The FReeper Foxhole's TreadHead Tuesday - Stuart M3 and M5 Light Tank - Apr. 20th, 2004

users.swing.be/tanks.tanks ^

[SAMWolf]

You guys had it worse than us. We used tie downs when we transported equipment on a low-boy trailer but once they were up they were out of the way. Of course the alternative is having all that equipment shift around on you. :-)

[SAMWolf]

The Germans weren't above using Stuarts

[The Mayor]

Hi to you both..

Today was in the 60's and cloudy while the President was here.
The sun came out later in the day and it warmed up some..

Spring is comin quickly, but there is still ice flowing down the river..
Keeps it cooler close to the water.

[jigsaw]

lol! Thanks for the ping. (I hadn't seen it.)

[jigsaw]

Actually, I should say 'tanks' for the ping.   :-)

[SAMWolf]

We've been cool and cloudy all day with on and off rain.

[Valin]

I didn't, I tripped over an exercise bicycle leg. Go Figure.

It sounds like a plot!

[SAMWolf]

I swear some sailor pushed it in front of me as I walked by. ;-)

[snippy_about_it]

Tie-downs causing trouble. LOL. Heck, after taking the grand 2 hour + tour of the Tarawa we couldn't imagine how you all don't get lost on one of those ships. It's like walking through a maze, and we didn't have too many other hazards like you would on a mission.

[snippy_about_it]

Life will always go in circles.

Ain't that the truth!

[snippy_about_it]

Did you get to see him, the President?

[Valin]

THEY are always trying to get me. If it wasn't for the voices warning me they would have succeeded long ago.

[snippy_about_it]

I swear when you tripped the first person I thought of was your friend Rodger funnin' with you from the great beyond. :-)

[SAMWolf]

If I didn't know better, I'd figure Roger would have tripped me just to cause an old Army guy embarrassment. :-)

[SAMWolf]

Even paranoids have enemies. ;-)

[snippy_about_it]

If I didn't know better...

What makes you think you know better, hmmm? :-)

[snippy_about_it]

Stuart M3A3 mit 75mm Pak der 1. jugoslawischen Panzerbrigade (1945)

[PhilDragoo]

Sam und snippy's Filmsiebungraum

US Light Tank M5/M5A1, "Stuart", Part 2

~~~

Van Tassel:

Yes. One other area of the research division is this tank gun stabilizer. Got any interesting little facets here?

Godsey:

Yes. That was one of the odd products that was manufactured in bits and pieces in several divisions of Westinghouse. It came about initially because a Dr. Hannah, an associate director of the research division, had been working with the same rate gyros that John Peters finally began to apply to aircraft use. The application that Hannah had had initially was to use them for very precise speed control on rotating machinery. The advantage was that you got a second-order signal immediately. You didn't have to wait for the speed of the shaft to change. If it started to change, you knew it, with the rate gyro; and so it placed you one up on all of the other types of governors that were then in existence. These were applied initially to rolling mills and to steel mills. Hannah did most of the development work on the controls, and the motor division of Westinghouse did the axle application to the steel mill drives. I don't know where the suggestion came from, but it became apparent to a number of people that a tank moving over even smooth ground is going to move around enough that it's almost impossible to fire a gun from a moving tank with the expectation of hitting a target. If you could stabilize the gun, the gun mount, then you could maintain a point of aim, and you would improve your probability of hit by a factor of ten-to-one or better. In some cases a hundred-to-one improvement. So Doctor Hannah started to develop a tank gun stabilizer using rate gyros. He brought this along in the very early days of the war, and actually before the United States got into the war, the components for these stabilizers were built in East Springfield, and out in Camden, Ohio, and many different places. Most of the tanks used by the United States and most of our allies by the end of the war had tank gun stabilizers on them. So this was the beginning of that. As a matter of fact, this was where Peters picked up the rate gyro control for the aircraft gun stabilizers and the aircraft gun sights.

Frank W. Godsey, Jr., Electrical Engineer, an oral history conducted in 1974 by Kenneth Van Tassel, IEEE History Center, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA.

~~~

The Synchromesh transmission is shown attached to the controlled differential that provided steering with the mechanical brakes and then drove the final drives via drive shafts to either side of the hull.

This is the British stowage sketch from their manual showing some details for their altered interior M3 Honeys.

US M3/M3A1 Light Tank, "Stuart", Part 1

Building the Killer Stuart Street Rod, Hot Rod Magazine, No. 1632, Summer, 1943.

The twin drive/propeller shafts from the rear-mounted engines powered the transfer case located between the drivers.

US Light Tank M5/M5A1, "Stuart", Part 1

The L-head V-8 remained basically unchanged from 1936 up to 1948, including tank use in WW2

The (new) Cadillac Database©

Checking boring with a Kerry-scope

The M5 made its debut in the invasion of Casablanca in French North Africa.

I'm afraid our tank has arrived, snippy, so if you gentlemen will excuse us, we'll be spanken.

[snippy_about_it]

M3 A3 Char léger " STUART " FLAK
Une rare photo d'un M3A3 de la 1ére brigade blindée de l'armée yougoslave soutenant les partisans de Tito en 1945 Les Britanniques équipèrent cette unité avec 56 M3A3s dont une batterie fut retirée afin d'être transformée en unité de soutien antiaérien. La conversion s'opérait par retrait de la tourelle et la mise en place d'un Flakvierling 38 quadritube de 20 mm AA. Une autre batterie fut transformée en unité de soutien antichar avec la mise en place du PAK 40 de 75 mm. Les M3 FLAK sont camouflés à l’aide de bandes aux formes arrondies de couleur brun foncé appliquées sur fond jaune sable. L’insigne national apparaît de chaque coté de la caisse.

[SAMWolf]

Hey!! You found a modification to the Stuart I never heard about!!