Alternative History Armoured Fighting Vehicles Part 4
- Thread starter Claymore
- Start date
How the hell would you even aim the machine gun?Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the Vespa Caproni Armoured Car of 1942. 4 wheels in a losange, 2 men, 1 machine gun.
I say it's a perfect steampunk vehicle, and needs to exist in massed numbers...
Even at that, it looks at the angle that you are going to b hitting sky more than people
Probably the entire Crew leans into a corner of the crew compartment to tilt the vehicle the right way.
Garrison
Donor
I'm sure it has come up before but was reading a blurb on Youtube from the tank museum about Project Prodigal and this machine:
Wish I had known about it sooner, could have blended well with the alt 1940s-80s part of my TL, where Britain retains more global commitments, still could I suppose.
FV4401 Contentious - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Wish I had known about it sooner, could have blended well with the alt 1940s-80s part of my TL, where Britain retains more global commitments, still could I suppose.
FV4401 Contentious - Wikipedia
ctayfor
Monthly Donor
So a British lightweight S-tank. Cool.I'm sure it has come up before but was reading a blurb on Youtube from the tank museum about Project Prodigal and this machine:
Wish I had known about it sooner, could have blended well with the alt 1940s-80s part of my TL, where Britain retains more global commitments, still could I suppose.
FV4401 Contentious - Wikipedia
How effective would a M556(76) been? As in replace the 152mm of the Sheridan with the M36 76mm gun that was on the walker bulldog but keep the Sheridan’s turret so with the stabilizers etc. I feel it would of fixed a few of the Sheridan's issues but not all of them of course. Also would this maybe end up with better rounds vs what the gun fired when in the Walker Bulldog?
You just wanna know about the new War Thunder battle pass vehicle, don't you?
it Maybe where I got the idea. But it does seem like a mod that would of probably worked in the 60's
No 76mm gun of that period can have enough penetration, no matter what ammo is used, to be effective against a state of the art MBT of that period. And, high velocity 76mm guns...unlike lower velocity 75mm/76mm guns dating back to WWII and before...require too-thick shell walls for structural reasons, and therefore have too little explosive to be sufficiently effective against soft targets that are best attacked with splinters. High velocity HE doesn't start to be as efficient at splinter generation as low/medium-velocity 75/76mm until the 90mm or 105mm caliber-class.
So if your design goal is a light tank to only fight other light tanks, sure, it could work. But if you want to fight MBTs, and you need a first shot kill capability because your own armor won't hold out the other guy's shells, then the design you're proposing won't do it.
So if your design goal is a light tank to only fight other light tanks, sure, it could work. But if you want to fight MBTs, and you need a first shot kill capability because your own armor won't hold out the other guy's shells, then the design you're proposing won't do it.
The 76mm Oto Melara naval gun on the Rooikat could penetrate the armor 1st generation mbts such as t-54s and t-62s, as could the Israeli 60mm high velocity gun put on the Chilean Shermans.
Not to mention wargames showed Norwegian chaffees were more than capable of ambushing and destroying 2nd generation mbts from the side.
Ramontxo
Donor
So did Bofors 40/70 mm guns (135mm at one thousand meters at the time)* and you can fire two three shells clips in just a little more than a second. Six Bofors shells provide a lot of fragmentation and the same number of apfds shells would present "an significant emotional event" to anything not an MTB front, and even then..
*The figure above is the "official" rating, but test firings have shown that this round can penetrate armor up to 5.3 inches (13.5 cm) at 1,100 yards (1,000 m).
Italy 40 mm/70 (1.57") Breda - NavWeaps
Hmm - 17 pdr with an APFS-DS shot?
Granted, the required 'real estate' on an AFV to install that cannon was close to that of a 90mm as used eg. on the M-36 or M-26.
Even before ww2, the HE shells were fired by reduced propellant on the Soviet or German guns. Worked just fine.
Unfortunately, the British and American high-power 3 in cannons fired the thick-walled shells while using full-weight propellant.
Was there a 90mm Gun that could be a replacement for the 152 MM gun that the Sheridan available at that time? Also a 76mm with the right rounds might do the job being the job is scout and support the airborne and air mobile troops till the heavy mech and real infantry can get to them
But the near contemporaries of the Sheridan were the T-64 and the T-72.
It's problematic to field an AFV that can only successfully engage its opponents from the side...especially when that AFV must achieve a first shot kill because its own armor will only hold out MG rounds and splinters, and especially when you don't necessarily get to choose the battlefield and may be in jungle or bocage, but equally likely might be on broad, flat Ukrainian or Belgian farm fields.
Here's a prototype 76mm M551 in 1967. It was tested and rejected, per its loss of the strengths of the standard gun (great HE and canister rounds) and its insufficient achievement of improvements to the standard gun's shortcomings:
AFAIK, no 90mm gun was tested, but a 105mm howitzer was. It was to be provided with enhanced HEAT shells, i.e. wirewound HEAT for all purposes. That design also was rejected, as insufficiently able to fight against contemporary MBTs at modern combat ranges...the design-requirement that brought about the Shillelagh missile in the first place.