Landships II

Mark Hansen · Legend

An easy Braille scale conversion

Eric · Colonel

Very interesting article, it is a good way to have a Mk3 in a collection.
Just a question : regarding the exhaust, do you let them as you show, only 3 holes ? or do you add something else ?
Same question for the MG's.

Thank you in advance.

Mark Hansen · Legend

Oops!

Sorry about that! There should be baffles above the exhausts, the same type as the Mk I & II. Thanks for spotting that Eric.

Mark Hansen · Legend

As far as machine guns not many Mk III's used them, if any. The main purpose of the Mk III was for driver training. If you wanted to equip it with MG's, I would use Lewis rather than Hotchkiss MG's.

P.S.: Here's the edited version taking into account the baffles and MG's

-- Edited by Mark Hansen at 05:15, 2006-06-17

Peter Kempf · Field Marshal

Hey Mark!

I've HTML-ed your very nice and instructive article and posted it on the site! Hope that is OK!

All the best

Mark Hansen · Legend

Fine by me, Peter. Thanks for that.

Mandrake · Corporal

An excellent article Mark, hope to convert one of my IV somtime soon with it.

Apoligies for my ignorance, I am new to this forum and WWI modelling, but I do have a few queries about MK.III and inparticular thier colours that hopefully someone can help clarify.

If MK.IIIs were purely unarmed training vehicles (I have seen contradictory statements on this site) how do we know that:

1. They were deployed to the front?

2. They recieved the brown khaki scheme?

Thanks in advance to anyone sharing their thoughts on this matter

Mark Hansen · Legend

Mandrake wrote:

An excellent article Mark, hope to convert one of my IV somtime soon with it. Apoligies for my ignorance, I am new to this forum and WWI modelling, but I do have a few queries about MK.III and inparticular thier colours that hopefully someone can help clarify. If MK.IIIs were purely unarmed training vehicles (I have seen contradictory statements on this site) how do we know that: 1. They were deployed to the front? 2. They recieved the brown khaki scheme? Thanks in advance to anyone sharing their thoughts on this matter

Welcome to the forum, Mandrake. Hopefully I can answer your questions.

1. According to David Fletcher in "British Mark I Tank 1916", the Mk III census numbers do not appear in Central Workshops records in France. This is, of course, an absence of evidence argument rather than evidence of absence but the records of tanks arriving in France should be more accurate than records submitted from closer to the front.

2. The colour scheme for the early tanks is difficult (discussed under quite a few threads throughout the forum). Unfortunately, the only true colour photos from WWI (yes, there are some!!) don't seem to have captured many tanks (unless some previously unknown ones turn up). The only one that I know of is photo No. P03631.210 of C1 "Champagne" at the AWM. However, the photo was taken well after the tank was abandoned so there is the effect of weather on the tank colours, and the quality of colour photography was not spectacular. There is a coloured postcard of the Mk III female that was given to Canterbury in which the tank is grey. The same picture appears in "British Mark I Tank 1916" p. 46. I don't see any reason why the artist would choose to colour the tank grey if it was brown.

P.S.: Of course as soon as I posted that I only knew of one colour photo, I remembered another! Another Paget plate (no. P03631.209) at the AWM.

P.P.S.: I've also apparently stolen my original .doc attachment. What is happening with this forum????

-- Edited by Mark Hansen at 04:57, 2006-06-30

-- Edited by Mark Hansen at 04:59, 2006-06-30

-- Edited by Mark Hansen at 05:00, 2006-06-30

Centurion · Legend

I have seen somewhere, I'll have to dig, references to the fact that there was a period during which tanks were sent to the front in their factory finish grey as mud soon provided a natural cammoflage anyway. One would imagine that training tanks might be left in grey in any case. Eventually there was a return to painting tanks in green? brown? but I suspect after Mk III production was over.

On the question of census numbers and CW records. I'm trying to build up a picture of how CW operated and exactly what they did and did not do. In the course of this I have discovered that when pressure was on to get tanks to the front ASAP some tanks would be detrained and driven to the tankodrome, near but not at CW Erin, by delivery crews (RNAS?) to be handed over to their army crews who would do any final fitting out before driving the tanks to the Le Platteau railhead to be entrained and moved to the front. These tanks would never actually pass through the hands of CW. Its the old problem of how do you prove a negative? But it is just possible that any Mk IIIs rushed to the front to make up the numbers might never have had their census numbers recorded at Erin

Whilst in the area of tank colours I have found a photo of some of the Chinese workers at Central Workshops painting a cammo pattern on a Mk V. I'll try and post this PM but any ideas on what the colours mght be? The pattern looks a bit like the French style but with no black lines.

