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Post by the light works on Jul 6, 2015 1:13:55 GMT
In World War 2 only the Germans had powered turrets (the system was electrical I think). Allied tanks, until near the very end of the war, had manual cranks to move the turret. (I'd guess that the Germans had manual systems in case the primary system stopped working) The manual system was probably something that came 'free' with a turret than was being used in a fixed position, and an electrical system was probably less useful as the need to rapidly turn the turret was not as important as it would be on a tank. (In the case of German emplacements fuel shortages would probably have made the electrical system, and the generator it would need, less practical anyway.) The British and the Russians used electrically rotated power turrets. The Germans used a hydraulic powered system driven by a PTO from the main engine. The Americans used a hydraulic system but drove it electrically energized by a pump driven by an electrical motor. The Japanese and Italian tanks used manual rotation,as did most light tanks in all countries. www.weaponsman.com/?p=19716I'm sure every effort was made to have the manual backup system be capable of moving the turret as swiftly as possible. the few heavy guns I have interacted with ran pretty smoothly on hand power. |
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Post by silverdragon on Jul 6, 2015 6:54:36 GMT
I believe that tank turrets had auxiliary manual power. The gunner would insert a crank into a cog and crank it. Slow but since the demounted turret was facing the general direction of the enemy it wouldn't matter that much. That makes sense, slowly, I suppose. It would have to be slow, they aint that light. You see the anti-aircraft guns on old films being would around, but the turrets had several extra tons of armour plating?... (I dont know exactly ho0w heavy they are...) |
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Post by Cybermortis on Jul 6, 2015 8:31:09 GMT
Off the top of my head most ww2 tanks were within the 30-45 ton weight range, so I'd guess turrets would be around 5-10 tons depending on date and the size of the gun.
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Post by silverdragon on Jul 6, 2015 8:39:52 GMT
Off the top of my head most ww2 tanks were within the 30-45 ton weight range, so I'd guess turrets would be around 5-10 tons depending on date and the size of the gun. I had to hand-winch a landrover out of the mud one time. Thats much less than that, and it was bloody hard work?.... (It broke, terminal failure of engine parts) |
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Post by OziRiS on Jul 7, 2015 1:10:57 GMT
Off the top of my head most ww2 tanks were within the 30-45 ton weight range, so I'd guess turrets would be around 5-10 tons depending on date and the size of the gun. I had to hand-winch a landrover out of the mud one time. Thats much less than that, and it was bloody hard work?.... (It broke, terminal failure of engine parts) That's different. It's an emergency-winch job. As in: Possible, but you'd rather not have to. A tank turret with a mechanical winch is actually designed to make the work easier for the user, not make it feel like pulling a Land Rover out of mud. I'm guessing they would have used well lubricated gears to make it move. |
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Post by the light works on Jul 7, 2015 3:10:11 GMT
I had to hand-winch a landrover out of the mud one time. Thats much less than that, and it was bloody hard work?.... (It broke, terminal failure of engine parts) That's different. It's an emergency-winch job. As in: Possible, but you'd rather not have to. A tank turret with a mechanical winch is actually designed to make the work easier for the user, not make it feel like pulling a Land Rover out of mud. I'm guessing they would have used well lubricated gears to make it move. Hm, I thought I had mentioned that they use steel guides instead of mud to mount tank turrets, but I apparently didn't post it. |
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Post by silverdragon on Jul 7, 2015 6:42:04 GMT
That's different. It's an emergency-winch job. As in: Possible, but you'd rather not have to. A tank turret with a mechanical winch is actually designed to make the work easier for the user, not make it feel like pulling a Land Rover out of mud. I'm guessing they would have used well lubricated gears to make it move. Hm, I thought I had mentioned that they use steel guides instead of mud to mount tank turrets, but I apparently didn't post it. Perhaps the mail is late?... the truck got stuck in the mud?.. You didnt put it in the post via UPS did you?.. they have recently been parking in rivers in the Picture thread. |
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Post by oscardeuce on Jul 20, 2015 13:36:24 GMT
We had an M-60 A1 main battle tank as part of our collection. It has been a while, but the gunner had a back up elevation crank and turret rotation crank. If I remember it took over 30-45 seconds for a complete rotation cranking as fast as you could. The driver could turn the tank to help if the tank still able to move. There was even a back up electrical firing device in case the main electrica system went down. As to the "hull down" it would be used with the tank in a more defensive or ambush position. It would fire then move to the next prepared position as needed. A tank that does not move, even in a prepared firing position will die Here is a good example  A prepared defilade position  The day our tank arrived:  |
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Post by the light works on Jul 20, 2015 14:49:38 GMT
excellent visual aids.
