WesWorld

This is a placeholder. RL bushwhacked me and I have been a bit busy with other things. Anyhow, short list of things Id like to cover in the next 2 quarters. I may eventually get to writing up the long version, but may also skip to Q1,1935.

News items for Q3
- Belgian campaigning for fall election of new parliament begins.
- Responding to requests to clarify to voters which politicians are under investigation, but not yet charged, Queens SIS declines, stating presumption of innocence
- Foreshadowing of election results
- Media calls result in SIS releasing lists of political figures cleared of major impropriety, and or cooperating fully in investigations.
- AC DeGraeff announces Natural Reserves modeled on the American National Forest Systems.
- AC De Graeff presents the governors of the new East Indies provinces, appointments of district assemblies. De Graeff will remain in an oversight and advisory role for a transition year, then retire to his family home on Sumatra.
- Destruction of new school of mechanical agriculture by anti-collaborationist arsonists at Yogakarta.
- Completion of BB van Heemskerk, 4 Windhond CLs.
- Naval academy, expanded sub/dd classes
- Dutch Budget
- Plan for broadening supplier base, with some 2nd place orders, and 3rd place building license copies.
- Plan to restructure Airforce announced. Substantial downsizing by elimination of obsolete aircraft in reserve wings, substitution of trainer squadrons. Plan to restructure includes heavy fighter squadrons of G-1 and FW-187s, new bombers to include aircruiser version of G-1 and new T-7.
- Aircraft development targets
- Land exercises in Kongo, joint exercises with SAE.
- 45mm AT gun accepted into service. .
- Eben Emal continues, description, continuation of other works as employment matter.
- More supplies to Paraguay Pfennigs for Paraguay campaign raises funds.
- Commentary on U.K.s July 25th note
- Commentary on events in Italy.
- Further commentary on events in Italy.
- Commentary on Talons results.
- Backfill for SF talks

News items for Q4
- Belgian elections
- New Belgian parliament votes for Belgian involvement in closer relations/joining with United Kingdom of the Netherlands.
- Luxembourg moves to join talks regarding UKN.
- Introduction of production G-1, 12Y-49 & D.XIXc, D.XVIIc upengine cont.
- Design of heavy tank accepted, production ordered.
- Fokker-Avia establishes engine factory in Belgium. Facility will produce the licensed Bristol Pegasus, but will have a design team to establish own engine designs (aka Hercules, Centarus)
- Scrapping commences, Palembangs, Ijelsijks.
- Benelux Air combat school founded, Belgium.

Edit T-5 to T7.

OOC: I wrote this up as a press release for the new Dutch heavy a couple months ago. Shame to skip it now. The specs came from a number of tanks, but primarily an expansion of the Souma S-35. I noticed RA's Tanksharp post and it works well in that.


The new tank is a 26 kton ton machine, 6.35m long, 2.6m wide, and 2.62m high. Built by Skoda to Dutch specs in the Netherlands.

The main gun is the new 45mm ATG, with a coaxil 13.2mm HMG and a pintle mounted 13.2mm HMG. The coaxial MG can be fired independently of the main armament due to a ball mount. A 138cm turret ring is fitted in expectation that a future support version may mount an 75mm howtizer for infantry support.

There is provision for a four man crew, consisting of a commander/ radio operator, a driver, a gunner and a loader.

While the prototype features riveted armor, the production version armor is expected to feature face hardened plates stepped and welded together. The hull mixes sloped 50 mm plates in the front and sides with thicker 55mm vertical plates facing the enemy at the drivers position and turret. Thinner 30mm horizontal plates provide protection from artillery splinters and aerial gunnery.

The driver is provided with a vision slit with a 70mm thick armor glass vision block. A lever allows lowering an 10mm armor flap over the exterior, at which time a small Gundlach periscope may be used for navigation.

The commander is provided with a small coupla, featuring 8 of the vision blocks to allow visibility while under cover. The commanders seat can be racheted up a notch to allow seated viewing through the coupala. The Commanders hatch splits when opened, with half opening forward and half aft, providing a torso shield while unbuttoned or using the pintle mounted MG.

