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.
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
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.
Thanks for all the interior and technical data on the Stuart.
I believe the Stuart was the oly light tank to be manufactured and in use for the entire war.
I'm afraid our tank has arrived, snippy, so if you gentlemen will excuse us, we'll be spanken.
ROTFL!! Who's Spanken whom?
LOL. We'll always have Paris.