Landships II

MarkV · Lieutenant-Colonel

Mark ? Tank Captured by Germans in May 1940???

Centurion · Legend

Most odd

Looks like a Mk IV with a section of exhaust missing (but otherwise in rasonably good condition externally). France only had Mk V and V*s and the British Mk IVs had almost all been taken out of frontline service by the end of 1918. I can't think who would have one in use in WW2

Mark Hansen · Legend

This tank is pictured in H&S's A7V book. It most definitely wasn't a runner in WW2 .

Mark Hansen · Legend

A quick addendum to the above. According to the accompanying text, this tank was the BAKP 20 testbed for a one man steering device for the Mk IV. It apparently failed behind the German lines and was abandoned.

Mark Hansen · Legend

One more feature I missed the first time. The tree that is growing happily in front of the sponson in the WW2 image is just visible in the WW1 image as a seedling.

Drader · Lieutenant

Trackstory 5 has a couple of pictures hinting that the MarkV*s may have been used in May/June 1940, plus a page or two on other WW1 material broughht out of store, like the Schneider based tractors shown here

http://www.minitracks.fr/juin_40.htm

David

Centurion · Legend

Mark Hansen wrote:

A quick addendum to the above. According to the accompanying text, this tank was the BAKP 20 testbed for a one man steering device for the Mk IV. It apparently failed behind the German lines and was abandoned.

Interesting, I'm slightly puzzled as to why it still has the Allied recognition markings on the front horn. I would have thought he tanks used by BAKP 20 were those recovered after Cambrai - well before such markings were introduced! Was this a much later Beute?

Centurion · Legend

Drader wrote:

Trackstory 5 has a couple of pictures hinting that the MarkV*s may have been used in May/June 1940, plus a page or two on other WW1 material broughht out of store, like the Schneider based tractors shown here

http://www.minitracks.fr/juin_40.htm

David

I think the tanks you are refering to in the link are in fact Char Bs. There was a disarmament conference in (I think) 1930 at which it was agreed that heavy tanks were weapons of agression and should be scrapped. Britain, the US, Poland, Italy etc that had no heavy tanks at the time agreed completely. France made the gesture of scrapping its obsolete Mk V*s (whilst quietly continuing to develop the Char B - quite a modern tank apart from the silly one man turret). Germany, of course, officially had no tanks and the Soviet Union just went its own way anyway. So apart from memorials etc there should have been no Mk V*s in France in 1940

mad zeppelin · Commander in Chief

This is a XII. Bn (L-Bn) tank, "donated" to some French village in order to safe the costs of scrapping when L-Bn finally received Mk.Vs. The French later dragged it to the vicinity of the Fort de la Pompelle where it replaced "Liesel" (the Guide Michelin said that two German ex-British vehicles where to be seen at the F.d.l.P., when "Liesel" had to be scrapped for reasons of tourist safety, another vehicle was needed to fill the quota).
The theory about this being a test vehicle is no longer valid, the extra rods and other devices on the tank have nothing to do with the Germans. This vehicle was first captured by the Germans in 1940.

Drader · Lieutenant

Centurion wrote:

Drader wrote:

Trackstory 5 has a couple of pictures hinting that the MarkV*s may have been used in May/June 1940, plus a page or two on other WW1 material broughht out of store, like the Schneider based tractors shown here

http://www.minitracks.fr/juin_40.htm

David

I think the tanks you are refering to in the link are in fact Char Bs. There was a disarmament conference in (I think) 1930 at which it was agreed that heavy tanks were weapons of agression and should be scrapped. Britain, the US, Poland, Italy etc that had no heavy tanks at the time agreed completely. France made the gesture of scrapping its obsolete Mk V*s (whilst quietly continuing to develop the Char B - quite a modern tank apart from the silly one man turret). Germany, of course, officially had no tanks and the Soviet Union just went its own way anyway. So apart from memorials etc there should have been no Mk V*s in France in 1940

The tanks I'm referring too aren't shown in the extracts appearing in the link to Minitracks, I put that in to show the Schneiders, as I said in the text. The photos are definitely WW1 British heavies.

Not forgetting also that France kept its Char 2Cs.

