Churchill mk1

[The_Enigma]

In game were told that the churchill mk1 is armed with a 40mm and a 76mm as well as an mg.

From the few RL pics ive seen it seems the 40mm was mounted in the turret and the 76mm in the hull.

I was just wondering, but why doesnt the ingame pic portray this?

lastly, why was this design used, mounting 2 guns in the tank?

and why were some of them still floating about in late war time frame?

(ps, is it me or all the churchill look the same (ingame) :S)

[flamingknives]

why doesnt the ingame pic portray this?

Because there is only finite resources for tank models, and an extra one for a rarely, if ever, used tank was deemed unnecessary?

lastly, why was this design used, mounting 2 guns in the tank?

Presumable due to the conflicting demands of an AT gun (high rate of fire, high velocity) and an HE chucker (Large shell, low pressure, hence low velocity). It could also be a function of the guns available. The 3" howitzer sucked in an AT role, the 2pdr was ineffective at lobbing HE, and there was a requirement for both jobs, as an infantry support tank?

and why were some of them still floating about in late war time frame?

Dunno.

[JasonC]

The 2 gun tank design was largely a result of Allied interwar thinking about the role of tanks, which envisioned a WW I type battlefield on which tanks would operate as bunker and MG nest busters, slowing fighting the infantry through improved enemy positions. Such stationary targets don't require a turret, but do require a sizable HE charge.

But they also saw a need to fight other tanks. The smaller gun up in a turret was meant for that. It would have a higher ROF, large ammo loads, and against interwar armor adequate penetration. A coaxial MG also up in the turret would also let the tank function as a moving MG nest on a WW I positional fighting pattern. The French, British, and Americans all made tanks according to this scheme.

The Germans did not, but did see a need for HE chucker vehicles. The StuGs were the straight ahead MG nest buster version of this. They had Pz IV shorts as HE chuckers for the Panzer force, meant to toss smoke as well as performing the bunker busting role. (The Brits and Russians also had "artillery tanks", similarly specialized).

In the event, these designs proved cumbersome. The turret mounted guns, being picked in the interwar period, quickly became obsolete as tank killers. Pointing the whole tank to fire the low slung larger gun at moving tanks rather than stationary bunkers proved awkward, and prevented hull down positioning. The high sillouette of the turret prevented any gain from the low mounted main gun.

The German turretless version proved useful in two ways - low profile for anti-armor ambush work, and the same chassis was able to carry a larger gun without a turret and its space requirements. As a result, the smaller half of the German chassis spectrum all transitioned to turretless during the war.

On the Allied side, the guns that had been down in the hull went up in the turret instead, and the double set up was eliminated. Existing chassis were mostly coverted to other roles. Most Grant chassis ended up as hulls for SP artillery, for instance (as Priests mostly).

[Buq-Buq]

enigma:

The Churchill Is that you find in Italy in 1944 were still being used as Close Support tanks in the Army Tank Brigades to which they were attached. I believe that these vehicles were issued to the various units, and the units just kept them until they were worn out or destroyed. Some Churchill Is underwent interesting field modifications while serving in Italy; a few had their 2-pdr. and 3-in. howitzer transposed, so that the bigger gun was in the turret (as Jason points out, a much more useful application), while others had the 2-pdr. replaced with a second 3-in. howitzer in the turret. This conversion would also have the advantage of having only one ammunition type to stow. There was also at least one Churchill I that was fitted with a PzKpfw III commander's cupola. See David Fletcher's "Mr. Churchill's Tank", as well as the North Irish Horse website for more info on these interesting Churchill I conversions:

http://www.geocities.com/vqpvqp/nih/Articles/1-1.html

Jason:

To say that "Most Grant chassis ended up as hulls for SP artillery . . . as Priests mostly" is misleading. I doubt that any production fully-tracked American SP guns were conversions of existing tanks. Pilot models were possibly constructed from torn down existing tanks. However, once an American design was standardized, it normally was built from the ground up — from scratch — in one of the various tank plants, thus not requiring an existing tank to be removed from inventory. The M7 Priest is a good example, and the vehicle has a built-in 'tell' that shows they were purpose-built. The Priest pilots, 105mm Gun Motor Carriage T32, were built in late 1941, possibly from cut-down existing M3 Medium tanks (although I even doubt that: M3 Mediums were just too much in demand at the end of 1941 to divert them to other uses). But the standardized M7 Howitzer Motor Carriage, which entered production in April of 1942, had 'soft' steel hull sides, not armor plate, which is what it would have had if it had actually been a conversion of existing 'Grant chassis'.

Most Grants (the M3 Medium model with the 'British' turret) probably ended up in the Far East as gun tanks; by April 1943, 901 of the approximately 1655 Grants built had been shipped to Australia or India. What happened to the 754 Grants that went to the United Kingdom or the Middle East is unknown to me [edit: In "M3 Lee/Grant Medium Tank 1941-45" Steven Zaloga writes on M3 Mediums in British service in North Africa: "In total, 350 Grants and Lees were lost in combat in 1942." So, that would account for a goodly number of the remaining 700+ Grants.]. See

http://anzacsteel.hobbyvista.com/Armoured%20Vehicles/m3ph_1.htm

for more info.

Mark

[ December 04, 2005, 09:28 AM: Message edited by: Buq-Buq ]

[Michael Dorosh]

Mark - the same thing applies in Canada; they were building Sexton SPs on the same chassis as the Ram. They did not, however, IIRC, tear down the Rams (even after they proved unsuitable for employment as a combat tank); in fact, production quotas for Rams were not being met due to the fact that new chassis were used for the Sextons.

[Buq-Buq]

Michael:

Yes, I imagine that taking an existing Ram and cutting it down to built a Sexton would have been way more work than was necessary, especially given the cast upper hull. I think that it would be far less expensive to build from the ground up.

That having been said, of course, there is the example of the Australian 25-pdr. SP that they converted from existing M3 Medium Tanks in the late 1940s (the Yeramba), but I think that only about a dozen of these were converted.

On the other hand, "existing chassis were mostly converted to other roles" would be correct as far as it goes. Again, to use the Grant as an example, the British certainly used existing Grant chassis' for converting to the Grant ARV MkI (armoured recovery vehicle), the Grant Scorpion III mine flail, and the Grant CDL (Canal Defence Light). I'm uncertain as to the numbers of Grant ARV MkIs or Grant Scorpions converted, but if memory serves me correctly, over 300 Grants were converted to Grant CDLs.

As for the Americans, they also did actually use 509 M3 Medium Tanks for conversion to M31 Tank Recovery Vehicles, an example of the Americans not purpose building a vehicle type — although, tank recovery vehicles usually require far less radical reconstruction of the existing tanks' armor shell. In addition to the M31 TRVs mentioned, almost 500 M3 Mediums were converted to T10 Shop Tractors, the American version of the Grant CDL.

Mark

[The_Enigma]

thanks for the info guys