AMX at Saumur

[jtrowbridge5]

these tanks seem to be so complicated, check out the large tanks, so many bits and pieces .
then you get to the ARL44 and the AMX50 that are almost bare

dennis
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[JeffStringer]

Yeah, their earlier tanks were pretty busy looking like the WWII British tanks were. That's one of the first pictures I've seen of the 50 showing it's overlapping road wheels.

Nice pics!

[Neil_Baumgardner]

Well, prototypes and vehicles that saw fairly limited service are often very "clean" in comparison...

Neil

[blair]

what is the rationale or design reasoning behind the oddly shaped turrets with the split sections ?

Were the tanks vulnerable where that material covers the gaps?

[oldertop]

Its called an articulated turret, the front section of the turret elevated and depressed the gun tube, the gun (75mm) was a french copy of the german panther 75mm, the correction in mils from 600m to 1200m was only 3/10 of a mil, there being 6400 mils in 360 degrees.

[Joe_D]

Hi Blair,

These turrets were sometimes described as "Oscillating". If you look at where the gun mates to the turret you'll see no gun mantle, or at least not one in the conventional way. The gun elevated and depressed with the top half of the turret, hence the split sections, top and bottom halves. The idea here was to be able to reduce the turret size while maintaining a larger gun. Conventional turrets need to have space in the roof for the breech in order for the gun to depress. Depending on the design and intended employment this would vary. NATO/ Western designs tended to put an emphasis on this capability, envisioning a defensive scenario. This type of turret also allowed for an easier installation of an auto loader. Much less engineering requirements to load a gun when the mechanism was fixed in the same axis. You can see the ejection port cover center of the turret rear. As far as I know only two Countries produced this type in large numbers, France (AMX-13) and Austria (Panzer Jager K/ 4K4F). The Austrian TD using the AMX-13 type Turret. The US Army experimented with it and IIRC made one full scale prototype installed on an M48 style chassis.

Were the tanks vulnerable where that material covers the gaps?

Not to my knowledge. The base of the turret, to put in simple terms, is like a socket overlapping a ball joint. The edge always covering the inner ball, regardless of position. Much like a ball turret on a B17, only half was ever exposed from the fuselage no matter the position. But in this case the ball is armored.

Joe D

[GaryKato]

I seem to recall that the joint between the turret pieces made it diffcult to seal against for NBC warfare.

[blair]

Joe_d

Thanks for the informative response! This in one of the reasons that I consider it to be a privilege to be able to post here in a forum that has so many educated, experienced and helpful members.