Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Interwar => Topic started by: frontal assault on 03 April 2011, 09:46:12 AM
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I know the Interwar period saw some interesting tank designs, notably with twin turret tanks like the Vickers light tank and the somewhat impractical attempts at producing a super-heavy tank, notably the T-35. However does anyone know if anyone ever tried to build a tank with Twin Turrets and Sponsons?
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I think sponsons fell out of favour quite quickly after the end of WW1, since technology progressed quite quickly to a level that allowed heavier guns to be mounted in turrets. If you combine the limited traverse of sponson guns with limited vehicle agility, it becomes clear that having one or more turrets with a traverse of up to 360° (single turret, or the topmost on a staggered design) is the way to go.
Off the top of my head, I wouldn't know of any tank designed after 1920 that had "sponsons" in the fashion of the British heavies, although machine guns mounted in various hull facings are a different matter. Look at it this way - the French never had any sponson tanks in the first place, mounting the heavy guns in the hull, pointing forward, and innovating tank design with the FT-17, which, in its basic concept, is the father of all tanks to come later (oddities like the S-Tank notwithstanding). All of their later designs had turrets for their main armament (except the Char 2b, IIRC).
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Sponsons were a design feature specific to dealing with the conditions of trench warfare and the use of tanks to breach hrough a trench line. Hence they we'ren't really continued into later designs.
Perhaps the closest was the British TOG-1, but it only had a single turret, not the twin turrets you're looking for. It was designed at the start of WWII by the team that worked on the first tanks in WWI and had a wierd mix of features.
At a massive 80 tons, with the 'wrap-over' tracks, it sported a turret, a forward firing hull gun, and two side sponsons.
It has a configuration closer to what we see in Games Workshop tanks than anything actually practical. My understanding is that the TOG programme was abandoned very quickly after the Churchill tanks were shown to the top brass.
This is the only image i could find;
(http://mailer.fsu.edu/~akirk/tanks/GreatBritain/GB-TOG1.jpg)
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Depending on your definition of "sponson", the most obvious example is the M3 Lee
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3_Lee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3_Lee)
They certainly called it a sponson and the turrets were a mess.
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The sponson tank died out pretty quickly with the development of the turret. The Lee was the sole exception and was the result of the need for a big gun in a tank in a hurry. The existing design (M2) had a small turret to cater for the now obsolete 37mm gun and 75mm was thrown into the adapted hull as an expedient measure. Bear in mind that the first Churchills had their big gun in the hull too.
Prior to WW2 there was no need seen for a gun any bigger than what was already about. Guns in the 20-40mm range being seen as sufficient for anti-tank work, or even the MG armed types, depending on whatever armoured doctrine was prevalent in the particular country in question.
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"he Lee was the sole exception and was the result of the need for a big gun in a tank in a hurry. The existing design (M2) had a small turret to cater for the now obsolete 37mm gun and 75mm was thrown into the adapted hull as an expedient measure. Bear in mind that the first Churchills had their big gun in the hull too. "
Actually, Jim, the Italian M11/39 was also a "Sponson" type tank. Developed for many of the same reasons as the M3 Grant/Lee. Also, there was a tendency in several Interwar designs to feature the main armament in hull mounted limited traverse sponsons (the Char B, for example) while the lighter armament was used in turret mounts. Now, granted, that's not the same thing as a side sponson.
-Alex
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And, of course, if you get the Lee, you get Humphrey Bogart in Sahara.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxH08uSTPgs (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxH08uSTPgs)
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Actually, Jim, the Italian M11/39 was also a "Sponson" type tank. Developed for many of the same reasons as the M3 Grant/Lee.
-Alex
I doff my cap to you, you are quite right. :)
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They're not Interwar, but the German P1000 and P1500 would make for some interesting scenarios. The P1500 was going to mount 28 cm naval guns in a turret like those on the Gneisenau, with other multiple turrets holding 12.8 cm guns.
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They're not Interwar, but the German P1000 and P1500 would make for some interesting scenarios. The P1500 was going to mount 28 cm naval guns in a turret like those on the Gneisenau, with other multiple turrets holding 12.8 cm guns.
The P.1000 was the one with the stripped-down turret. The P.1500 concept utilized an 80cm railway gun.
Still a bit out of scale, and honestly, I prefer the interwar land battleships that were actually built (Char 2C, T-28 and T-35) to such fanciful pipe dreams - nonetheless, the 3W2 crowd loves them, and I would be lying if I didn't admit I thought about building a "mammoth" two-gun tank from a large-scale King Tiger only yesterday.