AlienFTM

I'd guess they were simply treating the Channel as a wide river (as they did) and didn't expect in the short term to need to carry the war beyond the beachhead. By the time the medium term came around Hitler had given up with GB and turned eastward. How would the battle have gone had the fighters used drop tanks? They'd have spent more time over the battlefield and suffered greater losses. Every Luftwaffe aircraft downed was a pilot lost for the duration even if he got out. Only Franz von Werra ever escaped British captivity long enough to fly again. An RAF aircarft downed on the other hand didn't automatically mean a pilot lost, so long as he walked away. However, Luftwaffe fighters were tied to bomber protection. Unless they saved enough bombers to remove Fighter Command from the battle entirely, I don't believe it would have made much difference (though I accept they came perilously close). Once the Luftwaffe turned their attention from the airfields to London, the battle was lost and would have remained lost. There'd simply have been more Luftwaffe fighters over London during the day. (I don't see the use of drop tanks adding anything to Luftwaffe night-fighter defence of their bombers over London. It'd simply make more targets for the triple-A batteries.) But it's an excellent What-if? question I have never heard asked before, I think the thread could run and I look forward to the thoughts of others.

I'd love to know what the censor saw fit to cut from the background right of the second picture. Until I noticed that something was missing, I had a gut feeling the picture looked like the sea-front at somewhere like Houlgate (where I used to holiday), just east of the Pegasus Bridge or Deauville a little further east, but the date of 11 July in the caption tells me it was probably still in the Canadian beachead. Gut instinct still says the sea is on the right of the picture. Maybe the censor removed an image of a Mulberry or similar?

There is a far better armour add-on available for CVR(T)s than this that protects the turret and underneath the sponsons. IMCO it hasn't been added as armour - it merely utilises the old bolt-holes for the float-screen to create extra storage to tidy away cam nets so they don't catch in the tracks and stuff that doesn't need to be locked away or kept dry.

If you compare it with the other white star, the plate it's painted on looks identical to the one on the front of the SdKfz251.

