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 Witzkatz wrote:
Pretty sure he means a 90° angle between incoming shell and the face of the armor plating, so 90° would be vertical in that sense.

Oh right, is that what he means? Is he saying it isn't as thick as it seems on paper, because it isn't sloped liked other designs like the T-34? I did not get that, thanks for explaining. That said, the statement is true (the Churchill didn't have sloped armour), but it is misleading - it was still a lot of armour. Not enough armour to stop the long 75mm of the Panther or the 88mm of the Tiger, but that's a reality true of every tank on both sides that chased heavier armour in the late stages of the war - there wasn't a plausible amount of armour you could mount on a reasonably mobile design that would make the tank immune to the latest generation of AT guns.

And I agree, as far as I know the 75mm Churchill version carried HE shells, a job that was done with the hull-mounted howitzer in earlier variants.

The MkVII carried HE rounds. The whole reason to move to the 75mm gun was to give the tank more effectiveness against infantry.

 sebster wrote:

Wouldn't a 90' angle be lying the plate on its side? Once you get to 90' it isn't sloped armour, its the roof armour.

I was wondering too before, but that's in the literature they write about the vertical arrangement of plates

 sebster wrote:

I genuinely have no clue where you get the claim the Churchill lacked a HE shell from. I think you might be confused with earlier versions of the Churchill that carried 2pdr and 6pdr guns that had limited use against infantry and fortified positions. But the uparmoured MkVII being discussed here had a 75mm gun, of either UK or US design, which had an excellent HE round, far better than you'd see on any German tank through the war.

40mm HE would be almost absolutely useless (if there was any). 57mm HE - not enough power as the 76mm was minimal enough to destroy field defenses and kill infantry. 75mm gun Churchill was ok, but that's still a bad design, as it can be done with lighter and cheaper chassis. While in game there are many faked tanks, specifilaccy Churchill's armour is close to real one and it's still has many vulnerably spots.
About Churchill VII - yes, it's finally real 152mm front armour and good enough gun but... at infantry speed. This means not only slow movement, but also an increased threat of getting stuck. And for war ending gun still wasn't impressive in comparison to other tanks. Churchill can be called good only as the completion of the WW1 design, but it lagged behind the surrounding reality. Like Soviet multiturret tanks or Italian "heavy" tanks.

What I always found suprising about the Churchill is its size when you see it directly next to other heavy tanks. It's a comparably small silhouette compared to a Tiger, or even just a Panther. I guess that probably meant rather cramped conditions in the crew compartment, but being an overall comparably small target in addition to strong frontal and side armour is at least something positive for the Churchill.

A lot of British WW2 designs had the entire crew compartment down between the tracks, allowing the overall profile to be quite low.

The downside of this was that the maximum size of the turret ring was constrained by the width of UK railways. This led to UK tanks being undergunned in comparison with continental tanks of similar tonnage.

The Tiger in comparison was too wide to be transported by rail. It was designed to remove the outer road wheels and fit narrow tracks to get it onto a railway wagon. This if course took time and engineering resources, and made the tank less manoeuvrable until its fighting tracks were restored.

I think the Tiger was also so heavy that - in one of the frequent cases where something in the overworked gearbox or the engine broke - it couldn't be towed with most of the usual Wehrmacht towing vehicles, and the only thing being able to tow a Tiger was another Tiger, which must've been quite a tense situation with the drivetrain of the towing Tiger now doing even MORE work - and the prospect of TWO broken-down Tigers in the very near future...

(I'm really bad at picking an absolute favourite tank, but for some reason for me the M5 Stuart comes to mind. I'm fond of light, fast tanks, especially ones full of machine guns in addition to some main gun that can be used to at least disable the bigger, enemy vehicles...)

I think it took three Famo (sdkfz.9) to pull a Tiger. Some madmen have modelled this.

Another good tank story. When my grandfather finished training on Vickers MkII Medium they drove them off the harbour side into the sea to make a barrier to shipping. Somewhere in Africa there’s a man made reef of Vickers tanks rusting away.