David

-- Edited by Drader at 10:33, 2006-12-12

-- Edited by Drader at 12:18, 2006-12-12

Mark Hansen · Legend

mad zeppelin wrote:

This is a XII. Bn (L-Bn) tank, "donated" to some French village in order to safe the costs of scrapping when L-Bn finally received Mk.Vs. The French later dragged it to the vicinity of the Fort de la Pompelle where it replaced "Liesel" (the Guide Michelin said that two German ex-British vehicles where to be seen at the F.d.l.P., when "Liesel" had to be scrapped for reasons of tourist safety, another vehicle was needed to fill the quota).
The theory about this being a test vehicle is no longer valid, the extra rods and other devices on the tank have nothing to do with the Germans. This vehicle was first captured by the Germans in 1940.

When I first saw the photo at the start of the post, I thought it may have been either Liesel or Lotti but then realised they were sitting at different angles from this tank.

theburk · Captain

Centurion wrote:

Most odd

Looks like a Mk IV with a section of exhaust missing (but otherwise in rasonably good condition externally). France only had Mk V and V*s and the British Mk IVs had almost all been taken out of frontline service by the end of 1918. I can't think who would have one in use in WW2

it should be noted that a handful (very very few) mark IV's (or whichever type they recieved during the civil wars) were feilded breifly during the early stages of the invasion of russia, as nothing else was avialable, they even produced numerous one of a kind weapons in places like stalingrad, just by strapping guns and armor onto agricultural tractors.

vad26 · Captain

Read, that were used Мк from the Baltic countries (Estonia or Lithuania or Latvia). These tanks were in armies of these countries.

Centurion · Legend

theburk

Mark IVs were not supplied to Russia or to anybody else (apart from the odd evaluation/demonstration machine for the Americans and one for Japan) Only Mk Vs went to Russia. As Vad has pointed out there is no evidence of the surviving Russian Mk Vs being used, as they had all been distributed as memorial tanks and had their transmissions removed (just as in the UK) its difficult to see how they could have been. Its just posible that some survivor might have been used as a static pillbox but there's no evidence of it. The Germans shipped some back to Germany when they took the town in which they were on display. The only ones available were those in the ex Baltic states where some had been maintained in running order. As Vad says some were used in the defence of Tallin. Even then its likely from whats known that they were driven to appropriate points and used as semi static defence posts.

The tractor factory in Stalingrad had been converted for tank production. These were driving straight out of the factory gates and into action. Tractors were used during the siege of Sebastepol. In this case however there was actually a production line producing armoured and machine gun armed tractors. They were known as 'Terror Tractors'.

vad26 · Captain

About " armoured tractor " from Odessa and Kharkov - I know. But Sevastopol? I live in Sevastopol, but anywhere did not meet a mention of manufacture of such tractors. You have something more concrete?

P.S. Odessa a tractor referred to " On a fright " (or " for a fright ")

Centurion · Legend

Apologies Vad - I was working from memory. I got the wrong Black Sea Port - yes it was Odessa.

I guess that your auto translator has produced the odd translation of terror - it means extreme fear - thus a terrorist spreads exteme fear

theburk · Captain

hmm... ill have to try to find my source picture again, it may have been a mark v (sorry i couldnt remember if they were mk iv, or mk v that went to russia) and the picture may have been taken during the civil wars and not WWII

Drader · Lieutenant

The Estonian MarkV appears on Andrew Kirk's Tanks! site. Exactly who might have been using it it in 1941 is a poser, as Estonia and the other Baltic states were occupied by the Soviets in 1940, thanks to Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

Germany evidently borrowed at least one of the Mark Vs from its memorial base as it turns up in photographs taken in Berlin in 1945.

David

Centurion · Legend

Drader wrote:

The Estonian MarkV appears on Andrew Kirk's Tanks! site. Exactly who might have been using it it in 1941 is a poser, as Estonia and the other Baltic states were occupied by the Soviets in 1940, thanks to Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

Germany evidently borrowed at least one of the Mark Vs from its memorial base as it turns up in photographs taken in Berlin in 1945.

David

And it was almost certainly Soviet officials who pressed it into service as a mobile pill box in 1941

The Germans seem to have lifted a number of WW1 tanks from Soviet territory - but as trophies for museums so they probably were not runners