Fred, you and I discussed whether we overlapped previously but when I posted above I couldn't remember what you had said (and I never bothered referring back to the PM). During our tour the Nissen huts down by FHQ were occupied by the REMFs and base stallions who didn't cycle round the outstations. We sabre troops hung out the other side of camp beyond the NAAFI and the chuggie shop.* I don't think there were enough Nissen huts to house six sabre troops, but there were always troops deployed. (I am struggling to count six: hopefully Fred or Baz will help me out here.) In the east there was a troop at Larnaca (from the turret roof of a Ferret parked on the driveway of the UN Bungalow, you could just see the runway at Larnaca Airport). Austrian Contingent (AUSCON) Just up the road a troop was located near Ayyios Nicolauos between Famagusta and the British Eastern Sovereign Base Area at Dekhelia. I think we were supporting the Swedes (SWEDECON) A troop was located at the opposite end of the island inside a mine or engineering complex near Skouriotissa high in the Troudos Mountains. Danish Contingent, DANCON) A troop, based in Nicosia, supported BRITCON West to the west of Nicosia. A troop supported the Finns (FINCON) but I cannot for the life of me remember where they were based. A troop was on R&R. We did two weeks per location, theoretically we visited each location twice and the six-month rotation gave each troop two periods of two week's R&R. So, there not being enough huts to go round, we hot-hutted, handing over and taking over a different set of huts every fortnight, always nearer the toilet block than FHQ. I do remember rotating back into Nicosia toward the end of the tour. Our SSM had suggested it might be a good idea if troops gave the inside of their Nissen huts a lick of paint prior to handover to A Sqn. (If you haven't yet worked out how rough these huts were, they were Class D Accommodation. There was no Class E Accommodation.) Paint would be provided. One troop had taken the SSM at his word and got hold of some paint. Navy Blue, Post Office Red and Sunrise Yellow GLOSS and had painted their rooms Navy Blue with a yellow line through the middle above a red line, 15/19H Regimental colours. (Yes, to the REEMs on the forum: exactly like REME colours but without the repetition.) They were in the throes of painting this lot out with MATT emulsion pastel shades when we returned. Another room they had painted matt ... black. Yes, vehicle black. They painted that out as well. There were only two relics of the LG A Sqn tour that marked my memory. The squadron offices all had nice wooden plaques on the doors describing the appointment of the occupant. Two that confused me beyond words were SCM, occupied by our Squadron Sergeant Major and SQMC, occupied by our Squadron Quartermaster Sergeant. Now I knew that the infantry had a COMPANY Sergeant Major (CSM) COMPANY Quartermaster Sergeant (CQMS) whereas the cavalry had an SQMS (often pronounced Eskimo Ness), but I simply did not get these LG appointments, SCM and SQMC. Had these plaques been created by a dyslexic carpenter? THEN I learned that the LG did not have Sergeants. Being, as Fred recently pointed out, a senior regiment, they were servants to no-one bar the monarch. Since "Sergeant" comes from the French for "servant", all NCO ranks and appointments were / are filled by Corporals, hence Squadron Corporal Major and Squadron Quartermaster Corporal. Also down by FHQ we found that somebody had prepared us a Chuff Chart. Whenever a squaddy became demob happy and started counting down to the end of his tour / course / service, he prepared a chuff chart. As every day passed, it was crossed off, and squaddy would be able to recite how many days were left. The last day invariably started at dark o'clock, long before sparrows' fart with an early call and an early breakfast, followed by transport to the airport and a flight home. The last day therefore consisted in the squaddy's eyes of nothing more important than the early breakfast. When a demob happy squaddy walked by, he might greet you with, for example, "Six days and an early breakfast." The chuff chart prepared for us was a masterpiece, the size of the sort of office wall planner you see in any office today, but it only catered for our six-month tour, was entirely hand-drawn and every day included some sort of motto. In the early days it might say, "Picked up your UN kit yet?"; "Sunburnt yet?" etc and toward the end, "Getting excited yet?" There was one that particularly amused me. The pics in this thread show olive drab Ferrets. However, while the embers of the 1974 war in Cyprus were dying, four UN-attached Australian Civilian Policemen (AustCivPol) were attacked by Turkish fighter ground attack on the main road between Nicosia and Larnaca and died in a storn of napalm, despite their vehicle being clearly marked as UN. Directly because of this, EVERY UN vehicle was immediately painted gloss white to prevent this sort of tragedy ever occurring again. AFAIK, there is still a cairn by the roadside at the site, topped by four blue UN helmets in their memory. Cyprus in the 1970s did not have the sort of sewage system we don't even think about in the UK. Septic tanks were the norm. They needed emptying regularly. The local sewage truck was a Bedford MK, from the front at least exactly like the 4-tonners in use by UNFICYP. And painted white so that it could be seen to be clean. As I described above, UNFICYP comprised a good number of contingents from disparate nations (there has as yet been no mention of the Canadian Contingent, CANCON because Force Reserve Squadron only deployed a single section on an infrequent basis to patrol the CANCON sector East of Nicosia and off toward Larnaca). Most of these troops were conscripts (in the mid-70s, the British Army was the only, or one of a very few entirely non-conscript armies in the world. Expecting these conscripts to recognise and correctly salute officers from all these nations would have been a silly. The UN's solution was to decree that ALL UN troops were to salute one-another regardless of rank, to show recognition of their comrades in arms and not to cast insult upon foreign officers. This protocol was relaxed in camp where we all knew each other, but out of camp it was extended to vehicle commanders. (In camp, vehicle commanders might very likely salute one-another with just the two finger.) Every vehicle commander was expected to salute every other UN vehicle regardless of who was in it. So about Day 7 of our tour, the chuff chart read: "Have you saluted the sewage truck yet?" In my case the answer was yes. It was SUCH an easy mistake. Sorry, what was your question? * Chuggy shop: spellings vary. These days the term would be outlawed by the PC brigade. When the army deployed to NI in the late 60s, NAAFI could not or would not send staff to the temporary forts which sprung up all over town like desert roses, despite having been granted sole franchise to the sale of goods and services on military land after the Great War. Throughout the 20th Century, overseas stations would often find private enterprise right outside the camp gates - if there were any. The NI situation led to camps being sealed up tighter than a fish's bum, NAAFI as I said did not fulfil, so there was a niche in the market for somebody to provide boot laces, tea, coffee, burgers, egg banjoes, etc in the forts. After WW2, there had been an influx of immigrants from the Commonwealth, many of whom had a nouse for business, and of Commonwealth and Chinese ex-merchant seamen who hadn't bothered going home. These people saw the niche and grabbed it with both hands. They worked from buildings no less temporary than the forts themselves, usually something like a 20' container, made of wriggly tin, like the fort. Many of these people never saw the light of day throughout a tour except when they left the fort to get supplies. Many squaddies used and abused them, for instance running up credit tabs in the name of M. Mouse, but to the vast majority of the troops of the day, they were life-savers, loved (in a brotherly way obviously) and respected for their hard work and dedication. UNFICYP Force Reserve Squadron was located within the wire of RAF Nicosia (closed since the Turkish invasion of 1974 that brought the UN to patrol the demilitarised zone) on a site which had formerly been a refugee camp (as testified by the troop sergeant from our own A Sqn who arrived with their advance party to take over from us. His first words when he walked into our Nissen hut were, "This was a refugee camp when I parachuted into here with the RAC Para Squadron in 1974 during the invasion. It's gone downhill badly since then."). Unusually, therefore, the NAAFI complex had the usual NAAFI bar, lounge, cinema, billiards room complex ... and next door was the chuggy shop, whose proprietor presumably had laid his towel on the right chair in the confusion. Around Northern Ireland and AFAIK RAF Nicosia, in the rest of the British military world any private enterprise (which included YMCA, YWCA, Church Army, Salvation Army and Toc H) existed only OUTSIDE the confines of camp. But this is a generalisation.