Mandrake · Corporal

Thank you very much for the replies.

I have since read that a number of MKIII were armed and sent to the Frontline, but I'm still thinking that prior to that, in their training capactiy, they were probably grey. During their time at the frontline however is obviously a matter for some debate and probably always will be!

If I do go ahead with the converion I will stick to a grey training MKIII and quite probably '84' as seen in the video clip: http://www.landships.freeservers.com/downloads/Mk3.WMV Bit of a long shot but does anyone know the location where that demostration took place? I'm guessing its probably in or around Lincoln but any confirmation would be greatly appreciated.

Also could someone please tell me how to find those photos/plates on AWM? I seem to be having some difficulty navigating and searching for them.

Mark Hansen · Legend

To see the AWM online collection, go to the AWM site and click on Collection Databases in the left sidebar. Click on Collections Search and in Enter Search Term(s), type in tank. For Conflict select WWI (or whatever conflict you're after) and you'll get the list. Unfortunately "tank" will also bring up water tanks (real water tanks, not the ones going to "Petrograd").

Alternatively, you can click on Advanced Search if you already know the photo number. Enter the photo number in the Enter Search Term(s) field and you'll go straight to it.

Hope this helps.

Date: Jun 30, 2006

Thanks Mark, appreciate you help.

Made a bit of a blunder previously on the search criteria which was why i was getting nothing, d'oh!

Looks like there are some great pics on that site, will have fun exploring it further.

Mark Hansen · Legend

There are some good ones there; unfortunately there are a lot not available online. When I get to Canberra (probably won't happen until after August; too cold down there), I'm going to try and get a look at some of the ones that aren't available online.

One photo that won't turn up in that search is H02128. For some reason, the search skips it but it can be found searching through British WWI tanks (I think). Some A7V photos can also be a bit tricky to find. Just try some of the links that are included at the bottom of the photos.

Mark Hansen · Legend

Centurion wrote:

On the question of census numbers and CW records. I'm trying to build up a picture of how CW operated and exactly what they did and did not do. In the course of this I have discovered that when pressure was on to get tanks to the front ASAP some tanks would be detrained and driven to the tankodrome, near but not at CW Erin, by delivery crews (RNAS?) to be handed over to their army crews who would do any final fitting out before driving the tanks to the Le Platteau railhead to be entrained and moved to the front. These tanks would never actually pass through the hands of CW. Its the old problem of how do you prove a negative? But it is just possible that any Mk IIIs rushed to the front to make up the numbers might never have had their census numbers recorded at Erin

It's possible that some Mk III's did make it to France but unlikely. All the available photos show either Mk I's or II's. If female Mk III's were sent, they would be fairly easy to pick out in photos even if the WD number was obscured. It would have been unwise to send the Mk III's for the same reason that the Mk II was a bad choice. The hull sides weren't up to the task of stopping anything stronger than a regular rifle bullet, especially at close range. They still needed a tank of some sort to practice driving on in England and an unarmoured tank is just as good as an armoured one, especially if no-one is shooting at you. The Mk IV was available very shortly after the Mk II & III anyway and any surviving Mk I's and at least one Mk II were converted to supply tanks when the Mk IV did arrive. I think the Mk III in France is slightly more likely than the A7V in Poland but not by much.

Centurion · Legend

Mark Hansen wrote:

It's possible that some Mk III's did make it to France but unlikely. All the available photos show either Mk I's or II's. If female Mk III's were sent, they would be fairly easy to pick out in photos even if the WD number was obscured. It would have been unwise to send the Mk III's for the same reason that the Mk II was a bad choice. The hull sides weren't up to the task of stopping anything stronger than a regular rifle bullet, especially at close range. They still needed a tank of some sort to practice driving on in England and an unarmoured tank is just as good as an armoured one, especially if no-one is shooting at you. The Mk IV was available very shortly after the Mk II & III anyway and any surviving Mk I's and at least one Mk II were converted to supply tanks when the Mk IV did arrive. I think the Mk III in France is slightly more likely than the A7V in Poland but not by much.

In general I'd agree with one tiny quibble - the Mk III would probably be a slightly better bet than the MK II that we know did go given that its plate was slightly thicker and the sponsons were armoured. Incidentally one minor point, the steel sides of the Mk II and MIII did provide some protection from ordinary rounds if these were not fired at close range or struck at an angle. I've seen figures somewhere that the chance of penetration on a Mk II from a round fired from within 500 yards was about 50:50. At greater ranges the chance of penetration was lower. Not a lot of comfort though .