Castle Aching

[TheQ]

24 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

The father of a friend survived action, very heavy action, as a tank commander in every significant engagement involving British tanks through WW2, and he ascribed his survival to being colour-blind, because it allowed him to pick-out shapes, enemy tanks, emplacements etc, despite attempts to camouflage them.

 

 

I wonder If he ever met my Granddad, RSM 7RTR, unfortunately captured at the second seige of Tobruk , shipped to italy, POW there for a short time, cattle truck to Germany, POW for a couple of years , then the long march... Came home late 1945 and served till 1953 having joined up in 1919.

Edited May 17, 2019 by TheQ

[Edwardian]

2 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

Churchill certainly knew from his experiences in the Boer War, that armoured trains were a bust, Its only despotic leaders that don't want to plummet to a fiery death in an aeroplane that value armoured trains...

 

Yes, aside from providing a mobile coastal defence artillery platform, I suspect that the armed and armoured train is a flawed concept. 

 

Any situation in which a train needs defensive armour is likely to be one in which the permanent way is also vulnerable to attack, so as a defensive system, it is only strong as its weakest link, the infrastructure upon which it depends.

 

Put another way, if you could adequately protect the long miles of track, bridges etc and coal and water supplies, you'd hardly then need to armour your trains! 

 

If you have an enemy who lacks explosives and artillery, essentially a colonial encounter, there is a limit to the armour you need; a maxim on a flat-bed with protection against small arms' fire would seem the way forward, even then, the enemy can derail you and pick you off a long way from nowhere.

 

The genius of railways in war has always been in the field of logistics; railways do not cope well with 'war-fighting'. 

 

In the pre-Grouping era, the Brighton had a rail-mounted gun, IIRC for a volunteer coastal artillery unit, and, also IIRC, Mr Sutters has posted pictures of it here in the past.  

[Nearholmer]

Q

 

near certainty that they met, I’d say, in that Geoff was in RTR from c1937/8, all they say through. He showed me photos of them training on Salisbury Plain in 1938, with strange old-fashioned tanks.

 

As an aside, he was a drummer with the Savoy Orpheans before joining-up, so not only can he be seen in some quite often published photos taken a day or two after D-Day, but he can be heard on the odd 78rpm.

 

K

[TheQ]

37 Granddad was in India (what is now Pakistan) , then  to Egypt, then the BEF, Dunkirk, then off to Africa and the battles for Eithiopia, then the western deserts.

[Edwardian]

17 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Q

 

near certainty that they met, I’d say, in that Geoff was in RTR from c1937/8, all they say through. He showed me photos of them training on Salisbury Plain in 1938, with strange old-fashioned tanks.

 

As an aside, he was a drummer with the Savoy Orpheans before joining-up, so not only can he be seen in some quite often published photos taken a day or two after D-Day, but he can be heard on the odd 78rpm.

 

K

 

Probably something like the Vickers Medium

 

[Regularity]

11 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

Probably something like the Vickers Medium

Are we back onto spirituality?

[Northroader]

Damme, sir, we kept the bally huns out back in the forties with armoured trains, eh?

[Nearholmer]

Edwardian

 

my knowledge of tanks begins and ends with Airfix kits of my youth, and I only got to build German ones, because my brother needed some opposition forces for his war games.

 

My dim recollection of the photos is of a semi-open-top thing. I remember him telling me that they used them for training, but got new tanks for fighting, but that the new ones were next to useless (flat-fronted turret??). IIRC they had Shermans with British-made guns by D-Day, and those he rated very highly.

 

K

 

 

Edited May 17, 2019 by Nearholmer

[Edwardian]

Tank design has to balance three imperative but competing qualities; speed, protection (armour) and firepower.  We specialised in tanks that were deficient in at least two out of the three, and sometimes in all three.  

 

All British tanks of the '30s and '40s ranged from Useless to Barely Adequate.  Fortunately, Lend-Lease allowed us to re-arm many regiments with Not Much Better American tanks.

 

We have to wait until the 1950s for the first really good British tank, the Centurion.    

 

 

[TheQ]

The matilda 2 wasn't that bad a tank until the germans up gunned theirs or brought out larger ones. ours were of course made down to the specification so the matilda 2 had no room in the turret for a larger gun and their rounds just bounced off later german tanks unless they very lucky..

 

Sounds like a carden LLoyd tankette, they were out of service then, but even today when you are training they tend to teach you to start with on something obsolete.

Edited May 17, 2019 by TheQ

[Nearholmer]

Nope, taller than that, with a proper rotatable turret. I'm beginning to think that it might have been a "light tank" with all the hatches wide-open, certainly there were heads and shoulders of men poking out all over the place.

[Edwardian]

8 minutes ago, TheQ said:

The matilda 2 wasn't that bad a tank until the germans up gunned theirs or brought out larger ones. ours were of course made down to the specification so the matilda 2 had no room in the turret for a larger gun and their rounds just bounced off later german tanks unless they very lucky..

 

 

 

 

Classic example.