Some time after this he had to deliver vehicles to the front and upon arriving was immediately pulled into an offensive to drive back a German attack. Great, but they weren’t carrying ammunition as they were supposed to be delivering vehicles not going into combat. In the end they had to participate in an ‘counter attack’ on German positions effectively unarmed, simply to make up the numbers. Which worked as the Germans withdrew under the weight of numbers of British vehicles. At one point charging the enemy a huge bang caused my grandfathers tank to leap in the air - ‘direct hit, they can’t stop us boys!’ shouted the commander inspiring the men. Afterwards he was forced to admit the blast that rocked the whole tank came from a shell, artillery or an 88, that had landed yards away. A direct hit and I certainly wouldn’t be here today writing this.

 Witzkatz wrote:
I think the Tiger was also so heavy that - in one of the frequent cases where something in the overworked gearbox or the engine broke - it couldn't be towed with most of the usual Wehrmacht towing vehicles,

That's actually a misrreprsentation. While there were guidelines against towing a tiger with a tiger, the usual recovery was done with two standard Famo half tracks.



Thusly.

Ah, thanks for that info. Picture makes it quite clear. I heard the Tiger-Tiger-Towing story a few times, but I guess stories can circulate quite widely on the internet without necessarily being fully true, as usual.

 Witzkatz wrote:
I think the Tiger was also so heavy that - in one of the frequent cases where something in the overworked gearbox or the engine broke - it couldn't be towed with most of the usual Wehrmacht towing vehicles, and the only thing being able to tow a Tiger was another Tiger, which must've been quite a tense situation with the drivetrain of the towing Tiger now doing even MORE work - and the prospect of TWO broken-down Tigers in the very near future...

(I'm really bad at picking an absolute favourite tank, but for some reason for me the M5 Stuart comes to mind. I'm fond of light, fast tanks, especially ones full of machine guns in addition to some main gun that can be used to at least disable the bigger, enemy vehicles...)

There was a twilight zone episode where a Stuart went back in time to Little Bighorn. Very cool

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Witzkatz wrote:
I think the Tiger was also so heavy that - in one of the frequent cases where something in the overworked gearbox or the engine broke - it couldn't be towed with most of the usual Wehrmacht towing vehicles,

That's actually a misrreprsentation. While there were guidelines against towing a tiger with a tiger, the usual recovery was done with two standard Famo half tracks.



Thusly.

Oh they used those to tow heavy artillery too, they had a pretty hefty tow capacity. That looks about right. Though late war they rarely had capacity to recover a tiger due to losing ground.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I think it took three Famo (sdkfz.9) to pull a Tiger. Some madmen have modelled this.

Another good tank story. When my grandfather finished training on Vickers MkII Medium they drove them off the harbour side into the sea to make a barrier to shipping. Somewhere in Africa there’s a man made reef of Vickers tanks rusting away.

Some time after this he had to deliver vehicles to the front and upon arriving was immediately pulled into an offensive to drive back a German attack. Great, but they weren’t carrying ammunition as they were supposed to be delivering vehicles not going into combat. In the end they had to participate in an ‘counter attack’ on German positions effectively unarmed, simply to make up the numbers. Which worked as the Germans withdrew under the weight of numbers of British vehicles. At one point charging the enemy a huge bang caused my grandfathers tank to leap in the air - ‘direct hit, they can’t stop us boys!’ shouted the commander inspiring the men. Afterwards he was forced to admit the blast that rocked the whole tank came from a shell, artillery or an 88, that had landed yards away. A direct hit and I certainly wouldn’t be here today writing this.

My grandfather also was a tank driver in the western desert. He had a Valentine. The crew had a tortoise for their mascot.

SOP was to load as much ammo as possible, overflowing the storage bins and stacking it up on the floor, and fire as quickly as they could.

I have a soft spot for the M3 Lee/Grant. Even though it’s a weird compromise of a thing and a dead end in tank design.

Just imagine if you took a Lee/Grant, reversed it to a mirror image, and welded it to another Lee/Grant!

Then imagine if you took one of those combos and welded it to another one, back to back!