The suspension was designed by Eugène Brillié. Both transmission and steering were mechanically assisted with compressed air, reducing driver fatigue. Eight doubled road wheels on four bogies carried the tank, with a single front idler, and four track return wheels. Each road wheel features a light sealing ring to prevent mud from wedging between the wheels and freezing. The wider road wheels are to allow to allow a 0.6m wide track. This allows the tank to support its 26,014 Kg weight on over 4.3 square meters of track, giving the desirable low ground pressure of 0.5989cm2 (8.52SI).

The engine is a V-12 21.7 L diesel engine of 165 kW (220 hp) which propells the tank at a maximum speed of 28kph on roads and 16kph cross country for up to 300 km. The engine is mounted sideways at the rear of the hull, with armored loevers above to release heat. A Praga-Wilson pre-selector gearbox simplifies the gear changing. The fuel tank is between the engine and the fireproof bulkhead between the engineering section and fighting compartment. An innovative liner combination of vulcanized and natural rubber serves to seal any fuel tank holes. The floor under the fuel tanks is secured by small bolts. This is made to blow out the floor if an explosion happened inside the tank to reduce the damage internally.

(OOC : This is based on a mixture of tanks, but statistically is essentially an enlarged Souma S35 with wider tracks, turret ring and length, and of course weight, and a worsened power/weight ratio. The turret ring is that of the Sentinel tank, and should allow for a 3-man turret crew for the 45mm ATG, and later a 75mm howitzer. S35 armor was 40-47mm and that basis is used here. )

The 45mm AT is a 45L48, 1.4kg shell at 850m/s

Looks good for the time period. Version 0.6 of tanksharp is out which allows more inputs, e.g. sloping sides and rears. The 45mm should be good depending on the mv. Something like the French or Italian 47mm rather than the Russian 45mm which had poor penetration. Armour is extremely good for the time with the 50mm sloped plate. I'd be a bit worried over the mobility as the hp/ton figure is a bit low. Ground pressure is extremely low, can probably afford to be 0.8-0.9kg/m2 unless you're planning on driving through bog.

Any chance of a drawing?

I can't recall the mv of the 45mm off hand, should be in an earlier post regarding the ATG development, but I believe it was similar to the French, with a constraint being keeping the weight in the appropriate range for a field piece model.

The Tanksharp I used allowed for sloping hulls, I used 25% and allowed for track skirts.

The HP is low because the Dutch are envisioning something designed to either lead an attack or counter attack. They do not see high speed being of great value for that. The tanksharp indicates there is spare hull volume, so as engines improve it could get better to allow more speed or more weight.

For ground pressure, The first FT-17 tank tried in RL, sunk in the soil at the Hague. As such the tracks are designed to be exceptionally wide, which adds tonnage and degrades speed, but gives that very low ground pressure of 8.5psi, which is more suited for the Netherlands. So it's slow, but should be able to get around well enough.

I had ambitions of a drawing, or a photoshopped collage, but I doubt I'll get to it soon.

Quoted

The main gun is the new 45mm ATG, with a coaxil 13.2mm HMG and a pintle mounted 13.2mm HMG. The coaxial MG can be fired independently of the main armament due to a ball mount. A 138cm turret ring is fitted in expectation that a future support version may mount an 75mm howtizer for infantry support

A 45mm gun is reasonable for the period and WW tech level. A 13.2mm HMG is an unusual choice for a co-ax MG, because of the low rate of fire. Also, a pintle mounted HMG is a bit dubious in the 1930s: the threat of air attack is low, and using the pintle mount exposes the commander or loader to infantry fire.

Hmm, I've been working on the presumption that fields related to aeronautics, such as aerial threats, in Wesworld are a bit more understood and pronounced than in the original time line- that 3 to 5 year thing, so the pintle mount seemed reasonable. Not a critical thing though.

As for the coax, I didn't put a great deal of thought into it, mainly wanted the ammo the same as the other mount. The 13.2 also has good range and might be more effective in punching through field piece shields. While the 45mm will have an HE round, the HMG should help against indistinct targets.

