BT is the abbreviation of the Russian term for “fast tank”, with the BT-7 being the last in a line of Soviet fast tanks designed during the 1930’s.Each tank in the series incorporated the Christie type suspension – as designed by J. Walter Christie.
The BT series of tanks where also know as convertibles in that they could be driven either on tracks or on their road wheels, carrying their tracks with them.The rear set of road wheels where powered while the front set was steerable.In practical term, however, the removal and replacing of the tracks proved to be a laborious and time-consuming process, thus this option was often ignored by its crews.
During the Spanish Civil war the BT-5 tanks proved successful against the opposing light German and Italian armor used by the Nationalist.In 1939 the BT-5 and BT-7 tanks proved their combat success in border skirmishes with Japan, again outclassing the lighter Japanese tanks. At the outset of World War II the BT-7 was employed with success during against Polish forces during the Soviet invasion of Poland, but by the time of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 – Operation Barbarossa – the BT-7 was critically obsolete.As a result, large numbers of the vehicles where either lost in battle or abandoned by their crews during the first year of the campaign with very few surviving service beyond 1942.
I've mentioned before that I have a soft spot for construction equipment – and giving the opportunity to model two of the latest release from Tamiya I jumped at the chance. The challenge, of course, would be to present the same model in two, unique finishes. My plan was simple; show one Komatsu dozer as it would have looked at the time - this example can be seen on an earlier posting —->Komatsu.For the second bulldozer I was inspired by photographs of long forgotten relics sitting in silent testimony to the long ago battles. These rusting hulks of steel would provide the perfect platform to try some new painting and finishing ideas while achieving the goal of two kits with different finishes.
I detailed the construction of the small dozer in a prior post. If interested in seeing I invite you to visit the Komatsu posting below.
Plans for a return to the continent of Europe had been developing ever since the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940. However it was only by 1944 that the huge amount of men and equipment necessary for such an invasion would be ready. In the meantime the Germans had been building the ‘Atlantic Wall’, a series of fortifications along the coastline that they occupied, from northern Norway to the border with Spain. In August 1942 these defenses were tested in the disastrous raid by the Canadians at Dieppe. Very few tanks had been able to get off the beach to help the infantry, and the engineers who, without protection, were to help them do this suffered horrendous casualties from the German guns. The raid showed what some people already knew – that it was very difficult attacking a heavily defending coast, breaking through the defenses and getting off the beach. A lot of work would need to avoid another Dieppe on D-Day.
Experiments were already taking place in various parts of Britain looking at the problems of landing in the teeth of enemy fire. These experiments led to tanks that would swim ashore to support the first waves of troops; tanks that could flail the ground ahead of them to explode the mines that littered the beach; flame throwing tanks; and tanks that would help the engineers deal with other beach defenses – clear the concrete and steel obstacles, destroy pillboxes, and cross the anti-tank ditches that the Germans had dug to prevent the Allies getting off the beach.
In April 1943 all this work was brought together under one man, Major-General Sir Percy Hobart, and one unit – the 79th Armored Division. His job was to produce from all this development work fully trained and equipped units that would help the Allied forces break through the Atlantic Wall. The Churchill AVRE (Assault Vehicle, Royal Engineers) was developed after the Dieppe raid in an attempt to make combat engineers less vulnerable while they were attempting to destroy enemy defenses.
The AVRE was developed from a suggestion made by Lieutenant J. J. Denovan of the Royal Canadian Engineers.His idea was for a tank with as much of the standard internal equipment as possible removed and replaced with storage space for the sapper's equipment, tools and explosives. The Churchill was chosen because of its combination of a large interior, thick armor and side access door.The Churchill’s main gun was replaced with a powerful stubby mortar, called the petard which threw a 40 pound bomb, nicknamed the ‘flying dustbin’, on a wobbly flight for about 80 yards. Up to 24 of the big bombs were carried in the roomy AVRE. The crew also had plenty of ‘standard’ explosives in their Churchill, with names like General Wade, or the Beehive. These could be planted against a pillbox or concrete obstacle using the tank as cover, and then blown up from the safety of the tank.
Tracing it’s beginnings to 1902, what began as the Tacheuchi Mining Company operating the Yusenji copper mine about 8 kilometers from Komatsu City later became the Komatsu Equipment Company in May, 1921.
In 1920, the mine ran into financial difficulties and ceased operations. At this time, the head of the mining company, Meitaro Tacheuchi, got together a group of investors to form Komatsu Manufacturing Company Ltd. Earlier, in 1911, an iron casting works had been built near KomatsuCity and named Komatsu Ironworks. This ironworks was the foundation for Komatsu Manufacturing's iron and steel casting. This same group was responsible for the manufacture of the first domestically produced Japanese vehicle, the DAT, which eventually became Datsun.