Had a couple of months' break after the burst in the summer. Encouragement like this might get me going again. ;o)

Oops I now realise Baz was replying to Fred, the OP. Scratch my comment about March 77. The rest still applies though.

Baz and I did UNFICYP Force Reserve Squadron Sep 76 - Mar 77. That the Ferret is being painted tells me this would have been in March of 77 prior to the medal parade at Nicosia Airport. That the Ferret is a Mark 1 tells us that is was the Squadron Sergeant Major's Ferret (the other 24 were all Mark 2s). For the actual parade, the SSM manned the airport terminal roof with (IIRC) a B47 VHF complete with harness and ancillaries so that he could control the 25 Ferrets on parade remotely. He might have taken an A41 manpack, but put simply I don't recall us having an A41 in the squadron. The OC led the parade from the turret of 29Charlie (the SSM's Ferret). We all wore full No 2s (we had been entitled to wear the medal ribbon since about October 1976: the SSM had caught me taking my No 2s into the tailor's to be UNised so that I could wear it for walking out in winter. I also needed the ribbon for my GSM 1962 after our Omagh tour that had ended earlier that year. Having just had his own ribbon put up, he informed me that he was about to publish a Part 1 Order advising us all to get UNFICYP medal ribbons on our No 2s. So I was second person in the squadron to wear it). Commanders were without Larkspur headgear throughout the parade, simply standing to attention in the turrets, while drivers monitored the Command net, being run as said by the SSM from the airport roof. 25 Ferrets paraded in a single line with 29 (pronounced two-niner) commanding 29C on the right, followed by the six troops of four cars, Troop leader, Alpha, Charlie and Bravo. In front of us were paraded the British Army grunts who comprised Britcon (two subunits, one shared medal parade). You know after all these years I forget who they were. It had been B Coy 2 Para but I am sure they rotated out a month or two after we arrived. After the grunts had been inspected, medals dished out, etc, we went for a drive-past. On the SSM's word of command, 25 Ferrets turned over their engines simultaneously. Mercifully they all started. Imagine an oval running track around the formed up infantry. We were parked outside the back of it, facing in. 25 commanders leapt, because they got no warning. On the SSM's word of command, 25 Ferrets rolled forward at once, turning right to occupy four imagined lanes around the anticlockwise track. 29 took the centre of the track. The six troops each rotated as a troop, each car occupying its own lane, troop leaders on the outside, the troop taking dressing by the right. The Charlie callsigns had to turn at speed to stay with troop leaders who had a short sharp turn. Now in a single column of six troops, four cars abreast, we circled the track in impeccable style. After completing a lap, we were dismissed to make our return to RAF Nicosia and our vehicle park at our own speed. My own car was quite new out of overhaul, replacing my old one which was in turn in need of overhaul. On a recent Periodic REME Examination (PRE, yes?), the Tiffy had expressed his delight at the handling of my Ferret, deeming it the fastest in the squadron. I knew my own way back, so upon being dismissed, I was off. I had a New In Green troop leader in my turret, straight out of Sandhurst, so when he started to shout and hit me, it seemed entirely appropriate for a cavalry officer exhorting his driver to head for "Home, Alien, and don't spare the horsepower." I smugly pulled up on the vehicle park first. Rommel gave me a good smacking. It seemed he hadn't got his hand to his beret before I floored it and it was lying somewhere on the tarmac back at the airport. I was just restarting the beast to wend my weary, embarrassing way back when my old troop leader (callsign 26) pulled up alongside and passed Rommel his beret. Well it saved me a trip out.