My grandfather was a tanker, too, on the Wehrmacht side. I know pretty much nothing about his life or his actions during the war, though - he survived, but died a few years later of a then-untreatable vascular disease. I did some minor research and I'm assuming he commandeered a Panzer IV at first and later his (presumed) division was stocked with Panthers, mostly operating on the Eastern Front. Not sure if I'd actually be keen to hear war stories from him if I had had the chance, given that he was decidedly on the wrong side of this war.

More on topic, armored cars are also fair game in this thread, right? In a similar vein to the M5 Stuart, I like the German Sd.Kfz. 234 Puma quite a bit, an eight-wheeled fast reconaissance vehicle. Quite the streamlined look to it, and a reasonable gun on top of it, too.

 Witzkatz wrote:
My grandfather was a tanker, too, on the Wehrmacht side. I know pretty much nothing about his life or his actions during the war, though - he survived, but died a few years later of a then-untreatable vascular disease. I did some minor research and I'm assuming he commandeered a Panzer IV at first and later his (presumed) division was stocked with Panthers, mostly operating on the Eastern Front. Not sure if I'd actually be keen to hear war stories from him if I had had the chance, given that he was decidedly on the wrong side of this war.

More on topic, armored cars are also fair game in this thread, right? In a similar vein to the M5 Stuart, I like the German Sd.Kfz. 234 Puma quite a bit, an eight-wheeled fast reconaissance vehicle. Quite the streamlined look to it, and a reasonable gun on top of it, too.

wrong side yes, but i mean both sides did some pretty nasty things to each others and Brittish tankers, US, and Soviet probbly had there fair share of nasty momments as German armour crews.

Alot of the soliders, where just that, soldiers conscripted like any other nation.
the only ones with the reputations for evil and war crimes make up a small proportion.

Veterans of the war have met from oposite sides and become good freinds, in the end they where forced to fight those wars, and in the end, there both men, both bleed the same, both just wore diffrent uniforms under a diffrent flag.

If armoured cars are fair game, I nominate the Škoda Želva:


Is that a military vehicle or a driving art deco exhibit
Take special note of the little flag the Czechs attached to it...

I was given a model of that for Christmas. Peculiar vehicle, both ends are identical, it doesn’t have a ‘rear’ as it can go in both directions equally. The seats face opposite directions inside.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I was given a model of that for Christmas. Peculiar vehicle, both ends are identical, it doesn’t have a ‘rear’ as it can go in both directions equally. The seats face opposite directions inside.

More confusing for enemy to shoot at!

 Iron_Captain wrote:
If armoured cars are fair game, I nominate the Škoda Želva:


Is that a military vehicle or a driving art deco exhibit
Take special note of the little flag the Czechs attached to it...

An image that might be more helpful to those who've never seen one to get a better idea of the thing.

That's because the Czechs know not to trust the East or the West!

I will point out that those of you occasionally referring to Russian armor tests may want to take them with a grain of salt, some of them used what I can only describe as 'Questionable Methodology' such as parking the firing tank 20 yards from the target and firing repeatedly at the same location on the tank. Many of these tests were done for propaganda value over actual information gathering.

 Freakazoitt wrote:
I was wondering too before, but that's in the literature they write about the vertical arrangement of plates

That is weird. Can you give the exact quote. I think they probably meant what Witzkatz suggested- it was referring to the Churchill's armour being almost 90', so not getting any of the benefit of sloping like later designs.

40mm HE would be almost absolutely useless (if there was any). 57mm HE - not enough power as the 76mm was minimal enough to destroy field defenses and kill infantry. 75mm gun Churchill was ok, but that's still a bad design, as it can be done with lighter and cheaper chassis.

Yeah, read what I'm saying. The early Churchill with 2 and 6pdr guns had poor HE (the original had a hull mounted howitzer for that role, but it wasn't much use). But the tank being talked about here was the Mk VII, with 152mm armour and a 75mm gun. The HE round for that gun was about as good a HE round as you got on an all-purpose gun in the war, the only better HE was on specialist howitzer mounted tanks.

