Picture of the day

bellero said:
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New Army Carrier

The News and Eastern Townships Advocate; 18 September 1958

Ottawa, Aug.—The development of an armoured personnel carrier for the Canadian Army was announced here today by army headquarters.

The new tracked vehicle is essentially a troop carrier although it has been designed with a chassis capable of being converted to several other roles, one of them being self-propelled artillery.

The first of three prototypes being built for the Army by Canadian Car in Montreal were delivered this month, and are now undergoing engineering trials at the Army's proving grounds near Ottawa. If the prototypes prove successful, pilot vehicles will be ordered and subjected to user trials by Army units at training centres across the country. This is the usual procedure of assessing new types of equipment.

Speed and mobility are tow essential factors which will enable the modern soldier to exist on the atomic battlefield of any future war. The new vehicle is the outcome of considerable thought given to the development of a vehicle which would meet these requirements. The sides of the armoured personnel carrier, which are constructed on armour plate, will provide protection against the usual battlefield hazards of small arms fire and shell fragments. The armour will also afford complete protection from the thermal effects of atomic explosions and, in a lesser degree, against the blast and radiation effects.

Being amphibious the vehicle can rapidly transport its load of fighting men across all types of terrain and deposit them at their objective fresh and ready for battle. Eleven fully loaded soldiers can load onto the carrier in 10 seconds and on arrival at their new location can disembark in 8 seconds.

The unique track design of this Canadian developed vehicle in the result of many years experience with tracked vehicles by the Army in the Canadian North. For simplicity in construction many commercial parts have been used. The vehicle is powered with a modified commercial truck engine.

The chassis, being capable of conversion to various roles, will make the problem of supply much simpler by greatly reducing the variety of reserve stocks of vehicles and spare parts. It will also mean a saving in transport, maintenance and in the training of service personnel.
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It sits at CFB Borden now
 
The Bobcat was a good illustration of the futility of developing an armoured vehicle to suit the needs of a small army. Overall costs, incl R&D, are just too expensive for a small production run. We wound up getting the off the shelf M113A1instead. I got to drive one in the summer of 1965 when they arrived in Camp Borden. The M113 was a sound and reliable vehicle, although not an infantry fighting vehicle. I saw a number of vivid illustrations of this after the Yom Kippur war where they were reamed out like tomato cans. We wound up using them for 40 years.

As a footnote to the Bobcat saga I recall some of the discussions over the M113 replacement where the requirements people stated that there was no APC or IFV in the world that suited our needs. The obvious deduction was that we would need to go down the Bobcat path again and design our own unique vehicle. This was turned down as too costly and time consuming and we are now using the LAV.
 
There were slightly more than 49,000 Sherman gun tanks produced. There were also a large number of other Sherman based variants incl tank destroyers, SP guns and recovery vehicles. Of the 49,00 gun tanks the Soviets received slightly more than 4000, about half with the original low velocity 75mm gun and the remainder with the later 76mm gun. All of the Shermans given to the Soviets were the diesel powered M4A2s because of their preference for diesel fuelled engines.

The Brit/Commonwealth armies were the major recipients of lend lease Shermans receiving nearly 19,000 gun tanks of various models. The Brits scrambled to fit the Sherman with the high velocity 17pdr gun prior to D day. This was a very wise move as the 17pdr Sherman, AKA Firefly, was the only model that had a better than even chance of KOing a German Tiger or Panther, even though it suffered from the same protective armor limitations of the regular Sherman.

The 76mm Sherman and the North Korean operated T34s got to fight each other during the Korean war with the Sherman normally coming out on top due to better crew proficiency and it's still adequate 76mm gun. When Canada first deployed armor to Korea we sent 17pdr Achilles M10 tank destroyers because of the NK armor threat. These were quickly replaced by the better protected Sherman when it was realized how vulnerable the open topped M10 was to close infantry attacks. The tanks that were used in Korea were standard US Army M4A3E8s with the Ford V8 engine. Canada purchase it's last Shermans from the US in 1946 when we bought 300 diesel powered M4A2E8s. Some of these continued in use by reserve armoured regiments up until 1970.
 
Ganderite said:
Are they abandoned? Don't look to be shot up.
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No I would say they where hit and burned out (at least the front most one) by the vehicle sitting down on failed (by heat) torsion bars and the road wheel rubber melted off. The HEAT round (PIAT/"bazooka") will cut a small hole in the armour, tank contents of fuel or ammo catch fire and its toast.
 
Ganderite said:
Are they abandoned? Don't look to be shot up.
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US tactical air support got a lot of them in Korea. Napalm was particularly effective. Tough to say about these ones, but the first one looks pretty beat up. The US had a lot of trouble with them until they flew supplies of the larger 3.5in bazooka.

As the NK Army advanced south to the Naktong River in the summer of 1950 it outran it's rather primitive logistics system leaving it short of fuel and ammo so a lot of tanks were lost for these reasons as well as to mechanical breakdowns.

As long as a tank doesn't burn it can sometimes be recovered and repaired or cannibalized with components from other tanks to restore it to use. I saw a number of KO'd Syrian T54s/T55s/T62s which has been killed by Israeli tank gunnery and which did not burn. Most of them had 2 hits from 105mm APDS, one in the turret and one in the front of the hull. The hole left by the small APDS penetrator isn't that big, but it sure scours out the inside, even of the fuel and ammo doesn't ignite.
 
They might also be high centered from the looks of things.

What is the third vehicle in the background? Doesn't look like a T34.
 
Not sure if this one has been posted before (seems kind of familiar)...

http://4.bp.########.com/-aBfzEExTjC8/VBfi7nl4HKI/AAAAAAAA9H0/MRoa9HcX7TQ/s1600/German%2Bsoldier%2Blighting%2Bhis%2Bcigarette%2Bwith%2Ba%2Bflamethrower%2C%2B1940s.jpg
 
Flammenwerfers had more of a lever than a trigger (think Panzerfaust), which made that pretty tough! Franz must have REALLLLLY needed that smoke.
 
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