Quote:
Originally Posted by Blue Ghost
I bring this up because from a Car Wars Tanks design standpoint the magazine … trying to recall from memory of looking down the autoloader mechanism … was maybe … three spaces big, more or less. It was like a revolver hand gun; the rounds spun in a rotary chamber like a handgun revolver, and two metal arms reached down to grab the next shell and load it into the chamber. I still recall one of the engineers calling the rounds "HEAP, HEAP, SABOT, SABOT, SABOT" as they cycled the magazine.
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I think the Soviets used a similar autoloader at one point; it proved finicky (which is why Western designs rarely if ever used autoloaders).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Blue Ghost
I guess in retrospect it was a good tank for the wrong era. I recently saw a History channel documentary on the Sherman, and apparently its nickname was "deathtrap" because it took several Shermans to take out a Panzer; flanking it to fire at its backside because the Sherman's gun couldn't penetrate the Panzer glacis. I think that was the final parallel analysis for FMC's tank buster--it couldn't shrug off a direct hit, or so it was believed, but the design was such that it was supposed to "absorb" hits instead of "resisting" them with heavy armor.
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The "failure" of the Sherman was one of doctrine -- the Sherman was an infantry-support AFV; the job of killing tanks went to dedicated "tank destroyers" like the M10, M18, and M36. When it was learned "one never has the right kind of AFV in the right place at the right time", the notion of separate "tank" and "TD" types was disposed of; and the doctrine became "tanks fight tanks, infantry fights infantry" (best illustrated by the Soviet "tankodesantniki" -- put a squad of INF on each tank; if a tank is sighted, the INF decamps while the tanks fight it out; if INF is sighted, the INF hops off to engage while the tank provides support). Meanwhile, the US and Britain developed units like the Sherman "Firefly" (M4 with British 17-lb. cannon as main gun...).