Komatsu began crawler tractor production in 1932 with a copy of the Caterpillar 2-Ton crawler designated G25. In 1935, they released a copy of the Best 30, designated the G40.
In May 1937, the G40 was put up against a range of other tractor from other producers around the world in trials in Manchuria. The G40 out-performed all competitors but its gasoline engine was slightly less economical than the Cat RD4 which was its main competition. From these trials it was decided by the Japanese government that all agricultural tractors for Manchuria were to be diesel-fuelled. Komatsu began working on producing its own high-speed diesel engines. Their first diesel powered crawler was the G35, apparently released the same year.
Some years ago, what is believed to be the only surviving G35 was found on a farm near Griffith, New South Wales, Australia in working condition. It was shipped back to Japan where it now resides in a display of tractors at a Komatsu factory
The Type 97 was the Japanese Army's standard medium tank during World War Two. The Type 97, like it's predecessors, was intended primarily for an infantry support role. In 1939, skirmishes with Soviet forces along the Manchurian border proved that the Chi-Ha's short barreled 57mm cannon was not effective against enemy armor.
To remedy the situation a new version of the type Type 97 was ordered which was equipped with a new turret mounting a more powerful high-velocity 47mm gun with good penetrating power. However, the i9mporved Type 97 did not enter service until 1942 due, in part, to complacency in the army after early victories in China and Manchuria, as well as later victories in Malaya, Burma, and the Dutch East Indies. As the Pacific War progressed the Type 97 soon found itself outclassed by the better Allied tanks, such as the M4 Sherman. This resulted to an increased use of the Type 97 deployed as bunkers and pillbox fortifications.
Off we go! I'm not sure if you would call it a slump, or perhaps it is just due to the fact the life has gotten busy lately. Regardless of the reasons my modeling output has recently dwindled.
I have a number of good friends who are aircraft modelers; I admire their attention to the details, the painstaking paintwork, the scribing of panel lines….listening to their enthusiastic discussions. The thought …"perhaps I need to do something different than armor, maybe I should stretch my wings". You realize, or course, that it's been probably 30 years since I have built an aircraft kit. In the winged world I am a newbee and so I began to ask for kit recommendations and tips from those in the know. With increasing enthusiasm I began to narrow my choices until finally chose to build the recently released Tamiya Spitfire.
The Mk I "Little Boy" was 10 feet (3.0 m) in length, 28 inches (71 cm) in diameter and weighed 8,900 lb (4 000 kg). The design used the gun method to explosively force a hollow sub-critical mass of uranium-235 and a solid target spike together into a super-critical mass, initiating a nuclear chain reaction. This was accomplished by shooting one piece of the uranium onto the other by means of chemical explosives. It contained 64 kg of uranium, of which 0.7 kg underwent nuclear fission, and of this mass only 0.6 g was transformed into energy.
No full test of a gun-type nuclear weapon had occurred before the "Little Boy" device was dropped over Hiroshima. The only test explosion of a nuclear weapon had been of an implosion-type weapon using plutonium as its fissionable material, on July 16, 1945 at the Trinity test. There were several reasons for not testing the "Little Boy" device. Primarily, there was little uranium-235 compared with the relatively large amount of plutonium which, it was expected, could be produced by the Hanford reactors. Additionally, the weapon design was simple enough that it was only deemed necessary to do laboratory tests with the gun-type assembly (known during the war as "tickling the dragon's tail"). Unlike the implosion design, which required sophisticated coordination of shaped explosive charges, the gun-type design was considered almost certain to work.
Although occasionally used in later experimental devices, the design was only used once as a weapon because of the danger of accidental detonation. Little Boy's design was unsafe when compared to modern nuclear weapons, which incorporate safety features to endure various accident scenarios. The main objective of Little Boy was to create a weapon that was absolutely guaranteed to work. As a result, Little Boy incorporated only basic safety mechanisms.
The project stemmed from a 1914 report that Belgian soldiers were using an armor-plated Minerva sedan car to raid the German Army. Inspired by this knowledge, Rolls-Royce quickly armored an assortment of Rolls-Royce Silver Ghosts donated by private citizens. The cars were shielded with 3/8” thick armor plate, fitted with dual rear axles and two machine guns, with 3,000 rounds of ammunition. They carried a crew of three and despite their crudeness (and four ton weight), could reliably maintain 60 mph on dirt roads, thanks to the seven-liter, six-cylinder engine.
Each car had a five-foot steel machine gun turret, with an open wooden platform behind it. The hood was armor-plated and the vulnerable radiator shielded by two armored doors, which could be closed by the driver. The driver sat on the mattress-covered floor, leaning against a canvas sling, looking through a narrow slit. The only other alteration was to install 13 leaf springs in front and 15 leaf springs at the rear, for the added weight.
