Alternative History Armoured Fighting Vehicles Part 4

Claymore

Claymore

🥳🥳🥳👏👏👏🥳🥳🥳

...and here we go for Part 4 of this thread. Same rules apply as always. We are looking for viable and realistic Alternative History AFVs, ideally with a suitable developmental backstory to explain and justify your idea/creations.

Please keep things realistic and I might even get round to building your concept in 1/35 scale.

Images, plans, ideas, CGI and models all welcome but please no crazy, unrealistic madness. Something that might have been, could be or might be in the real world is what we are after.

A link to the old threat can be found at: https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...ured-fighting-vehicles-part-3.470632/page-499
 
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alspug

The one gun that I am surprised was never used on an AFV during ww2 in even prototype form is the 5inch mk 38. Looking at it's specs it would have made an excellent weapon for killing German Cats.

The armour penetration figures are suitably impressive with 127mm of penetration at 4,000 yards. The striking velocity at this range is 526mps. This is good but the figure for 1,000 yards is a far more impressive 721mps. This should make for very impressive capabilities.

As far as tank mount goes the complete mount with loading rammers and lots of equipment that is not needed is around 14 tons. This could be rduced fairly easily with the barrel weighing a far better 2 ton approx. A simple limited traverse mount on a M7 priest or Grant hull could have been very useful. Fortrifications would also suffer greatly due to the complete long range fire solutions being already done.
 
Claymore

Claymore

alspug said:
The one gun that I am surprised was never used on an AFV during ww2 in even prototype form is the 5inch mk 38. Looking at it's specs it would have made an excellent weapon for killing German Cats.

The armour penetration figures are suitably impressive with 127mm of penetration at 4,000 yards. The striking velocity at this range is 526mps. This is good but the figure for 1,000 yards is a far more impressive 721mps. This should make for very impressive capabilities.

As far as tank mount goes the complete mount with loading rammers and lots of equipment that is not needed is around 14 tons. This could be rduced fairly easily with the barrel weighing a far better 2 ton approx. A simple limited traverse mount on a M7 priest or Grant hull could have been very useful. Fortrifications would also suffer greatly due to the complete long range fire solutions being already done.
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Very impressive but perhaps more gun than was required to get the job done - ammunition would also have been pretty bulky. I suspect that, much like the M4 Sherman, the smaller calibre guns were deemed to be good enough.
 

JWilly48519

Claymore said:
(...) ammunition would also have been pretty bulky.
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paulo said:
And the recoil must be fun - A warship laughs at that, but a Sherman-size tank not so much.
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The ammunition solution for a five inch naval gun, or comparable, is not significantly different from that for any of the land-derived 120mm / 122mm / 125mm guns we've seen on AFVs, including during WWII.

The Jagdtiger's gun was comparable in caliber, length and performance to the German naval guns 12.7 cm/45 (5") SK C/34 and 12.7 cm (5") SK C/41. That gun on the Jagdtiger no doubt had a substantial recoil, but the vehicle to which it was mounted handled it just fine. The armor it carried for survival in direct-fire combat of course added a lot of mass that no doubt helped.

But various nations fielded 150mm-class self propelled guns of long caliber-classification, many of which were at times used for low angle fire, that were sometimes mounted to chassis's that weren't heavily armored, and they nonetheless functioned adequately. The US "Long Tom" 155mm cannon, evolved from the French "GPF", was L/48...a much longer gun than many naval cannon of similar caliber. And, it fired with a muzzle velocity of 2800 fps, easily surpassing many naval guns of similar or smaller caliber.

Among US equipment, the T6, M12 and M40 155mm SPGs all mounted the Long Tom or a similar gun to a Grant or Sherman chassis. The M40 chassis was somewhat enlarged, but that was to add more space to carry ammo and the full gun crew, not for improved recoil handling. Those gun systems at times were direct-fired, including in instances where a fortified position was encountered and it was desired to put an HE shell directly into a frontal element of the target.
 
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RamscoopRaider

Donor
alspug said:
The one gun that I am surprised was never used on an AFV during ww2 in even prototype form is the 5inch mk 38. Looking at it's specs it would have made an excellent weapon for killing German Cats.

The armour penetration figures are suitably impressive with 127mm of penetration at 4,000 yards. The striking velocity at this range is 526mps. This is good but the figure for 1,000 yards is a far more impressive 721mps. This should make for very impressive capabilities.

