Universal Carrier

Speaking of universal carriers (or I will be tomorrow), this one isn't automated, sadly, but does provide more detail on the ins and outs of the markings and placement of some items. Shame I'd forgotten these pictured from Bovington when painting the automated carrier!

Apparently there were nearly 113,000 of these built by 1960, solely for use in Commonwealth armed forced. This would make it the most produced armoured fighting vehicle in history*

*If Wikipedia is to be believed.

M10 Tank Destroyer

And another useful set of photos pulled form the Draft queue that is related to the recent painting spree.

The M10 is one of those tanks that I clearly got to near the end of the day and forgot to actually take full shots of. I did get a few detail shots that might be useful to someone though. I'm interested to note that the turret has loops on the side of it. these are not present on the kit, though this one doesn't have the rear section of the turret, to it may be a different version of the M10.

LVT-4 Buffalo

I failed to get far enough away to get a proper photo of the Buffalo, so here is an old B&W

The LVTs were originally based upon a tracked civilian rescue vehicle called the Alligator. The military version was intended solely as a cargo carrier for the US forces to transport support materials from ship to shore, but they quickly became useful for assault and fire support tasks as well.

The LVT series slowly evolved over time, standardising on drivetrains and tracks used in other readily available tanks. Each iteration shuffled the engine and crew compartment around until, by the time the LVT-4 came into being, everything was at the front, leaving the entire back section as the transport area. This made it large enough to carry both troops (up to 30) or small vehicles or artillery. Over 8300 of these were produced.

Cruiser Mk II (A10)

And just when you thought the tanks were all over, turns out there are still 16 tanks to go ;)

The Cruiser Mk II (A10) was developed as a heavier version of the Vickers A9, with armour of up to an inch thick, double that of the A9. Unfortunately as the engine was still the same, this slowed the tank down to 16mph, but with the thicker armour it didn't need to be quite so fast... so all was good.

Originally it was designed as an infantry support tank, but the speed of development meant that it was shelved, later revived as a heavy cruiser instead. After 175 were produced, the slow speed and relatively thin armour compared to other tanks on the battlefield at the same time led to it being mothballed.

A number saw service with the BEF in France, but performance was reported as very poor. On the other hand, some also saw service in the defense of Tobruk where it's speed and performance suited the environment. The remains were taken to Greece, where they performed well, but over 90% were lost due to malfunction, rather than combat.

The track guard seems to be made of perishable rubber as you can see here from the warping/cracked state.

 

T-26 Light Infantry Tank

In the 1930s, the British manufacturer Vickers produced a tank design called the 6-Ton. When the 6-Ton wasn't picked up by the British army, the Russians bought the license and started to produce it under the name T-26. This tank saw action throughout the 30's as one of the leading tank designs. Unfortunately by the time WW2 came around, it had seen better days and was outclassed by anti-tank weapons. That didn't stop it from being widely used in the defense of Russia.With over 11,000 produced across 23 production variants, plus a lot of experimental iterations, it was in use for a long time. Spain and Finland continued to use them well after the war had finished.

Here we have a Russian T-26 displaying Finnish markings. 

SdKfz. 251

Oh geeze. I just found a whole pile of unpublished tank photos from the tank museum while looking for the Hanomag colours for someone! So it looks like I could have been giving you some posts while trying to paint things for the challenge after all! Onwards and upwards!

The SdKfz 251/1 was a dedicated troop transport designed by the Hanomag company, who had previously specialised in trains and construction vehicles. The vehicle was commonly referred to as Hanomags by both German and Allied troops, despite the company producing a number of other vehicles, such as the earlier Sd.Kfz. 11. The vehicle was so widely used that there were over 20 official variants, with a number of field modified versions making an appearance too.

Tiger II

So I got a helpful reminder text from Dan last night to say that I'd not finished putting up the Bovington photos and, you know what? He's right. There are still about 10 tanks left to do, so I'll try and finish them off before Christmas! To keep him quiet though, here's the Tiger II that he was looking for.

The Tiger II clocks in at a mere 70 Tons with between 100 and 180mm of armour. According to Wikipedia and Google Translate, those well known factually accurate sites, King Tiger isn't the correct translation of Königstiger. Go figure. It's supposed to be Bengal Tiger.

Anyway. The Tiger II didn't make an appearance until '44 during the Normandy campaign with only 492 being produced before the end of the war, due to a series of rather disruptive bombing raids on the factories. Initial versions were unreliable thanks to some lower quality components and lacklustre training of crews. The first 5 delivered all failed before they were ever used.

You've got to laugh. The first actual field use of these saw two destroyed and the commander's permanently stuck when it fell into a crater and couldn't get out again. Over time, the components were improved so that they could cope with the sheer weight and force needed to keep this thing moving.

Renault UE Chenillette

Here's another weirdly wonderful little tankette.  Those bubbles to cover the crew's heads must have been very claustrophobic. The Chenillette was designed in the 30s to tow artillery or ammunition, so wasn't armed with anything to defend itself with. All of the Chenillettes that were captured by the German forces were provided with light machineguns or anti-tank weapons to provide mobile infantry support.