surface navy had fallen out of favour with Hitler. No chance that precious resources would have been allocated to put these ships in service. The only thing that i can imagine that capturing the ships would have been useful for was to use their guns (or maybe with some effort complete turrets/mounts) to strengthen coastal defenses.
  3. Thank you for this picture, i have been wondering for years how the KM planned to cram 2 6" guns into one casemate. As far as i can judge, these guns would indeed have been nearly unservicable, especially when adding the movement of the ship and manhandling the heavy shells in such a restricted space. And this picture is actually putting the mount in a less cramped position that it would have been in the ship, imagine this being crammed into the side of the ship, drastically reducing the amount of space around it.
  4. Fletcher in The Great Tank Scandal notes that the short range of the CS tank armament would probably preclude if from being used effectively as an HE-lobber: " I don't know whether i agree with Fletcher on this (a very dangerous thing to do for an amateur like me :-) ) Given the fact that the main weapon of the tanks were MG's against all targets with a 2 pdr added for AT work, a 3" shell even with only a range of about 2000 m would be a huge improvement against say AT guns or general soft targets. Did anyone envision tanks fighting at ranges over 2000 m in 1939-1940 anyway ? (apart from some SP gun prototypes for indirect fire ) edit: possibly the Russians did. German Befehlswagen were also defenceless. So... 2,000 yards is well beyond typical combat ranges at that stage of the war, so I guess the smoke could serve a purpose, e.g. blocking LOS of a pesky gun position, or helping the squadron pinpoint a target. Note the observation in the document linked below 'all forms of smoke were used with success'. 2 Armoured Brigade was equipped with a number of CS tanks so one can infer that this includes them. https://rommelsriposte.com/2011/10/13/the-battle-for-1-army-tank-brigade%E2%80%99s-repair-shop-2/ Also note the wistful observation that 'a proportion of HE would have been useful', which one can infer to mean that there wasn't any even for the CS tanks. All the best Andreas I believe that the BEF had none, or almost none HE shells for its CS tanks when shipped to France.
  5. and then there was of course the infamous BT-42
  6. I think also the Russians were very aware of the need to fire good HE from their tanks: for example the descision to not continue production of T 34's with a 57 mm AT gun, which was a better armour penetrator than the 76 mm gun was taken because the 76 mm had a much more useful HE shell and thus mas more of a dual purpose gun. Also they preferred the 122 mm gun over the high velocity 100 mm AT gun on their heavies because the 122 mm had a far batter HE capability, and the (imho correct) reasoning was that the tanks would fire more HE in action than AT rounds in tank versus tank battles.
  7. But only if you hit them and with half the MV of the German 75mm/L24 gun you very, very unlikely to hit a moving target. The short 75 bad enough at that. Three or four shots were required for a hit. hm, i hadn't tought of that, it is indeed like trying to hit a moving tank with a mortar...
  8. In the end it all goes back (again) to the Renault FT: FT BS: short 75 mm gun in a (fixed tough) turret on FT chassis as a short range HE lobber support for the standard FT's. I believe plan was to provide one BS for every squad of 5 FT's. But the BS was only produced in very small numbers in the end. The FT was really influential in many ways :-).
  9. And the 75mm-armed amphibious LVT's, namely the LVT(A)-4 and LVT(A)-5. These effectively replaced the LVT(A)-1 which had some form of modified early M3 Stuart light tank turret complete with the 37mm gun, the 75mm short howitzer being more beneficial in the amphibious landing and later, ground-support role. Don't forget the Russians also managed to get the BT-7A light artillery tank into limited service. They tried a similar idea with the T-26, which wasn't so successful. And the BT - 5 A (if i remember correctly the BT-7 A turrets were taken from old BT-5's) Well that's something I've learned. I did not know there was an artillery version of the BT-5. Thank you for that. Do you know if any of the BT-7A's received new production turrets or if they were all removed from a BT-5? I think there were no new production turrets. If i remember correctly BT 5-A's were even allocated as support to BT-7 units in stead of transferring the turrets to the new hulls..but i guess Bojan can enlighten us on this... EDIT: after quickly checking some books it seems i was a bit quick, there certaly was a BT 5-A but it seems new turrets were produced for the BT 7-A (but the turret was little modified from tha on the BT 5-A)
  10. And the 75mm-armed amphibious LVT's, namely the LVT(A)-4 and LVT(A)-5. These effectively replaced the LVT(A)-1 which had some form of modified early M3 Stuart light tank turret complete with the 37mm gun, the 75mm short howitzer being more beneficial in the amphibious landing and later, ground-support role. Don't forget the Russians also managed to get the BT-7A light artillery tank into limited service. They tried a similar idea with the T-26, which wasn't so successful. And the BT - 5 A (if i remember correctly the BT-7 A turrets were taken from old BT-5's)
  11. Soviets planned for that in early 1941, and that was to be introduced on the next generation heavy tanks (KV-3/4) which were supposed to have rangefinders and 107mm guns. What was the maximum range that the various models of 76 mm gun armed tanks (mainly T 34 and KV 1) were expected to fight ?