You are right that the 75mm AP round was underwhelming. It wasn't terrible, but it certainly wasn't that good, certainly not for the weight. This isn't a 'yay Churchill! boo Churchill!' thing, that you seem to be trying to turn it in to. What is actually is is you making some mistaken statements about the Churchill Mk VII, confusing it with earlier versions, and me correcting those mistakes.

About Churchill VII - yes, it's finally real 152mm front armour and good enough gun but... at infantry speed. This means not only slow movement, but also an increased threat of getting stuck. And for war ending gun still wasn't impressive in comparison to other tanks. Churchill can be called good only as the completion of the WW1 design, but it lagged behind the surrounding reality. Like Soviet multiturret tanks or Italian "heavy" tanks.

Uh, the one stand out feature of the Churchill is that it didn't get stuck. Forget speed, the Churchill was stupidly long and had high tracks - it was basically designed as the tank that wouldn't get stuck.

But yes, the later uparmoured version was slow, and the added weight made it less reliable. However, saying it lagged behind the surrounding reality so that it should rank alongside abject failures like the Soviet multi-turret tanks is exaggeration to the point of silliness. Due to poor understanding of the place of tanks in modern war at the start of fighting, and the rush of new designs during the war, WW2 was full of genuinely awful tank designs. The Churchill was nowhere near the worst designs of the war. It wasn't even among the worst UK designs (that'd probably be the Matilda I or the Covenator). It had drawbacks, particularly that small turret ring, but it had excellent cross terrain performance, and a surprising amount of versatility for funny tank variants, making it a curious and ultimately more or less okay design.

Should have put a 25 lber in it.

 Frazzled wrote:
Should have put a 25 lber in it.

They did. The Churchill Mk VIII was the howitzer variant, it had a 25pdr gun.

But nobody ever talks about tank, because the AVRE existed. What's the fun in talking about Churchill variants with entirely sensible, effective howitzers, when there was a Churchill with a 40 pound spigot mortar?

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I was given a model of that for Christmas. Peculiar vehicle, both ends are identical, it doesn’t have a ‘rear’ as it can go in both directions equally. The seats face opposite directions inside.

Many WW2 armoured cars were built that way, the idea being that being recon vehicles they would often have to back quickly at the sight of trouble, and their turn radius was generally abysmal (and a recipe for getting stuck off road as well). They also had multiple reverse gears for this precise reason, although not totally symmetrical.

The Italian AB41, German Sdkfz 234 and 231, and probably others had this feature.

 sebster wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Should have put a 25 lber in it.

They did. The Churchill Mk VIII was the howitzer variant, it had a 25pdr gun.

But nobody ever talks about tank, because the AVRE existed. What's the fun in talking about Churchill variants with entirely sensible, effective howitzers, when there was a Churchill with a 40 pound spigot mortar?

Why talk about that when there's the Toad?!? Nothing says loving like dozens of chains beating infantrymen to death in a bloody haze of gore.



I have nightmares of this thing chasing me down tunnels at work.

 sebster wrote:

Yeah, read what I'm saying. The early Churchill with 2 and 6pdr guns had poor HE (the original had a hull mounted howitzer for that role, but it wasn't much use). But the tank being talked about here was the Mk VII, with 152mm armour and a 75mm gun. The HE round for that gun was about as good a HE round as you got on an all-purpose gun in the war, the only better HE was on specialist howitzer mounted tanks.

I forgot about hull gun. Yeah, if tank has weapon against both trenches and tanks - it's adequate armament. But if it's a heavy tank with 40mm gun it's just freaky. Mk.VII 75mm gun - just "normal" gun. Not something late war heavy tanks usually had.

 sebster wrote:

You are right that the 75mm AP round was underwhelming. It wasn't terrible, but it certainly wasn't that good, certainly not for the weight. This isn't a 'yay Churchill! boo Churchill!' thing, that you seem to be trying to turn it in to. What is actually is is you making some mistaken statements about the Churchill Mk VII, confusing it with earlier versions, and me correcting those mistakes.

 sebster wrote:

