New Rides Without Enough New Guns- Vehicles/Ships With Salvaged Weapons

[dy031101]

In the M113 thread, Jeffry Fontaine mentioned Wiipedia entry of South Vietnamese mounted M8 Greyhound armor car turret onto M113 hulls and then suggested WHIF applications such as arming the M113 with the 75mm howitzer turret from the LVT(A)4/LVT(A)5/M8 HMC and the 75mm gun turret from the M24 light tank.

This morning it got me thinking.    Previously I posted a pic in the M41 thread displaying a M18 Hellcat tank destroyer turret mounted onto M42 Duster hull and then, inspired by Bosnian Serb re-arming T-55 hulls with M18 Hellcat turrets, a mental note of M36 Jackson turret with T-55 hull:



What are other possibilities of a warring party wanting to stretch their revolutionary/counter-revolutionary dollars as far as they can but couldn't buy enough weapons to bring to bear?

I for some reason was quite interested in imagining there being enough Shinhoto Chi-Ha turrets left over...... the 47mm-gun turret then being mounted onto a relatively more modern APC hull......  What about the turrets of the BT series light tank and T-34-76?

[jorel62]

Very cool..... I like it.

[dy031101]

Mental note number 2: MT-LB with the turret from the Shinhoto Chi-Ha.  Hope I got the scaling correct......

I tried to obtain colours used by Indonesian armoured vehicles......

[sotoolslinger]

Very cool stuff and excellent whiffy ideas.(scaleorama up to get Bolos/Ogres)

[dy031101]

scaleorama up to get Bolos/Ogres)

Bolos/Ogres?

[Jschmus]

scaleorama up to get Bolos/Ogres)

Bolos/Ogres?

Bolos are artificially intelligent tanks/fighting machines, originally created by Keith Laumer, then later fleshed out by other authors.  The earliest version was simply a very large tank with a big gun and a fuzzy-logic targeting computer.  Later models were produced during a war between Earth and the Deng, and later the Melconians (Yes, I am a fan).  The later marks are fusion-powered, with Hellbores for main armament.

Ogres are, I think, a similar machine on a hovercraft chassis produced for a tabletop gaming system.

[dy031101]

Expanding from Jeffry Fontaine's idea of arming the M113 modified as fire support vehicles with the 75mm howitzer turret from the LVT(A)4/LVT(A)5/M8 HMC...... apparently arming the M8 HMC with the same 75mm gun used by standard M4 Shermans was attempted.  The resulting vehicle is the M8A1......

[NARSES2]

There's an article on building that M8A1 in the Jan Scale Military Modeller International

[dy031101]

There's an article on building that M8A1 in the Jan Scale Military Modeller International

If we are to choose between the turret of M8 HMC and the turret of M8A1 for installation onto a M113......  which weapon (75mm tank gun used by Sherman tanks or 75mm Pack Howitzer used by M8 HMC) would remain relatively more useful now......?

And would modifying the M8 HMC turret to take the 75mm tank gun straight forward enough in practice such that it can be accomplished as a field modification?



P.S. First paragraph re-worded for a bit to adequately express one of the questions I have in mind.

[Joe C-P]

In WW2 Japan captured and operated the destroyer USS Stewart, DD 224, along with a couple minor warships.
They also came upon the carrier USS Hornet, though they sank her as unsalvagable; one could posit them recovering her to partially replace their carrier losses.
Germany captured several French vessels, and rearmed and used them.
The French BB Richelieu was updated with US AA weapons and operated in the Pacific. Jean Bart was partially built, and it was considered to have her armed with a large number of 5"/38 twins as a super-AA ship.

After both world wars, the Allies ended up with a number of Central Powers (WW1) and Axis (WW2) warships. I've done post-WW2 versions of the cruiser Prinz Eugen, battleship Nagato (which were captured) and carrier Shinano (which had been sunk, but could have survived with better damage control).

[pyro-manic]

Hochseeflotte ships in Allied service in the 1920s could be interesting, or maybe sold off to Brazil, Argentina, etc. Refitted with radar etc. in the 1930s, perhaps going up against U-boats or Panzerschiffs in the early part of the Second World War?

[dy031101]

In WW2 Japan captured and operated the destroyer USS Stewart, DD 224, along with a couple minor warships.
They also came upon the carrier USS Hornet, though they sank her as unsalvagable; one could posit them recovering her to partially replace their carrier losses.
Germany captured several French vessels, and rearmed and used them.
The French BB Richelieu was updated with US AA weapons and operated in the Pacific. Jean Bart was partially built, and it was considered to have her armed with a large number of 5"/38 twins as a super-AA ship.

After both world wars, the Allies ended up with a number of Central Powers (WW1) and Axis (WW2) warships. I've done post-WW2 versions of the cruiser Prinz Eugen, battleship Nagato (which were captured) and carrier Shinano (which had been sunk, but could have survived with better damage control).

Hochseeflotte ships in Allied service in the 1920s could be interesting, or maybe sold off to Brazil, Argentina, etc. Refitted with radar etc. in the 1930s, perhaps going up against U-boats or Panzerschiffs in the early part of the Second World War?

Technically these proposals are more of the opposite of the topic concept 

(Of course, these captured/salvaged ships could have received older weapons like the Japanese 4.7"/L45 DP because those guns were more readily available than the top-of-the-line......)

[Joe C-P]

Technically these proposals are more of the opposite of the topic concept 

(Of course, these captured/salvaged ships could have received older weapons like the Japanese 4.7"/L45 DP because those guns were more readily available than the top-of-the-line......)

Oh, right, right; then let us consider something more modern. The USN decides to sell off the Spruance DDs and OHP FFGs, but demilitarizes them first - guns, missiles, radar, radios all removed. They are acquired in ones and twos by small nations as replacements for their WW2 vintage major combatants, where they are re-armed with weapons, electronics, and other equipment taken off older vessels. One could even consider European and Soviet equipment, plus helos as well because both classes had helo decks and hangars. (I chose US ships both because they have actually been decommed, and because there are cheap models available.)

Also, the film "The Final Countdown" has the CVN USS Nimitz travel back in time to 7 December 1941; I've considered building her in, say, 1943 if she hadn't returned to the 1980s, with a deckload of WW2 prop planes.

[dy031101]

Also, the film "The Final Countdown" has the CVN USS Nimitz travel back in time to 7 December 1941; I've considered building her in, say, 1943 if she hadn't returned to the 1980s, with a deckload of WW2 prop planes.

This idea reminds me of the game "Naval Ops: Warship Gunner" and "Naval Ops: Commander".

After having the game and its save files sitting in storage for years, I started a new game (with a save file that allows me to do so with technologies for Kitty Hawk class carriers and modern aircraft already in place), ducked the number of F-14s and F/A-18 (reasoning that a portion of them were cannibalized for parts) on my Kitty Hawk class carrier, acquired F4F as well as both bomb- and depth-charge-equipped PBJ-1 to make up for the shortfall, and added numerous 5-inch guns and 20mm cannons (reasoning again that the ammos for both the Phalanxes and Sea Sparrow launchers needed to be conserved).

[Jschmus]

Vehicles with salvaged weapons sounds like a word-for-word description of the technicals used by the various factions in Somalia.  Most of these are jeeps and similar-sized vehicles that mount machine guns (DshK and the like) or recoilless rifles, but I was looking around the internets and I found this:



Looks like a 23mm cannon.  40mm Bofors wouldn't be a bad fit, either.