Landships II

Just so you know that I do have some stuff already, here are photos I have for reference:

Oops, sorry! I forgot all about this. I will post something on my plans page tomorrow.

Helen x

TeeELL wrote:

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Thanks for the additional photo Helen. It gives more detail on the rear of the tank but where else was the armour planned for? Surely the front would have been considerably more important than the rear upper surface?

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 As far as I'm aware, the studs were only on the roof. Normal practice in tank design is to put thicker armour on frontal surfaces and sides, using thinner metal at the back and on the roof to save weight.

If anyone knows better they can correct me, but I suspect the idea behind adding spaced armour to the rhomboids was to protect against "potato mashers" flung onto the roof. Being thinner armoured and horizontal, the roof would need protecting much more than the front, which had a sloping glacis and vertical cab face - so nothing would be likely to lodge there.

I believe the spaced armour came first and that for some reason they chose not to use it. The wooden frames were I think an attempt to give them some protection without using the metal spaced armour. Hopefully someone will be able to fill in some detail on this.

I'm sure I have read somewhere that the plates were sent to France, but never used. I have never seen drawings or photos of the plates.

Even the bolts create more questions, as there seem to be a number of male tanks without any. At first I thought it was only the Bovington example, but photos showed more males without bolts. I have often wondered if they were late in the production run, or a quirk of a particular manufacturer. Either way it hints that they may have given up on the idea of spaced armour early on.

Helen x

MK1 Nut wrote:

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I believe the spaced armour came first and that for some reason they chose not to use it...

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When I was researching the development of the Flying Elephant, I came across a report (in the Stern Archives) by Swinton which I summarised as follows:

Around Christmas 1915, the imaginative Col Ernest Swinton, in his new capacity as Assistant Secretary to the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID), noted concerns about the danger to the tanks under development from new German tactics using protected quick-firing (Q.F.) guns in a report copied to the Landships Committee. He recommended research into the capacity of light armour to resist small high-explosive (H.E.) shells, noting that Admiral Sir Percy Scott, the great naval gunnery innovator, had performed promising experiments a few years previously at Portsmouth into the effects of H.E. against submarine hulls... at this stage, there was interest in determining whether it would be feasible to make the existing design of tank (Mother) resistant to shells, whether through a thicker single layer or a double-skin of the planned, relatively thin, bullet-proof armour.

Unfortunately, my notes are buried in a box somewhere so I don't know how much more information I gleaned, but it would appear that the spaced armour was devised as a potential response to light shells, but not used when it became apparent that it wouldn't actually defeat them (hence the whole Flying Elephant project).