Facebook: Friends of the Tank Museum

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Thats just the dementia Phil

[fsn]

French Foreign Legionnaires working on US-supplied M24 Chaffee tanks at Dien Bien Phu in Indochina (Vietnam) in 1954. The French plan was to insert a base into territory dominated by the Vietminh guerillas by air, and choke off their supply lines. As part of the plan, a squadron of Chaffees was airlifted into the base to provide mobile fire support for the defence and to conduct offensive operations. However, the French lacked any aircraft capable of lifting a vehicle weighing as much as a Chaffee, and had to disassemble each one into 180 separate components, fly the part to the airstrip at new base at Dien Bien Phu with 8 separate flights per tank and reassemble them there. Unfortunately, the French had overreached themselves. Rather than their new base dominating its surroundings, the garrison found themselves besieged and reliant on an inadequate air resupply pipeline. The Chaffees did good work as a "fire brigade" reinforcing crisis points, but ultimately the base fell, with significant French losses; it was the beginning of the end for their campaign in Indochina.

Diorama anyone?

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Known as Bisons, and have one of the most complex cammo schemes I have ever seen

[fsn]

They're French.

[paulr]

I'm a little surprised Nobby hasn't posted this yet

[fsn]

 

[fsn]

The round hatch above this Centurion driver's head didn't last long. It was intended to allow the 17 pounder gun barrel to be changed. After removing the commander's cupola and the breech block, it would be pulled backwards out of this hatch. The replacement 20 pounder on the Mark 3 could be removed from the front though, so this hatch was no longer needed. It was welded shut on tanks that had it and soon removed from the design.

[fsn]

A British Centurion tank of the 1st Commonwealth Division fires upon enemy positions in Korea. The Korean War (1950-1953), often referred to as Britain's 'forgotten war' saw around 90,000 British troops take part, with over 1000 losing their lives. One action of note was the Battle of Imjin River, where 600 British troops, supported by tanks of C Squadron, 8th King's Royal Hussars, held off 30,000 Chinese troops, delaying their advance significantly and allowing preparations to take place in Seoul for the Chinese attack.

[fsn]

German gunners in a tractor, created on the basis of the captured Soviet tank BT-7.
The tractor is towing a light Soviet 45-mm anti-tank gun 53-K of the 1937 model.

[Steve J]

That's brilliant .

[howayman]

You think it would be easier to leave the turret on and use it as a tank.

[fred.]

It does seem a bit excessive for such a small AT gun

It looks fairly early war, so perhaps they were confident they didn't near more captured light tanks?

The British made good use of old Crusader tank chassis as tows for 17pdr AT guns, but the 17pdr was a huge gun so the power would have helped a lot in moving the gun cross country.

The Americans had a fully tracked artillery tractor, but I don't think it was based on a tank hull?

[sultanbev]

The Americans had a fully tracked artillery tractor, but I don't think it was based on a tank hull?

There were a few:
The M35 was on an M10 tank destroyer hull, used to tow really heavy artillery.
More common were the M4 High Speed Tractor and M5 High Speed Tractor, used to tow divisional and corps level 155mm, 90mm AA, 8" howitzers.

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

The US also used de-fanged lee's although most of those were converted to recovery vechiles.

[fsn]

This is how Jeeps were shipped out during World War Two.


Some assembly required.