Just a bit of armor stuff that I ran across or was suggested (thanks Ryan!) that I thought the readers here might find interesting.
Armor Art.
Ever heard of Peter Sarson? If you've glanced at an Osprey-Vanguard and enjoyed the illustrations then you have (just didn't know it). Some of his more unusual "period" work is below.
X-Weapon Light Tank.
Ryan suggested the T-92 as perhaps the best light tank never to make it into service. I was aware of it but wondered what else was out there. Then I ran into this beauty. The X-Weapon Light Tank. Pics and a bit of info below.
Armor Art.
Ever heard of Peter Sarson? If you've glanced at an Osprey-Vanguard and enjoyed the illustrations then you have (just didn't know it). Some of his more unusual "period" work is below.
X-Weapon Light Tank.
Ryan suggested the T-92 as perhaps the best light tank never to make it into service. I was aware of it but wondered what else was out there. Then I ran into this beauty. The X-Weapon Light Tank. Pics and a bit of info below.
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| via Welsh Robot's Deviant Page...
A proposal for a new light tank developed by General Motors as part of the ASTRON project. The engineers at GM decided that the best form of protection was mobility (same concept with the Leopard I, AMX-30, and other similar tanks). The tank was estimated to weigh 26 tons and be powered by a 590 horsepower Continental AOI-119 5 engine. The wheels were sprung with half-width torsion bars meaning that the opposite suspension sets did not have to be offset from each other. Shock absorbers were placed on the first and last road wheels on each side. The tracks were to be 22" (56cm) wide single-pin steel tracks (mine are rubber pads to cut down on polys). Speeds were expected to be up to 50 mph (80 km/h) on level ground.
The armor on the tank was only enough to protect against small arms fire and shell fragments as the designers believed that modern guns would make heavily armored vehicles useless. The turret front and sides were both protected with 29mm of welded homogeneous armor at 30°. The front hull was 19mm thick at 67°.
The X-Weapon was to be armed with a modified 90mm T208 smooth bore gun without stabilizers. It was mounted in a 3-man turret with a 85" (216cm) turret ring. The tank was also armed with 2 .50 caliber machine guns, one mounted coaxially to the left of the main gun with the other in the commander's cupola. The optics and FCS where to be the same as found in the M48 Patton tank. The turret was to be able to spin in a complete 360° circle in 8 seconds.
The commander and gunner were stationed in the turret on the right side with the loader on the left. The driver was stationed in the front hull on the left side. All of the ammunition was stored below the turret ring in the hull. It is worth noting that General Motor's X-Weapon closely followed their work with the M18 and M41; both being fast tanks with minimal armor.
The T101A, a proposed self-propelled gun mounting the same gun was also developed with this chassis. All sources and reference images were taken from Abrams: A History of the American Main Battle Tank by R.P. Hunnicutt (note his images weren't used, just the info..as usual photos are open source).
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Thanks for solving a long time mystery. It was the T-92, that was in my bag of toy soldiers when I was a kid. LOL I never could figure out what tank it was. Always thought it was a bad copy of the M60A2. It's a sad thing when a toy company "fields" a better tank than the Army. It's kind of like a model manufacturer coming out with a better stealth fighter than the F35..
ReplyDeleteThe Astron Project is actually a main battle tank, in the sense that the Leopard 1 and the AMX-30 were main battle tanks.
ReplyDeleteBasically HEAT shells were able to penetrate anything (IMO the beyond armor effects of HEAT shells are poor, and unlikely to cause a vehicle kill), so design doctrine at the time was to have a tank go as fast as possible with sufficient armor to protect against small arms and shell bursts.
Amazingly, the Soviets did not fall for this fallacy. If they did, the evidence is locked up in Moscow.
I suggest bookza.org .
awesome site! MEGA SCORE!!!! i can take down my sidenote now!
DeleteMan, the roadwheels on the Astron remind me of the Czech LT vz. 38/ German 38(t).
ReplyDeleteThat suspension style was in vogue in the US for awhile. Look at the T-95 medium tank project (aborted) and the M-107/M-110 suspension (production) and a bunch of paper only design projects from that era. Also the road-wheels have a certain similarity but the 38(t) was leaf springs while all of the US designs were torsion bar.
DeleteT-92 is an interesting what-if. If the US had basically gone the french route of 75mm upgraded to 90 mm firing HEAT, to adding external ATGM while retaining the conventional gun, we might have avoided the whole Shillelagh debacle.
ReplyDeleteIf you think the X weapon is cool, check out a very similar philosophy in the Batignolles-Châtillon 25, which actually made it into metal but was passed over for the AMX-30 project. Still, it left behind one of the coolest prototypes ever. http://www.chars-francais.net/new/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=711&Itemid=36
Peter Sarson. Excellent illustrator. I have some Osprey volumes with his artwork in them. AFVs.
ReplyDelete