It wasn't really until mid-way through WWII that armored vehicles were really threatened by air attacks, when planes were equipped with anti-tank guns or rockets to directly attack them. Before that, the only real threat was a lucky hit from a dive bomber, and that was rare enough that tanks of the day didn't usually carry pintle weapons.

The 13.2mm would be better than a rifle-caliber weapon against a protected target, but not as good as a 7.62-8mm weapon against most infantry targets. It's an unusual choice, not one that's technically infeasible or anything like that, just a choice that was rarely made historically.

Hmm, my mental image of WWII, US tanks tends towards having a pintle. Looks like the M5 had one in 1941, but the 1939 M3 did not, with 1940 being the +5 mark. So it's a bit advanced. On the other hand there appear to be more divebombers out there than OTL.

I could strike it and weld one back on later. Unfortunately that leaves just the coax one. Maybe tack on onto the loader's position... ..... I'm strongly inclined to just be overly advanced.

I will stick to the 13.2mm for the coax though, I like the idea of having something less than the main gun that can punch through hard cover. I could always do someting like the PZ-IIIE and have dual coax MGs for the ROF

US tanks were the exception to the rule, getting pintles before everyone else.

Heh, Germany's requirements for it's new medium Panzer specify 2 7.92mm coax MGs, so I'm keeping with that part of things.

And I was thinking about giving the Polish 10TP tank a 20mm on the hull instead of a machinegun as historically was thought, with a 37mm AT gun on the turret and a coax MG. The idea is to have one gun to face tanks and one for "soft" targets.

Of course after the first 16 are produced they will figure out the space on the hull is very cramped and the rest of the production run will be completed as historically was designed.

Quoted

For ground pressure, The first FT-17 tank tried in RL, sunk in the soil at the Hague. As such the tracks are designed to be exceptionally wide, which adds tonnage and degrades speed, but gives that very low ground pressure of 8.5psi, which is more suited for the Netherlands. So it's slow, but should be able to get around well enough.

It still seems overkill. The Churchill was fine for operations in muddy mires and had ground pressure 0.9kg/m2, though I seem to remember that the suspension helped a lot compared to other tanks. In the desert it didn't seem to be a great problem for any of the tanks involved.





I went with a 13.2mm HMG in the turret as well to supplement the 75/18. I thought a LMG on the commander's cupola that can be moved from inside would be quite useful and compensate for not having a hull mounted mg.

A fast tank for desert use with Christie suspension. Armour basis is only 20mm but highly sloped which gives the frontal arcs some protection. Speed is about 50mph though from the 380hp aero engine. Armament; prototype 1x47/32, 1x8mm production 1x47/60 auto, 2x8mm or 1x75/18 1x13.2mm 1x8mm. Only 3 man and quite small.

I looked at WWII tank ground pressures when I was researching this, and deliberately pushed below the normal range that. Pre-tanksharp, I was trying to figure track areas by hand (well, excel crunched the numbers), and stretched the Souma chasis to help compensate for the addition weight of the extra width, then combined that with a suspension and wheel layout that allowed wider tracks in order to get down to the range.

The final ground pressure may be excessively low for many theaters. However Dutch doctrine and the defense plan calls for some flooding, and we can expect deep mud, particularly after shelling. The 8.5 PSI gets down into the human foot range, and the WWI experience in Flanders showed even that to be excessive :

By the USFS, 8.5 is still not considered high floatation, but is getting close. Some logging equipment gets down into the 4-5 PSI range for mud/snow and around 2 is recommended for actual bogs. So it's not quite a bog beast, but is likely to be manueverable in most field conditions.

On the secondary armament, a small copula turret, like the M60A2 had might serve the same all-round traverse role intended for the pintle mount without the AA capability. Considering several tanks had secondary turrets, this isn't too far off, though I don't like the additional profile. Darn it, I want a MG to be able to slew around the hull independent of the main turret. A pintle works best- and I already provided torso shielding with the split hatch, while the copula would be the logical successor after commander losses.