As far as tank mount goes the complete mount with loading rammers and lots of equipment that is not needed is around 14 tons. This could be rduced fairly easily with the barrel weighing a far better 2 ton approx. A simple limited traverse mount on a M7 priest or Grant hull could have been very useful. Fortrifications would also suffer greatly due to the complete long range fire solutions being already done.
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It's not that surprising

Basically the M12 and M40 exist and use ammunition that the US Army already stocks, if you are going to bust a fortification you might as well use those, or the proposed SP 8" and 240mms that reached prototype phase

For killing tanks, the M36 and M26 exist, the 90mm M3 with HVAP is enough for even the Jagtiger at reasonable combat ranges, and again uses ammunition already in stock. If you must kill a Tiger II or Jagtiger without using Tungsten, well the M12 and M40 exist and if you want an armored chassis there was consideration to adopting the M1 120mm Stratosphere gun as a tank gun

In short there is nothing the 5"/38 really does that another gun already in the US Army inventory does not already do, ergo no reason to add it to the inventory and add an additional type of ammunition to stock
 
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LostCosmonaut

RamscoopRaider said:
If you must kill a Tiger II or Jagtiger without using Tungsten, well the M12 and M40 exist and if you want an armored chassis there was consideration to adopting the M1 120mm Stratosphere gun as a tank gun
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To wit, if there had been much more concern about German heavy tanks you likely would see the T29/T34 (the latter of which used a derivative of the M1 120mm) pushed harder and possibly enter service.
 

cortz#9

A new alt-AFV design for the new alternate Armoured Fighting Vehicle thread. :cool:

Carro Armato TD.png

Carro Armato P26/40 converted into a Marder-ish tank destroyer armed with the 90mm cannone Da90/53.
I see this AFV being bashed together near the end of the war but only in a few numbers but had it been introduced in 1942 or 43, could've given the Wallies a hard time.
 

vetinari

Jedi Commisar said:
So I would like to make a request for a M1 Abrams equipped to fire the MGM-51 Shillelagh either having the short barrel of the M551 Sheridan or the long barrels of the MBT-70 or the M60A2 "Starship" please.
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The Shillelagh was an unreliable missile. When ever the gun fire conventional rounds, it knocked the missile guidance system out of whack. When it fired the missile you couldn't be sure you would hit the target. All it all it was a failure as a tank system. In the Sheridan it was too much for the chassis to absorb the recoil. When Australia carried out trials they were too frightened to fire it ahwartships because the recoil was too great. When fired fore-aft the tank would move even with the handbrake hard on over a metre. It was truly a frightening vehicle to it's users, let alone the enemy.
 

wietze

vetinari said:
The Shillelagh was an unreliable missile. When ever the gun fire conventional rounds, it knocked the missile guidance system out of whack. When it fired the missile you couldn't be sure you would hit the target. All it all it was a failure as a tank system. In the Sheridan it was too much for the chassis to absorb the recoil. When Australia carried out trials they were too frightened to fire it ahwartships because the recoil was too great. When fired fore-aft the tank would move even with the handbrake hard on over a metre. It was truly a frightening vehicle to it's users, let alone the enemy.
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just surprised the troops didn't nickname it 'Shitlelagh'
 
Jedi Commisar

Jedi Commisar

Claymore said:
Will see what I can rustle up. What‘s the background?
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Background: Not really got a major one, The US Army realises that putting a huge gun on a light platform is maybe not a good idea so they went with a sane light tank design, so they put what would be the M551's gun into something that might be able to handle the recoil better, this plus better manufacturing standards eliminated (or at least made them lest noticeable) some of the problems of the Gun/Missile system lead to the US Army deciding that said system would be main weapon on all future MBTs going forward.
 

bottler

hello friends im back again and i come with more questions
does anyone have a list of wheeled armoured fighting vehicles that arent ifvs or APCs, e.g the stryker, radpanzer90, if so could you please send it here thank you
 

cortz#9

A request for a TD based on the Pz.38 (t) armed with the 7.5cm Pak 97/38 from this thread - https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/german-army-sanity-options-2-0-1935-44.548802/
Jagdpanzer 38(t)--m97 w Pak 97-38 TAZ - -Cortz.png

I took my old Proto-Hetzer that I made for Garrison's TL - https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/munich-shuffle-1938-1942.518000/ and re-armed it with the Pak.39/38 which was a modified French gun the Model 1939.

So another earlier Hetzer-ish TD, not 100% sure if there's enough room in the interior to handle the recoil.
 
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