WesWorld

The Mexican Navy Marines are seeking a light (<4tons) tank chassis that can be easily modified. Armor is to be against rifle and light machine gun fire. High speed is not a requirement, but the tank should have a low ground pressure. The vehicle should be capable fo carrying the equivalent of a 25mm cannon on a turret.

Since there where no entries the Mexicans decided to go at it alone. After a careful analisis of several tanks designs they have come up with a suitable design.

The tank is designed to support amphibious assaults and be air transportable. A suitable aircraft (Boeing 307? 314?) is being searched for.

LT-1 1M1 Light Tank
Crew: 3
Weight: 5 tons (10,000lbs)
Length: 13'
Width: 7'
Height: 5'
Engine: 6 cyl diesel, 200hp
Armor: 1"-0.5"
Performance: 20mph

Several armament options are available

Armament:
1.- 6x100mm rocket launchers, 1x30cal MG
2.- 1x25.4mm cannon on turrent
3.- 1x47mm cannon on open mount
4.- 1x75mm howitzer on open mount

Pic of the mockup at the Army test site in Chiapas:

Highly skeptical of the rockets.

Why not keep the recoilless guns of the ONTOS? A numer of nations were experimenting that kind of weapons in this period.

Not to mention the RW Ontos weighed in at 9 tons. You'll be hard pressed to ditch 4 tons.

Here´s a tank the RSAA has in service (hence battle tested ;o)):

Name: W4-SP Wasp



Year: 1930
Weight: 5,4 tons
Crew: 3
Speed (terrain): 45 km/h
Range (terrain): 145 km
Armor: 15 mm
Armament: 2x MG or 1x 2cm gun (variant W5-SP)
Note: Weakly armed and armored but with reliable radio set

I know the Mexicans are highly sceptical regarding the SAE in general but here´s probably a chance for some business and better relations afterwards....

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Why not keep the recoilless guns of the ONTOS? A numer of nations were experimenting that kind of weapons in this period.

As far as I know, the only pre-WWII recoiless gun was the Davis gun. On the other hand, rockets are a known quantity. Mexico just got a rocket launcher from Siam and has observed Argentinian rocket experiments. At least for now, rockets are the way to go.

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I suggest that the Ontos is a little advanced.

It's not the Ontos, I'm just using Ontos pics, cause I think the Ontos just looks cool!

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I know the Mexicans are highly sceptical regarding the SAE in general but here´s probably a chance for some business and better relations afterwards....

Well, that's exacly what I was looking for. But I think it's still a bit early for any SAE-Mexican deals, maybe in a few years...

Also I want to develop the capability to design armed vehicles in Mexico, and this seems like a suitable first project.

Here we go again with the rockets. Why do we have to play tech so early?

Whats more interesting, aside from the tech issue (which some STILL won't listen to, no sence beating a dead horse), is that two nations with no political ties are freely exchanging tech between each other.

Its also interesting when you note that Siam is part of AEGIS, who Mexico see's as the evil empire, but that can be conveiniently egnored for the sake of aquiring tech. Nevermind the posibility that the tech could possibly be used against AEGIS in the future!

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Originally posted by howard
Another possibility is the Carden Lloydd series of tankettes. You can put a decent gun on those and they are fairly reliable. Just don't buy them with the crappy Meadows engine!

H.

Howard has a point, the basic Carden-Loyd designs are widely available, so costs should be low. Ground pressure likely isn't where you want, but that should be correctable. The Belgian T-13 tank destroyer is based on them.

From the Belgian Army Equipment post as an example:

T-13 B-3 Tank Destroyer
Based on the Vickers-Carden-Loyd Light Dragon MkII B, this tank destroyer has a fully rotating turret containing a 47L30 ATG and a 7.65mm Hotchkiss MG. The turret has front, side and roof armor, but an open rear. This lightly armored the vehicle is intended to be placed in ambush with the rear to the enemy and the turret traversed to the rear. The earlier B-1 and B-2 models could not traverse the turret without lowering side panels. The T-13 is equipped with a towing hook.

Weapons : 1 x FRC 47mm L30 ATG ( 69 AP / 69 HE)+1 FN-Browning 7.65mm FM Mod30 (anti aircraft)
Armor : 6-13mm
Crew : 3-4

Weight : 5.1 tonnes
Length : 3.65m
Width : 1.87m
Height : 1.84m

Max speed : 40km/H
HP : 80hp
Range : 400km

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Originally posted by thesmilingassassin
Whats more interesting, aside from the tech issue (which some STILL won't listen to, no sence beating a dead horse), is that two nations with no political ties are freely exchanging tech between each other.