On RA's desert tank, it sounds like a BT-series. Didn't the Russians try an autocannon in one of their light tanks? And it was unsuccessful? Do you know why? Or for that matter, since there were existing autocannon in the size range of the main armament of the early war tanks,- like the 20mm PzIIc, why they were not adopted for them? Obviously you see them mounted later as AA guns, but not early on when it would seem advantageous.

edit : squares

Well, most of the bigger autocannon (37mm+) were clip-loaded, and loading the clips into the cannon would require a pretty high turret roof. Not to mention being fairly unwieldy to load. Also, there simply weren't big, powerful autocannon available: the 37-40mm guns were comparable to the 37-40mm autocannon, but over that size there weren't many autocannon at all. The 57mm Molins Gun was the biggest I can think of during WWII, and it wasn't a particularly good performer by the standards of tank cannon (low muzzle velocity, high weight).

The autocannon is mounted because it's available and reduces strain on the commander/gunner. There isn't really space to go to a 3 man turret. The 47mm gun is gas operated and can fire at 60 or 90rpm, or single shot - which will more likely be used. Its that straight afterwards another shot can be fired instead of a reloading pause.

The older pattern 47/40 auto used was a scaled-up version of the Breda 37/54 to accommodate a the larger 47mm round. The 37x232 changing to the 47x235. That gun wasn't particularly successful due mostly to the triple mountings. The newer pattern was designed alongside the OTOMadsen 25mm and in many respects is an enlarged version. A larger cartridge 47x350 being adopted with an increased mv. A belt feed was tried at first like the 25mm but was abandoned and replaced with a disintegrating link feed. The feed will probably drop from the side and down to a box on the basket floor. Maybe a little ungainly but there won't be many of them produced. Something with more armour would be better as Italy can't go for quantative superiority. The design really depends on other country's offerings;1. the need for protection against their guns at battle ranges and 2. the need to penetrate their armour at battle ranges

Belt feed, via disintegrating or non-disintegrating belt, is belt feed, there's not that much difference between the two. I'm not aware of too many belt fed guns larger than the 2-pounders that the UK, the feed mechanisms tended to have problems moving the increasingly heavy belts.

Quoted

Originally posted by Red Admiral
The autocannon is mounted because it's available

Regardless of 47mm autocannons being good/bad/etc. What I'm more curious about is that 20mm, 37mm, 40mm autocannons were all available in the AA role, in addition to being common early war ATG bores. So if tank autocannons were practical in that period, why wasn't something like the Pz-IIC, Maltilda, or M5 Stuart armed with one?

Could it be vibration, or something like fume extraction causing problems in enclosed turrets? Most / all the later AA tanks seem to be not fully enclosed.

semi-edit- tried to find the autocannon soviet tank, Wiki indicates apparently various attempts to rearm the T-60 light tank to make it more viable. Searcing further on the ZIS-19 took me here :
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-vetscor/1338404/posts
which describes 3 attempts to upgun the T-60, after failing at 23mm due to vibration, they did manage a working 37mm autocannon in a new turret to accomodate the vibration and size, but dropped that for a normal 45mm.

So- not suprisingly- conceptually doable, but apparently problematic and involving size/weight tradeoffs.

There's another tradeoff: ammunition availability. If there are multiple types of ammunition available for the gun, some good for one target and others good for a different target, there's no real practical way to switch ammunition with period cannon. If you have a belt/clip of HE in the gun, that's what you have, it's not nearly as easy to load an APCBC round as it is in a single-shot weapon.

(The Pz II series carried a 20mm autocannon, btw.)

Quoted

Originally posted by Hrolf Hakonson
(The Pz II series carried a 20mm autocannon, btw.)

Well, thats just annoying. Why haven't I stumbled on that before? I've been thinking it had a lousy single-shot gun. Poking about I see it had 10 round clips. Sheesh, next you'll tell me the Tiger could be killed by a 6pdr.

The info I have is the 20mm (KwK 30) gun only fired AP rounds, 180 of which were carried. The KwK 38 gun had a higher velocity.

180 rounds on most models, up to 330 on the II L. Ammunition types included AP, two kinds of APCR, and HE.

[As to the 6-pounder vs the Tiger, sure, as long as the 6 pounder was close enough, had APDS rounds, and the Tiger had it's side or rear armor squarely facing the gun......)