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Post by silverdragon on Jul 21, 2015 7:49:33 GMT
It also visualises exactly what I was thinking...
the middle one, if that was extended sideways with enough room for say half a dozen tanks in a row.....
I dont know how common this knowledge was, but from what I did know of a one-tank hole-in-the-ground with a scrim-net over it to a fully large trench, with room to move, its all new to me...
Thanks all for the help here.
Or is that tanks for the help......
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Post by oscardeuce on Jul 25, 2015 9:39:06 GMT
I would say having that many tanks in a trench parallel to the front would be trouble. Either artillery would take them out or advancing forces would. It would be hard to pull back to other positions. Better each tank had a prepared position and another prepared secondary position. This way they can reposition from a defensive/ambush to either withdraw or advance based on the situation
Pick up a copy of "Team Yankee" by Harold Coyle. It describes this very well.
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Post by Cybermortis on Jul 25, 2015 12:36:20 GMT
I would say having that many tanks in a trench parallel to the front would be trouble. Either artillery would take them out or advancing forces would. It would be hard to pull back to other positions. Better each tank had a prepared position and another prepared secondary position. This way they can reposition from a defensive/ambush to either withdraw or advance based on the situation Pick up a copy of "Team Yankee" by Harold Coyle. It describes this very well. I'd guess it would depend on the tactical situation. The main advantage of a tank compared to conventional artillery is actually its mobility, not its armor or firepower. The mobility allows you to bring the gun to where it is needed and hit targets at closer ranges where they can direct that fire to weak points much more effectively. A case in point being concrete machine-gun bunkers in Northern France in 1944. The five inch guns of destroyers off shore only seem to have been capable of knocking such bunkers out of action for a short time, while tanks with considerably smaller guns were able to target the gun slots or get behind the bunkers. Of course there are going to be situations where you can't use the mobility of a tank, such as being forced to defend a fixed position. In that case a tank effectively becomes static artillery. |
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Post by the light works on Jul 25, 2015 13:01:15 GMT
as I had said earlier, rather than a slit trench, like the ones they used for men, they would be more likely to make a berm where the tank could go hull down or turret down, or run up or over the berm at any point.
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Post by Cybermortis on Jul 25, 2015 15:59:22 GMT
as I had said earlier, rather than a slit trench, like the ones they used for men, they would be more likely to make a berm where the tank could go hull down or turret down, or run up or over the berm at any point. The basic principle is much the same, if on a larger scale for tanks and with somewhat different construction on the inner side if you want to give a tank the option of sallying forth to counter-attack. Although saying that you'd probably be better served using beams that could take the weight of the vehicle. Defensively that would mean that if the position was overrun by enemy infantry they'd be faced with a drop of several feet. That isn't in itself going to stop infantry as a whole, but it would slow them down and give you time to pull back while inflicting casualties. |
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Post by the light works on Jul 25, 2015 16:24:56 GMT
as I had said earlier, rather than a slit trench, like the ones they used for men, they would be more likely to make a berm where the tank could go hull down or turret down, or run up or over the berm at any point. The basic principle is much the same, if on a larger scale for tanks and with somewhat different construction on the inner side if you want to give a tank the option of sallying forth to counter-attack. Although saying that you'd probably be better served using beams that could take the weight of the vehicle. Defensively that would mean that if the position was overrun by enemy infantry they'd be faced with a drop of several feet. That isn't in itself going to stop infantry as a whole, but it would slow them down and give you time to pull back while inflicting casualties. done right, the outer berm would slow infantry, and force machines to crest the berm blind and with their belly exposed, then descend the berm with their top exposed and limited angle of fire. men can duck and climb ladders, tanks can't. edit: which is to say, similar concepts may be vastly different in application. |
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Post by Cybermortis on Jul 25, 2015 17:55:00 GMT
I would imagine that you'd want the outward facing side to be steeply banked, but not flat, to increase its effectiveness against direct shot. The inner side however would be better served being basically a vertical wall. While a five or six foot drop isn't going to stop an attacking force, it is going to slow them down. Even tanks would have some problems with such a drop, as some might have to rotate the turret to the side or have the gun barrel dig into the ground. Even if the drop isn't that serious you only need a 30 degree or more downward slope to prevent a tank from being able to elevate its main and co-axial machine gun high enough to hit anything in front of it. (Heck, I suspect that most if not all tanks would be incapable of even seeing what is in front of them at that angle, assuming that the crew thinks better of opening a hatch and looking around.)