Its also interesting when you note that Siam is part of AEGIS, who Mexico see's as the evil empire, but that can be conveiniently egnored for the sake of aquiring tech. Nevermind the posibility that the tech could possibly be used against AEGIS in the future!

Iberia would TRULY love to know what the Siamese are doing.......maybe they don't want the 12 dd's currently refitting?

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Mexico just got a rocket launcher from Siam and has observed Argentinian rocket experiments. At least for now, rockets are the way to go.

Mexico should have been at the Japanese experiment in the 1920s with the improved version of the Le Prieur rocket from the Great War being launched from a few planes. They would have realized much earlier that rockets are the way to go.

Le Prieur rockets are dreadfully inaccurate, their range was limited to about 115 m (125 yd). They successfully brought down observation balloons, but never managed to bring down a Zeppelin which is what they were designed for primarily.

Tracer and incendary bullets made them obsolete.

Poor accuracy is the bane of direct-fire military rockets during this time period, it means you either have to be CLOSE to the target (so the deviation is limited), or fire a lot of rockets for a "shotgun" effect (where you accept the inaccuracy of an individual weapon but hope to make up for it with enough projectiles that you'll still hit the target). Indirect-fire rockets, like the Katyusha or Nebelwerfer, simply accept the inaccuracy and fire lots of rockets into an area to try to hit the area.

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Le Prieur rockets are dreadfully inaccurate

... which was why one of them ended up in the bedroom of the Shogun during the demonstration back in 1927. With the Improved Le Prieur used back then, accuracy was a bit better but it was not deemed to be important for what it was intended to do. The Nouveau Le Prieur rockets hardly resemble the Le Prieur rockets from 20 years ago anymore and are a lot more accurate (about RS-82 level of accuracy that is).

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Poor accuracy is the bane of direct-fire military rockets during this time period, it means you either have to be CLOSE to the target (so the deviation is limited), or fire a lot of rockets for a "shotgun" effect (where you accept the inaccuracy of an individual weapon but hope to make up for it with enough projectiles that you'll still hit the target).

I think that Wikipedia's entry on the RS-82/132 shows you how accurate exactly that is in the 1930-1940 time period:
"Like most unguided rockets, RS suffered from poor accuracy. Early testing demonstrated that, when fired from 500 m (1,640 ft), a mere 1.1% of 186 fired RS-82 hit a single tank and only 3.7% hit a column of tanks. RS-132 accuracy was even worse with no hits scored in 134 firings during one test. Combat accuracy was even worse since the rockets were typically fired from even greater distances."

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Here we go again with the rockets. Why do we have to play tech so early?

There's plenty of pre-WWII rockets. Nothing early about them. The Russian RS-82 entered service in 1937.

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Its also interesting when you note that Siam is part of AEGIS, who Mexico see's as the evil empire, but that can be conveiniently egnored for the sake of aquiring tech. Nevermind the posibility that the tech could possibly be used against AEGIS in the future!

Iberia would TRULY love to know what the Siamese are doing.......maybe they don't want the 12 dd's currently refitting?

He, he, he...

Getting weapons from the enemy? So much the better!

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Poor accuracy is the bane of direct-fire military rockets during this time period, it means you either have to be CLOSE to the target (so the deviation is limited), or fire a lot of rockets for a "shotgun" effect (where you accept the inaccuracy of an individual weapon but hope to make up for it with enough projectiles that you'll still hit the target). Indirect-fire rockets, like the Katyusha or Nebelwerfer, simply accept the inaccuracy and fire lots of rockets into an area to try to hit the area.

Of course there will be drawbacks. But for my purposes, rockets will work fine. They are required as a direct fire, suppression, lightweight weapon. Something to keep the enemy occupied during the all important first phase of an invasion. Get enough of these little suckers and accuracy won't matter as the enemy is smothered by a hail of rockets.

It would be more usefull to have a light tank armed with a 37mm gun or MG's AND a few rockets rather than have purely rockets, like the BT-5 and M4A1 Shermans did.

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Originally posted by Desertfox

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Its also interesting when you note that Siam is part of AEGIS, who Mexico see's as the evil empire, but that can be conveiniently egnored for the sake of aquiring tech. Nevermind the posibility that the tech could possibly be used against AEGIS in the future!

Iberia would TRULY love to know what the Siamese are doing.......maybe they don't want the 12 dd's currently refitting?

He, he, he...

Getting weapons from the enemy? So much the better!

...and its not odd that none of the AEGIS nations have aquired these weapons from their allie's?