But yes, the later uparmoured version was slow, and the added weight made it less reliable. However, saying it lagged behind the surrounding reality so that it should rank alongside abject failures like the Soviet multi-turret tanks is exaggeration to the point of silliness. Due to poor understanding of the place of tanks in modern war at the start of fighting, and the rush of new designs during the war, WW2 was full of genuinely awful tank designs. The Churchill was nowhere near the worst designs of the war. It wasn't even among the worst UK designs (that'd probably be the Matilda I or the Covenator). It had drawbacks, particularly that small turret ring, but it had excellent cross terrain performance, and a surprising amount of versatility for funny tank variants, making it a curious and ultimately more or less okay design.

Churchill's concept was too archaic from beginning and supporting it's development was wasting resources. There were much more effictive projects like a Comet, for example. Comet - was a modern tank that could move and maneuver at normal speed, could break through the defenses and without problems destroy both the Panther and the Tiger. And Churchill is a product of old-fashioned minds that were prepared for WW1 with rows of spiny wires, ditches, chains of attacking infantry with bayonettes and trenches with static machine-gun positions.

 sebster wrote:

Uh, the one stand out feature of the Churchill is that it didn't get stuck. Forget speed, the Churchill was stupidly long and had high tracks - it was basically designed as the tank that wouldn't get stuck.

It did stuck. Despite long tracks it wasn't able to safely climb obstackles as that tracks were falling apart. The Soviet Churchills were known for falling apart suspension on the move, losing wheels, tracks, attachments and springs. And he showed a tendency to get stuck in the mud. And again, the mud break the suspension.

 sebster wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Should have put a 25 lber in it.

They did. The Churchill Mk VIII was the howitzer variant, it had a 25pdr gun.

But nobody ever talks about tank, because the AVRE existed. What's the fun in talking about Churchill variants with entirely sensible, effective howitzers, when there was a Churchill with a 40 pound spigot mortar?

it was cruder and not always safest weapon to use but it worked!

And yes Churchill was not always fasted but was easily adapted to many logistical roles, and a sturdy and reliable platform for deploying auxiliary auxuilary gear.

 jhe90 wrote:

 sebster wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Should have put a 25 lber in it.

They did. The Churchill Mk VIII was the howitzer variant, it had a 25pdr gun.

But nobody ever talks about tank, because the AVRE existed. What's the fun in talking about Churchill variants with entirely sensible, effective howitzers, when there was a Churchill with a 40 pound spigot mortar?

it was cruder and not always safest weapon to use but it worked!

And yes Churchill was not always fasted but was easily adapted to many logistical roles, and a sturdy and reliable platform for deploying auxiliary auxuilary gear.

I will have to look that up!
Interesting. There were recommendations bandied about to shift to a mix if 76s and 105s in a similar fashion to the Firefly mix.

 Frazzled wrote:

 jhe90 wrote:

 sebster wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Should have put a 25 lber in it.

They did. The Churchill Mk VIII was the howitzer variant, it had a 25pdr gun.

But nobody ever talks about tank, because the AVRE existed. What's the fun in talking about Churchill variants with entirely sensible, effective howitzers, when there was a Churchill with a 40 pound spigot mortar?

it was cruder and not always safest weapon to use but it worked!

And yes Churchill was not always fasted but was easily adapted to many logistical roles, and a sturdy and reliable platform for deploying auxiliary auxuilary gear.

I will have to look that up!
Interesting. There were recommendations bandied about to shift to a mix if 76s and 105s in a similar fashion to the Firefly mix.

they where among the assult machines we build for D Day in UK, the US prefered there own Sherman variants and UK used more Churchills as assult and logistical barrier crossing machines.

many however saw later use as the designs worked and found many other uses oiutside the beaches.
its long design, terrain abilities and decent armour made Churchill a good tank for beach assult.

we learnt from Dieppe and brought large mats to lay as roads over softer sand so they did nto bogged down, others hauling wood to fill anti tank ditches and streams, some brought bridges later on and more.

the allied armies where alot better prepared to face the Atlantic wall the second time,