Even a couple of seconds pause in an attack can mean the difference between troops getting torn apart by enemy fire in the open, or being able to get behind cover.
As for getting out. I'd imagine that movable ramps (which is actually what I had in mind when I said 'beams' before) would be the best option. Not only does this mean that there is no 'easy' route for an attacker, but it gives you the option of sallying forth at any point in your defensive line. Rather than being limited to specific areas the enemy could concentrate fire on and block fairly easily.
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Post by mrfatso on Jul 25, 2015 23:19:42 GMT
A bigger problem for tanks cresting over a slope is exposing their undersides to enemy fire as they do so. this would be the best time for defenders to use anti tank weapons against them.
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Post by c64 on Aug 16, 2015 13:24:24 GMT
Tank trench. If you think it through, its not such a good idea... At the start of WW11, I have been hearing "rumours" that they experimented with tank trenches. Here is the idea, during WW1, they had trench warfare, and thats about how it went. So in the beginning of WW2, they thought (and by them, I mean the high-guard of the military) that this new-fangled tank "thingumy" would be an excellent replacement for the rifleman of the trenches, so, experimented with digging long trenches as defence around important places where tanks could trundle about exposing just the top of the turret and the Gun. Sort of dug-in gun emplacements, but with sideways movement to cover different parts of the defence "as needed". If you think of the old style Castle, its like draining the moat and letting the tanks have that as their own personal race-track?... The idea being that the tanks could then go out on the attack at some point. (There would be ramps somewhere...) And for me, its a bloody silly idea, why not just use field cannons and leave the heavy machinery scattered where its harder to find..... I just dont know if this is an old soldiers tale or if there is anything "more" to this. Anyone know?... It does make sense to use tanks stationary - for a while! If you want to defend a strategic place, you really dig in tanks. To do that, you simply dig a ramp down into the ground. It works best if the tank is in top of a ridge. This makes it a very small target which is very hard to hit. This causes a lot of problems for the advancing enemy. First of all, every approaching enemy tank is suddenly exposed to several turrets which can shoot at it. The moving enemy tanks lack accuracy compared to the stationary ones. And the stationary ones are not sitting ducks at all since they are a tiny target to spot and then hit. And a stationary tank can shoot much more accurate so it can destroy the targets on greater distances. And when the enemy manages to break through, the tanks then just floor the accelerator and rush down the ridge into another fortress position to start the trick all over again. |
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Post by c64 on Aug 16, 2015 13:27:10 GMT
Off the top of my head most ww2 tanks were within the 30-45 ton weight range, so I'd guess turrets would be around 5-10 tons depending on date and the size of the gun. And then there was the "Maus" ("mouse"), a tank built to the specifications from Hitler himself. 120 tons and then increased to 180 tons. Fully unable to cross bridges, a pure waste of resources. They could have made several hundred "good" tanks instead. |
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Post by the light works on Aug 16, 2015 14:53:17 GMT
Off the top of my head most ww2 tanks were within the 30-45 ton weight range, so I'd guess turrets would be around 5-10 tons depending on date and the size of the gun. And then there was the "Maus" ("mouse"), a tank built to the specifications from Hitler himself. 120 tons and then increased to 180 tons. Fully unable to cross bridges, a pure waste of resources. They could have made several hundred "good" tanks instead. are you aware of our saying "an elephant is a mouse built to government specifications"? it seems appropriate to the name of your maus. |
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