The armored cars were organized into fifteen squadrons. They weren’t suited for the stalemated Western Front, so were dispatched to Africa and the Middle East. Most went to Egypt, sporting names like “Bull Dog,” “Biter,” “Bloodhound,” and “Blast.”
They were spectacularly reliable—“a triumph of British workmanship”—crowed The Times, but awkward and ungainly. In fact they were mistaken for water trucks by a German spy in West Africa; a costly mistake, one imagines.
Colonel T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) commanded a fleet of nine Rolls-Royce armored cars in Palestine. On one single day, Lawrence took three of the cars and captured two Turkish posts, blew up a bridge, wiped out a Kurdish cavalry regiment, blew up another bridge, and ripped up miles of rails, throwing the whole Turkish supply system into chaos.
After the Armistice, the journalist Lowell Thomas asked Lawrence if there was anything he would like to have. Lawrence answered, “I should like to have a Rolls-Royce car with enough tires and petrol to last me all my life.”
The early passenger car conversions were so effective, the War Office ordered specifically-designed armored cars to be built on the Silver Ghost platform. These cars were assigned chassis numbers WO1–279. Officially phased out in 1922, some served in India during World War II until they were all scrapped in 1944.
In keeping with the British concepts at the time, the Matilda tank was developed for a role as infantry support. Although well armored, the relatively weak engine power and troublesome suspension severely limited the speed of the vehicle. This shortcoming, however, was not considered an issue as the vehicles intended role was to provide close support to the infantry. As shown though combat, the heavy armor of the Matilda's cast turret became legendary; and for a time in 1940-41 the Matilda earned the nickname "Queen of the Desert".
However, in the rapid maneuver warfare often practiced in the open in the wide open spaces of North Africa, the tank's low speed and unreliable steering mechanism became major problems. Another problem was the lack of a high-explosive capability (the appropriate shell existed but was not issued). Ultimately, the lack of speed and maneuverability of the Matilda, along with the Afrika Korps deployment of the 88 mm anti-aircraft gun in the anti-tank role eventually doomed the Matilda in this theatre of war.
Confirming the rule that armies always prepare to fight the previous war, the idea of tanks fighting tanks was an anathema to the U.S. Army of the 1930s, just as it had been to the combatants of the First World War, who used tanks supported by infantry to assault positions held by infantry, not to fight other tanks. Defense against massed enemy armor was just that – defense. Aggressive anti-tank tactics was a doctrine forced on the American army by the Wehrmacht's romp across Poland in September 1939. The German’s success forced the Americans to build from scratch an anti-tank capacity, which culminated in the formation of the Tank Destroyer Forces.
After being tested in the Fall 1941 maneuvers, the anti-tank concept won a certain independence from the infantry and field artillery. This independence was limited due to a continuous and rancorous debate of the doctrine and use of AT forces. While there was agreement on the necessity of such formations, the head of each of the existing combat arms, except Armor, wanted responsibility for these new units.
In early December 1941, putting an aggressive spin on the "anti-tank" function, the battalions were renamed Tank Destroyer, and a Tank Destroyer Tactical and Firing Center was activated at Ft. Meade, Maryland. The Center was moved shortly thereafter to Camp Hood, Texas, where it was enlarged in March 1942 to form the Tank Destroyer Command, whose mission was to coordinate the creation and training of the new units.
The aggressive spin that attached to the title "Tank Destroyer" was based on the mobility, speed, and tactics these units possessed in theory. Often, however, the practical function of motorized TD units was reconnaissance, a function inconsistent with two-thirds of their "Seek, Strike, Destroy" motto. Initially, lack of adequate firepower posed an unwarranted liability to the success of these units’ primary mission of combating enemy armor, and the Army's Ordnance Department never ceased its efforts to improve the armament of Tank Destroyer forces.
There were many high-level discussions of "light" and "medium" versions of tank destroyer vehicles and weapons. With their low velocities and small calibers, both the 37-mm and 57-mm rounds were totally inadequate against enemy armor; German armor, in particular, which was specially designed to resist larger-caliber penetrating rounds. Ordnance test results were embarrassing: the tiny 37-mm shells were unable to pierce relatively thin wood even at a range of less than 100 yards, yet 37-mm guns were ordered in large quantities, probably to appease influential congressmen. The 37-mm and 57-mm guns had limited success against Japanese armor. Incredibly, the 37-mm guns were installed in the rear decks of M-6 trucks ("Fargos"), which were little more than stretch Jeeps. North Africa proved how vulnerable and unsuccessful these armed M-6 trucks were. Ordnance even experimented with a 37-mm half-track jeep, but that combination never left the proving grounds. Towed-gun battalions were subsequently armed with 76-mm cannons.