Maybe Baz can help here. Maybe not - come to think of it I know he had move from 3 Tp B Sqn because we had been in Command Troop in the meantime. Summer of 1981. A glorious day and a memorable exercise (exept the exercise name escapes me). We must have exercised in at least brigade strength because we had real armour and real infantry against us. Come to think of it, it was us who were orange forces (exercise speak for commies but the politicians didn't like us saying that. This is going to be a string of events from the exercise, not necessarily in chronological order. You'll see where it comes on-topic. Our recce screen advanced into the sprawling village of Forst, somewhere in central BRD. (Some years later an F16 fell out of the sky on the village ... messy.) Understand that the terms Dorf (village) and Stadt (town or city) do not correlate with their English translations. A Dorf might be almost as big as what we'd consider a town. A collection of farmhouses might or might not be classed as a village. When in Rome ... Our section motored past a farmyard ... with 432s and Chieftains cammed up therein. We carried straight on through and I initiated a Fire Mission on an Armoured Combat Team FHQ. Having had our attached artillery lay waste to this HQ, on our next sweep through the village we found the farmyard mysteriously quiet as if recently deserted ... It was breakfast time so we parked up our Scorpions in a side street and churned out a brew and sausages, bacon grill and beans from the boiling vessel. While the BV was doing its thing, as gunner I prepared the cups, only to discover we had run out of tinned milk. Being a German linguist I disconnected my umbilical radio lead, collected my Small Metal Gun and legged it to a nearby grocery store. The old lady was gassing with her mate like Les Dawson and Roy Barraclough (yes?) though in German, not Yorkshire. They stopped as I walked in wearing baggy green skin, CVR(T) bonedome and SMG, then passed comment. "Aah Englaender, nicht wahr?" This little village had almost certainly never seen a CVR(T) bonedome before, so I was fairly confident when I pointed at my orange armband and replied, "Nein, heute bin ich Russisch." ("No, today I am Russian.") They stopped laughing and paled a little. Then I asked sweetly for some tinned milk, said my polite goodbyes and got back in the turret. Breakfast safely consumed, we got back on with the war. As we pulled out of our back street, I stared in disbelief and nudged troopy's (the troop leader) arm, pointing out to him a mechanised infantry company in the process of debussing from their 432s in full view on a hillside just outside the village. Another fire mission (I don't recall there was actually any RA representation on the exercise: the Golf 11 callsign, who FHQ assured me was our Shelldrake rep, sounded remarkably like one of our own FHQ operators ...) and I had personally clocked up my greatest ever number of Cold War kills for a single day, and the locals were hardly on their way to work. Next morning our recce screen was to advance to contact in the village, leading the way for an armoured combat team. Trouble was that in the pre-dawn there was a pea-souper which lasted well into the morning. The driver couldn't see a vehicle's length in front of him. The advance was pitifully slow but we were recce troops and had to do it right. We were maybe 1/4 mile from the village when we stopped one last time to check the map (well Troopy WAS map reading). As he and I leaned over the map spread across the turret, we became aware that the Scorpion's idle was getting ever louder and shaking the vehicle ever more intensely. As it peaked, I looked over my right shoulder and saw the whites of an RTR tank commander's eyes. They had got fed up of playing the game and wanted a swan. All I ever saw was the commanders eyeballs and the whole side of the Chieftain as it thundered by six inches from my right elbow. And the loader's two-fingered salute as they disappeared as quickly as they had appeared. Then another Chieftain and a third. One afternoon our squadron led the left flank of an assault on the village, held by dug-in enemy infantry. 1 Tp were to our left, 3 Tp to our right, 4 Tp and Surveillance Tp in reserve. 1 Tp and we were making heavy weather of our advance across open country. 3 Tp on the other hand suddenly announced they they were making excellent progress and were entering the village along the Blue. This village was nowhere near an Autobahn: cue large numbers of recce troops trying to work out wtf 3 Tp were up to. Then I saw then to my right, advancing into the village along the stream bed. They actually caught the enemy cold. Their AT capability was all covering the logical entries into the village: a quick pass under the main road bridge into the village and the enemy were in chaos. 3 Tp leader then ordered his driver to right-stick out of the river and up the bank, into the village centre. Unfortunately his driver was a bit keen on his right stick and they threw a track in three feet of water. The seals on the belly plates were less than perfect. They'd have been fine, but suddenly they were looking at a very difficult recovery. Oops.

