British armor

[Liam]

The one and only Sten that we had certainly did fire by itself as was demonstrated by one of our weapons intructors, who 'locked and loaded' it and then shook the gun (pointing at the target) and about five times out of ten it would fire! So the drill was never cock the gun until you were at a range pointing it at a target. It was a useful lesson for teaching you about the dangers of weapons, i'll say!

[sid guttridge]

Hi Guys,

In defence of the Sten I would say that amongst other things it was designed to be produced with minimal machine tools, even in occupied territory! It was designed as a more primitive weapon than its competitors. I have heard that the Germans were sufficiently impressed by the low technology used to produce it that they manufactured some themselves. Is this true?

Another point is that part of the "run-away Sten" reputation is due to the ammunition. It used 9mm ammunition identical in external appearance to much pistol ammunition. However, the recoil from pistol ammunition was not powerful enough to throw the working parts of the Sten far enough back to engage the single shot catch. As a result, a Sten with a magazine full of pistol rounds tended to empty its entire contents even when set up for single shots. A Sten had to be used with 9mm sub-machine gun rounds, not 9mm pistol rounds, but confusion was common as the external appearance of both was virtually identical. Only with SMG rounds could one be certain that the working parts were thrown far enough back to engage the single shot catch.

I had a Sten in 1977 when I was working on a coffee farm in Rhodesia. I always used to cock it when going out at dusk to lock the security gates. I dropped it once, but fortunately it did not discharge. However, I changed to a local Rhodesian-made SMG at the first opportunity, largely because of the Sten's poor reputation.

Cheers,

Sid.

[Darrin]

The M4 Shermans with the 9cylinder air cooled radial was a stopgap untill the GAA or GAF Ford tank engine became available,it was a V8 overhead cam engine,it gave very good service.A guy i knew who was in armor told me he saw some with 5 Chrysler engines in them,don't quote me on this though.

The sherman was designed to work with the cont radial engines early on but the demand for these in the airforcere increased during the war so other engines had to be dev and tried. The chrsler multibank was a stop gap process that was used in large numbers in the middle of the war many of these ended up being given away as lend lease. The ford V8 was the main tank engine as the war progressed. Interestingly the mutli engine did not have much worse of a service record than the others during the war.

There was one other common eng for the shermans a diseal twin. It was used in the rus LL shermans and the US marines who had some indep sherm bat supporting them.

[Rodger Herbst]

Darrin,first i'v heard of diesels in Shermans,do you know the make of the engines?

[Darrin]

Darrin,first i'v heard of diesels in Shermans,do you know the make of the engines?

No I don´t rember but they were aparently two small 250 hp engines together as a twin. With the T34 and other med and heavy tanks using diseal the rus wanted to min supply diffcultyies spare parts fuel main etc...

With only 4000 shermans total sent LL to russia it seems they were small compared to the other engines. The vast majority of all shermans did use gas engines excet a few in the US marines in the pacific. Which was done to min supply difficulty since the marines being part of the navy tended to use diseal as well.

[michael kenny]

8053 Diesel engined M4A2's to be exact. 5041 to the UK (as Sherman III) and 1990 to Russia. This is also a fifth of the toTal production of Shermans and thus, is not quite :

"they were small compared to the other engines."

Russia got a total of 4065 Shermans ( 2073 M4A2, 1990 M4A2{76}W and 2 M4A4) They also got 1386 M3's and 52 M10's.

I am not sure if the M4A2(76)W was also diesel engined, help anyone?

[Darrin]

Darrin,first i'v heard of diesels in Shermans,do you know the make of the engines?

Rodger,

I found bits of info I was quting the diseals were GM 6046 inline 12 with a 13.9 L deplacment. According to one source they were deployed as twins. The M4A2s and M4A2(76)W all supposedly had diseal engines. The less than 3000 76mm shermans were mainly sent to the USSR. Some of the 8000 75 mm shermans were sent to units attached to maires in the pacifc. Some were definatly sent to the CW but I´m not sure how common they were at the front. Its a bit funny with so many diseals bing sent to the CW but none of thier own tanks appear to use diseal engines.

Darrin

[Das Tot]

Is there anybody knowing URLs or FTPs where I (and others) could download FREE video clips on the subject. No Arschkecke DVD/HVS sales orders, please, just good old video clip galleries or arrays.


Thank you all very much