Ultimately, a French 75-mm gun was installed in a half-track. The 75-mm gun was woefully outclassed by the infamous German 88-mm gun, which featured a 28" to 30" high-velocity round. The thinly-armored half-tracks were not as fast as German armor, and they presented very high silhouettes as targets. Additionally, the half-track had to face the target during firing: its gun could not traverse.
Gen. Lucian Truscott, who rose from command of the 5th Cavalry Regiment to command of the 5th Army during the war years, used the Kasserine Pass debacle to underscore the inadequacy of the TD units’ firepower:
"My Tunisian experience also provided me with an outstanding example of how American soldiers can be indoctrinated in training. Our tank destroyer battalions, organized only a few months previous, with no historical prototype, equipped with an improvised weapon – an almost unarmored half-track mounting an entirely inadequate 75-mm gun – had been taught during their training that it was their duty to seek out and destroy enemy tanks. The number of half-tracks which these gallant units left on the Tunisian deserts was mute testimony to the superiority of German armor, and antitank guns. It was also evidence of the efficacy of their indoctrination, a mark that I was to note among these units throughout the war."
BT is the abbreviation of the Russian term for “fast tank”, with the BT-7 being the last in a line of Soviet fast tanks designed during the 1930’s. Each tank in the series incorporated the Christie type suspension – as designed by J. Walter Christie. 
As a result, large numbers of the vehicles where either lost in battle or abandoned by their crews during the first year of the campaign with very few surviving service beyond 1942. 
Plans for a return to the continent of Europe had been developing ever since the 
In the meantime the Germans had been building the ‘Atlantic Wall’, a series of fortifications along the coastline that they occupied, from northern 
Experiments were already taking place in various parts of 
standard internal equipment as possible removed and replaced with storage space for the sapper's equipment, tools and explosives. The Churchill was chosen because of its combination of a large interior, thick armor and side access door.
Off we go! I'm not sure if you would call it a slump, or perhaps it is just due to the fact the life has gotten busy lately. Regardless of the reasons my modeling output has recently dwindled. 
The Mk I "Little Boy" was 10 feet (3.0 m) in length, 28 inches (71 cm) in diameter and weighed 8,900 lb (4 000 kg). The design used the 
The project stemmed from a 1914 report that Belgian soldiers were using an armor-plated Minerva sedan car to raid the German Army. Inspired by this knowledge, Rolls-Royce quickly armored an assortment of Rolls-Royce Silver Ghosts donated by private citizens. The cars were shielded with 3/8” thick armor plate, fitted with dual rear axles and two machine guns, with 3,000 rounds of ammunition. They carried a crew of three and despite their crudeness (and four ton weight), could reliably maintain 60 mph on dirt roads, thanks to the seven-liter, six-cylinder engine.
They were spectacularly reliable—“a triumph of British workmanship”—crowed The Times, but awkward and ungainly. In fact they were mistaken for water trucks by a German spy in West Africa; a costly mistake, one imagines.
In keeping with the British concepts at the time, the Matilda tank was developed for a role as infantry support. Although well armored, the relatively weak engine power and troublesome suspension severely limited the speed of the vehicle. This shortcoming, however, was not considered an issue as the vehicles intended role was to provide close support to the infantry. As shown though combat, the heavy armor of the Matilda's cast turret became legendary; and for a time in 1940-41 the Matilda earned the nickname "Queen of the Desert". 
became major problems. Another problem was the lack of a high-explosive capability (the appropriate shell existed but was not issued). Ultimately, the lack of speed and maneuverability of the Matilda, along with the Afrika Korps deployment of the 88 mm anti-aircraft gun in the anti-tank role eventually doomed the Matilda in this theatre of war.
Confirming the rule that armies always prepare to fight the previous war, the idea of tanks fighting tanks was an anathema to the U.S. Army of the 1930s, just as it had been to the combatants of the First World War, who used tanks supported by infantry to 
assault positions held by infantry, not to fight other tanks. Defense against massed enemy armor was just that – defense. Aggressive anti-tank tactics was a doctrine forced on the American army by the Wehrmacht's romp across Poland in September 1939. The German’s success forced the Americans to build from scratch an anti-tank capacity, which culminated in the formation of the Tank Destroyer Forces.
The aggressive spin that attached to the title "Tank Destroyer" was based on the mobility, speed, and tactics these units possessed in theory. Often, however, the practical function of motorized TD units was reconnaissance, a function inconsistent with two-thirds of their "Seek, Strike, Destroy" motto. Initially, lack of adequate firepower posed an unwarranted liability to the success of these units’ primary mission of combating enemy armor, and the Army's Ordnance Department never ceased its efforts to improve the armament of Tank Destroyer forces. 