A side benefit of the German invasion of Czechoslovakia was that they acquired enough Skoda tanks to re-equip four Light Divisions as Panzer Divisions, giving them ten Panzer divisions instead of six. The tanks became PzKpfw35(T) - for Tscheschich = Czech - and PzKpfw 38(T). Had this not happened, Rommel would have commanded 7 Light Division rather than 7 Panzer Division and not become the great Panzer general many now consider him to have been. The 35(T)s and 38(T)s may not have been the most up-to-date tanks in the world, but Skoda was a great marque in those days prior to being run by Commies throughout the Cold War and the chassis remained good throughout the war. The 38(T) chassis was re-used as the light Jagdpanzer Hetzer (Beaver or a meringue?) which was extremely will received (or not, depending which side you were on).

If you ask SBS, they'll tell you SAS is Stores and Supplies.

I stand by my previous. ISTR invasion stripes were applied universally on D-1 because they had worked so well saving Typhoons - I am pretty sure - from blue on blues. But I cannot remember where I got the snippet from.

Have you heard about the plans to build giany icebergs to use as unsinkable aircraft carriers to plug the Atlantic Gap? Churchill was very enthusiastic and the Canadians were designing / building one as they went alomg before the gap was closed by other technology. Somebody (name of Pyke I think) discovered that mixing ice and wood pulp made a substance which torpedoes couldn't even scratch. They called it Pykerete (sp) in his honour. ISTR the plan was to be 1/2 mile long and displace a million tons and Churchill wanted 100 built. IIRC all that remains are at the bottom of the Canadian lake where it was being developed.

Come to think of it, the Mossie in question was in full invasion stripes with US white star / blue circle markings on top of these on the rear fuselage, but the period being discussed was well in advance of the invasion, so maybe these were an extra identification aide. My memory suggests there was another aircraft where this happened, possibly Typhoon because its silhouette looked more like an Fw 190 than anything else. Of course none of this proves anything: on two occasions in the last fortnight on Hell's Battlefield on satellite I have seen the same clip of a T34 brewing. One of the programmes was about The first week of the Ardennes Offensive; the other was Omaha Beach. Ho hum.

Reminds me of being in SCS* for the tail end of the furniture sale yesterday. As we stood, we caught sight of a young lad stress testing an oscillating, focking chair. First off I pointed out how, on his first day, every Trooper gets warned that turning the turret on a [insert name of vehicle here] clockwise 13 times will cause the turret to fall off. After we'd laughed at that, I explained to Wor Lass how Fw Condor airliners were converted to recce aircraft to track the Murmansk convoys with impunity, so far out that launching a Hurricane to intercept would only result in the certain loss of a Hurricane in the sea and the almost certain loss of the pilot. One Convoy commander is purported to have turned to his ASDIC signaller and instructed him to make "Your constant clockwise circuits are making us dizzy. Please commence circling anti-clockwise" to the Condor circling the convoy. The condor pilot duly obliged. * Other purveyors of suites are available

People who only read McNab / Ryan books stupidly think that because THEY refer to themselves as The Regiment, that everybody else thinks of THEM as The Regiment. Not so. Every officer and soldier who serves in any regiment thinks of themselves as The Regiment. For example. Vist http://www.arrse.co.uk and the RAC Forum. Every couple of weeks another young lad signs on and his first post reads: "I am joining the Army and want to serve in the RAC. Which is the best regiment?" And every time it happens, it starts an inter-regimental flame war which continues until somebody tells him that, "Whichever regiment you serve in, that will be the best regiment. End of argument. FACT." I was a Trooper in The Regiment for four and a half years. The Regiment was 15th/19th The King's Royal Hussars.