  12. What about the 105 mm armed Shermans and the Howitzer Motor Carriage M8, were these liked by the troops for their extra HE punch ?
  13. That was a very minor purpose of the CS tanks, which were there really to create smokescreens. Jentz in Tank Combat in North Africa breaks down the typical ammo loadout of the cruiser Mk.II CS as 4 rounds HE and 36 rounds of smoke. Contrarily to Jentz, Dick Taylor in Firing Now asserts, "The only two types of ammunition it [the 3.7" CS howitzer] could fire were a 15lb phosphorous smoke shell with a direct action percussion (instantaneous) 106E nose fuse, or a rarely seen HE shell which does not seem to have been issued to CS tanks." On to tanks with the 3" ordnance, Fletcher in The Great Tank Scandal notes that the short range of the CS tank armament would probably preclude if from being used effectively as an HE-lobber: "The only alternative [tank] weapon [to the 2 pounder] available at the outbreak of war was a 3.7-inch breech loading mortar which was soon replaced by a 3-inch howitzer, but they both had such a short range that the high-explosive shell could rarely be used effectively, and the main purpose of the weapon was to fire a smoke shell to mask the tanks from enemy fire. Tanks thus armed were known as close-support tanks and they were issued, in small numbers only, to headquarters squadrons of armoured regiments. The logic of providing even a few tanks whose sole purpose was to fire smoke shells almost defies explanation. Not only was it invariably impossible to ensure that they would be where they were most needed at the right time; it was also obvious that if they did unintentionally find themselves matched against an enemy gun-tank they were defenceless." The Royal Marines may have had a different idea of course: their CS Centaurs, with the 94mm CS howitzer, were used both during the Normandy Landings in actual fire support, and inland as tanks in support of infantry, mainly firing HE. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Australian Matildas were happily firing 3" HE (and 2pdr HE from 2pdr tanks) against the Japanese. I guess that a 3" HE shell was more than suffficient to take out any of the light Japanese tank types the Australians encountered, maybe they should have gone for 100% Matilda CS versions ?
  14. Fletcher in The Great Tank Scandal notes that the short range of the CS tank armament would probably preclude if from being used effectively as an HE-lobber: " I don't know whether i agree with Fletcher on this (a very dangerous thing to do for an amateur like me :-) ) Given the fact that the main weapon of the tanks were MG's against all targets with a 2 pdr added for AT work, a 3" shell even with only a range of about 2000 m would be a huge improvement against say AT guns or general soft targets. Did anyone envision tanks fighting at ranges over 2000 m in 1939-1940 anyway ? (apart from some SP gun prototypes for indirect fire ) edit: possibly the Russians did.
  15. I guess that they could have gotten the tech from Germany, but we all know that Germany was quite unwilling to share its tech with its allies, except maybe for huge cost.... Edit: they could just have copied the German shells with maybe minor changes in outside form factor to make it compatible with the gun.
  16. I wonder if the 75 mm hollow charge shell issued to the 7.5 cm Pak 97/38 might have been used (with some modifications) in the Italian 75 mm Deport gun (Cannone da 75/27 modello 11). Italy had a rather large amount of these weapons still in service and with its split trail and 52° of traverse , it might have been a rather effective AT weapon given this ammo in an army so devoid of useful AT weapons. It would haven given the Italian army on the eastern front an AT capablilty about on a par with the 7.5 cm Pak 97/38, much better than anything they had in useful numbers. Any thoughts ?
  17. I have a question on the Ordnance QF 3-inch howitzer. Would this weapon have been useful if it had been given HE rounds in service? Its range was of course low, but then were the engagement ranges of AT weaponry and even tanks in general at that time. I think a 6.3 kg HE shell was nothing to ignore even if the range was only about 2000 meter. But it was meant to be used in a direct fire role, so 2000 m range was imho enough at that time. I just wonder whether the bad reputation of this weapon was because it was only issued smoke rounds, or that something else made it a bad weapon. Thanks Inhapi.
  18. You didn't get proof prints before accepting the changes ? wow, that is some bad publishing tactics....
  19. maybe a stupid and trivial question, , but what format and now many pages is the book, just to get a first impression on the amount of information in it. It is quite condensed ? Inhapi
  20. Nazi stuff? Koen was absolutely not far right. The current owner is not Koen nor his wife, the shop is now called the "eagle", with an Eagle on a black background as webtheme and logo, lots of stuff on SS, SS- medals and actions, Flemish SS combattants etc :-(
  21. Maybe Nick should get one of these: http://www.fujitsu.com/global/products/computing/peripheral/scanners/scansnap/sv600/ I'd love to have one to work trough old archaeological reports....and who knows, that book on the T1 might become reality.... !
  22. Yes it is. It is a new owner now....and looking at the books from his "personal collection" he is now selling, he has a bit of a dark side....
  23. Or rather not.....the prices the current owner lists on his webpage are insane....(40 EUR for a Jane's Fighter aircraft of WWI to give an example).
  24. Yes, i should head there. They are liquidating their stock at 50% off, even the personal collection of the owner. Although they say the shop will continue, i find that difficult to believe. :-(
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