 

Scored 1 out of 3

 

Conceived as an Infantry Tank (an out-dated doctrine that we never fully abandoned in design terms - see the Churchill tank) it was too slow. 

 

Typically under-gunned, so lost out on the fire-power needed to knock out Panzers.

 

Where it scored was protection.  Most German anti-tank shells bounced off it.  You probably needed an 88 to stop one.  Or you could just walk away slowly until you were safely out of range.  

 

Undoubtedly our best tank in 1940, the Matilda Mk.II was still Not Good Enough. 

[TheQ]

matilda 1 tank?

 

[Edwardian]

Kevin's mystery tank - and don't let the absence of any visual reference discourage us - could be one of a number of things:

 

- Vickers Light Tank.  This is a Mk.IV (1934). Mk.VIs served with the BEF

 

 

- Vickers Medium Tank.  I don't think these saw front-line service, which is principally why I suggested them. 

 

 

- An early Cruiser Tank.  These were conceived as fast cavalry tanks and I think were intended to supersede the Medium tanks. These also saw service with the BEF.  As a new (1939) tank, I doubt these would have been abandined for another model, as Kevin describes. 

 

 

- An Infantry tank, Matildas I and II both served with the BEF

 

 

[Talltim]

10 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

 

 

He's turning right

Edited May 17, 2019 by Talltim

[Nearholmer]

The top one is getting very close to my mental snapshot ........ I think there was a chap sitting down in the front too.

 

The photos showed all sorts of other, ancillary, stuff too, little water bowsers and equipment trailers that were pulled by the tanks I think. I've seen adverts for Dinky Toy models of all this stuff in late-1930s Meccano Magazines.

 

 

Edited May 17, 2019 by Nearholmer

[Northroader]

It’s a Hitler salute to fool the Germans.

[Edwardian]

8 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

The top one is getting very close to my mental snapshot ........ I think there was a chap sitting down in the front too.

 

The photos showed all sorts of other, ancillary, stuff too, little water bowsers and equipment trailers that were pulled by the tanks I think.

 

Well, here's a Mk.VI being overtaken by a water bowser!

 

[Nearholmer]

Here we are, from MM in May 1938. 

 

They made the Light Tank too, their model 152a.

 

Oh, how good it would be to have a display of manoeuvres on my layout, but Each set seems to command the price of a decent-sized locomotive!

 

 

 

 

Edited May 17, 2019 by Nearholmer

[Hroth]

19 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

Well, here's a Mk.VI being overtaken by a water bowser!

 

 

That one is just the lookout, the rest of the squadron are hidden under the inflatable haystacks...

 

Maskelyne up to his old tricks again?

 

 

[corneliuslundie]

Probably not too relevant to the WNR but others may be interested:

jonathan

[Northroader]

Back in WW2, you could get little packs of printed cards by Micromodels, which you could cut out and shape and glue to make small models. Looking at their catalogue today, I see there’s a pack for tanks, which gives a clue as to what was fashionable. Funny thing is I couldn’t have had a full pack, as listed, they must have done smaller packs. I can remember doing the General Grant and the Bren Gun carrier, but not the rest.

http://worldofmicromodels.nl/database/modelcraft-packets/d1-tanks/

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, Northroader said:

Back in WW2, you could get little packs of printed cards by Micromodels, which you could cut out and shape and glue to make small models. Looking at their catalogue today, I see there’s a pack for tanks, which gives a clue as to what was fashionable. Funny thing is I couldn’t have had a full pack, as listed, they must have done smaller packs. I can remember doing the General Grant and the Bren Gun carrier, but not the rest.

http://worldofmicromodels.nl/database/modelcraft-packets/d1-tanks/

 

Fascinating.

 

Issued in 1942.

 

I think you did well to stick to the Grant and the Bren Gun Carrier.  That Churchill turret looks well dodgy!

 

The Russian "medium" tank could be a rather free interpretation of a T28, but it's hard to tell.

 

The "American Heavy" is pure fiction. IIRC, the Sherman entered service in 1942, but I wonder if this is an allusion to the M26 Pershing?  I think this was in development in 1942, but did not take the field until 1945.  Needless to say, it looked nothing like this model! 

[petethemole]

The "American Heavy" appears to be the M6, announced in 1940 but cancelled after only 40 produced, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M6_heavy_tank.

[Fat Controller]

16 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

Fascinating.

 

Issued in 1942.

 

I think you did well to stick to the Grant and the Bren Gun Carrier.  That Churchill turret looks well dodgy!

 

The Russian "medium" tank could be a rather free interpretation of a T28, but it's hard to tell.

 

The "American Heavy" is pure fiction. IIRC, the Sherman entered service in 1942, but I wonder if this is an allusion to the M26 Pershing?  I think this was in development in 1942, but did not take the field until 1945.  Needless to say, it looked nothing like this model! 

There was a 'super-heavy' American tank, which only reached the prototype stage: this was the M6 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M6_heavy_tank ) Although it never saw service, special wagons were built to transport it, with a maximum load of 80 tons, carried on two, three-axle bogies. Some of these ended up carrying deliveries of large ingot moulds from BSC Landore until the beginning of the 1980s.