Curiously regarding the discussion about B29, Lancaster and Mossie in this thread ... A couple of nights ago I watched something on satellite about strange Allied inventions of WW2. It included a plan to fit one ounce incendiary devices (some bloke at one the big US universities invented napalm for the purpose) to be carried by bats dropped onto Jap cities where they'd find dark holes in attics etc of wooden buildings, then 30 minutes later the whole city would erupt in flame. By the time they had tested and proved it (and destroyed a USAF base because the artificially-hibernated bats awoke too soon ...) Project Manhatten had rendered the device obsolete. During the course of this section, I thought I saw a mossie in USAF markings. I had to rewind Sky+ to confirm it. I had never realised the Americans had ever taken Mossies. Then they looked at Grand Slam. The programme was US sponsored and frankly they had their script all over for this one, frequently referring to Grand Slams as Tallboys and vice versa and getting their dimensions confused. But they showed a number of pictures of Grand Slam-equipped Lancs with the beasts loaded, including from directly blow in flight. Breathtaking? It nearly caused me an asthma attack!!! According to the programme, only 41 Grand Slams were ever dropped. At least they got right the fact that Grand Slam remains the heaviest bomb ever dropped (heavier by a few pounds than a MOAB). Hang on, didn't the Russians recently announce the FOAB? Is it heavier than both?

TBH the stuff we had in Omagh never struck me as much more than chicken wire. That said, I never walked across to take a close look.

Nebelwerfer translates literally and popularly as Fog Thrower. Sadly in reality it also translates rather more prosaically as Smoke Launcher (so called to get around a last vestige of the Versailles Treaty in the same way PzKpfw3 was called Zugfuehrerwagen (Platoon commander's vehicle) and PzKpfw4 was ... erm something else, next one up, which escapes me atm).

Basically, as long as it triggers a HEAT round to detonate away from the armour, it doesn't matter what it is. Somewhere (I have a good idea where but it's well-hidden - probably from "Panzer 4 in Action" I have a picture of a late model PzKpfw 4 which had lost a section of its Thoma skirt and had it replaced with a cut-to-shape piece of non-slip metal floor. They also took to using mesh not unlike XPM to reduce the weight of the skirts.

How spooky is that? I just made reference to Grasshopper (thinking of the Kung Fu TV series) in another thread, then realise there is a member by that name. No offence intended.

I think if you picture Centurion bins mounted on the Black Prince turret, it's clear there must be some commonality, even if Black Prince's hull is clearly a straight evolution of the much older-technolgy Churchill. As you say, no competition.

I remember reading about a Sherman conversion in a modelling magazine 30-odd years ago to create a T34 Calliope and couldn't get my head around a Sherman becoming a T34. Yes it's an MLRS. Don't know much more about it. Wikipedia has information. Google search for sherman t34 calliope led me to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T34_Calliope which doesn't tell us much more but may set you on the way to enlightenment, Grasshopper.

Remembering to slip a small amount of cotton waste in first to pad the tube so that the continuous vibration of can on trigger didn't puncture the cans. But hey, on Scorpion we hadf the luxury of a giant empty case bin under the gun, smack in the centre of the turret floor to hold the beer. But seriously, even though Chieftain looked huge inside compared with Scorpion (in the 70s it was reputed to have more space than any contemporary tank), Chieftain crews will tell you there wasn't room to swing a cat (see Armoured Farmer by Malcolm Cleverley - partially edited by me). Scorpions had netting to hold kit on the sponson above the tracks, but even so it was very easy to get stuff caught in the turret traverse. Being manually traversed, it was easy to jam. You might argue it was better than losing a finger in the mechanism. Scorpion felt big inside, but purely because we never, if possible, worked closed down. It is very difficult to reconnoitre whilst closed down. And not having a loader meant that the commander had a lot of work to do.

Track sections were a good way of breaking up the strike of both kinetic and explosive rounds before causing any damage. What surprises me is that Tiger 1 crews felt they needed it when the turret was a single horseshoe of armour - I dunno four? - inches thick. Logs were good to throw under the tracks to help navigate mud. After WW2, vehicles came issued with purpose-built sand channels. The Russians built their tanks with wide tracks all the way back. The Germans cottoned on with the Tiger and Panther but had to redesign their tracks for PzKpfw 3s and 4s and retrofit them for the western front with Ostketten. Likewise the Americans started using wider tracks at least from the M4A3E2 on VVSS suspension, continued on the HVSS M4A3E8. Sandbags were useful against HEAT rounds, detonating the warhead to far out from the steel armour, causing the plasma jet to splash ineffectively against it. By cement, I am guessing you are referring particularly to Zimmeritt paste applied by the Germans to late model tanks. The texture was not unlike concrete, thinly applied in a sort of herringbone fashion in a way that prevented magnetic mines and sticky bombs from sticking to the tank.