strange target

[tailgunner]

Does any one know what this target is.............

Its looks to well made just to be a hard target , is it a concept tank that was cancelled?

Any ideas , these photos were taken back in the 90`s on the kikubright ranges.

[Pzkpfw-e]

Looks like they'd run out of real tanks and used a silhouette (?spelling?) made out of sheet metal.

[Gordon_M]

Looks like a fabrication job to represent Chieftain to me. I think the idlers on the bottom were just for moving it around, and it is probably 2/3rds or 5/8 scale too.

[jchinuk]

I've seen silhouette "tanks" mounted on small railway trucks, which are towed along a set of rails. They were about that size, I presume to give the impression of a larger target further away?

 

Perhaps the idea was the same.

 

jch

[steveo578]

It looks like a full scale mock up for either FV300 series or something from the early development of the Armoured Vehicle Reconnaissance the precursor to the Scorpion.

[robin craig]

me thinks it was a decoy to fool our Adrian!

 

R

[Adrian Barrell]

me thinks it was a decoy to fool our Adrian!

 

R

 

It takes more than that to fool me.......

 

I see it has a Cromwell wheel station though! I would also suggest that tube is real too.

Nice to see Major Anderson again!

[steveo578]

From Scorpion AFV/Profile 34 by R.M. Ogorkiewicz

 

 

Note the low profile of turret and had the front of the mockup not been opened up like a bean can I'm sure the layout would be apparent. the turret could have been an internal oscilating turret allowing the comparatively low height in relationship to the gun.

 

You get a deeper level of AFV research with books and articles by Prof. Oggorkiewicz.

 

Steve

Edited October 6, 2010 by steveo578

[Adrian Barrell]

I suspect it was nothing more than a towed target.

[John Pearson]

It takes more than that to fool me.......

 

I see it has a Cromwell wheel station though! I would also suggest that tube is real too.

Nice to see Major Anderson again!

 

Picture was taken I think in May 1992. Tube is real, it was a 6 pdr I think Mk IV/V and was complete with breach ring and block but the rust was heavy and scaling due to being very close to the sea. It was on a bit of Kircudbright very close to the part that glows in the dark.............

We recovered the gun to Bovy but I have no idea which vehicle it ended up in.

On the way back, me and mate in his van were stopped for being overweight a couple of miles short of the Scottish border but the Police let us go because we were going into England. The copper said " will you look at that, your springs are bent over backwards!"

On the way down the motorway, we totted up the weight and could only account for about 28 to 30 cwt (that is hundredweight or about 1 1/2 tonne). "Shouldn't be a problem" says I "in this 35 cwt Ford Transit van". A few moments of silence then mate says " It is only an 18 cwt van!"

Ah the good old days!

On the same trip, we got a TA Foden EKA stuck up to its axles. Batteries were taken from the EKA and placed in a target Chieftain which started and was used to tow the EKA free.

The primary purpose of the trip was to collect tracks, sprockets, radiators, gearboxes etc from several Comets which were used to restore a Comet and a Charioteer for the Finns at Parola. In repayment, they gave Bovy the Stug III and the T26.

Also on Kircudbright, (to this day so far as I know), is a Tortoise and the brother of the Sherman 105mm HVSS that is at Bovy. Both have a quite good and a very bad side!

[antar]

Picture was taken I think in May 1992. Tube is real, it was a 6 pdr I think Mk IV/V and was complete with breach ring and block but the rust was heavy and scaling due to being very close to the sea. It was on a bit of Kircudbright very close to the part that glows in the dark.............

We recovered the gun to Bovy but I have no idea which vehicle it ended up in.

On the way back, me and mate in his van were stopped for being overweight a couple of miles short of the Scottish border but the Police let us go because we were going into England. The copper said " will you look at that, your springs are bent over backwards!"

On the way down the motorway, we totted up the weight and could only account for about 28 to 30 cwt (that is hundredweight or about 1 1/2 tonne). "Shouldn't be a problem" says I "in this 35 cwt Ford Transit van". A few moments of silence then mate says " It is only an 18 cwt van!"

Ah the good old days!

On the same trip, we got a TA Foden EKA stuck up to its axles. Batteries were taken from the EKA and placed in a target Chieftain which started and was used to tow the EKA free.

The primary purpose of the trip was to collect tracks, sprockets, radiators, gearboxes etc from several Comets which were used to restore a Comet and a Charioteer for the Finns at Parola. In repayment, they gave Bovy the Stug III and the T26.

Also on Kircudbright, (to this day so far as I know), is a Tortoise and the brother of the Sherman 105mm HVSS that is at Bovy. Both have a quite good and a very bad side!

 

Perhaps Bob Grundy knows something about it, around this time he was doing some work with the MOD with towed targets, but was keeping it a bit cloak and dagger !

[Bob Grundy]

John

Bob Grundy does know something as I took the photos. A very intersting day all round.

I recall thet the steel was very thick, it can be seen in the photo

Perhaps the old gentleman at The Library, Tank Museum would know more ?

[AlienFTM]

Towed targets ("movers") are used to train gunners to attack moving targets by aiming ahead of the target and traversing the turret to maintain the lead * during the action. They are always canvas on a wood frame so that a PRAC round will pass straight through it and not damage the infrastructure. Service rounds are never used, because they will damage the target or the rails and bring the range session to a halt while the mover is fixed.

 

Movers traditionally trundle left to right and back across the range. It is possible to have movers toward (let's face it, it's the only way we ever expected 3 Shock Army to move), but this exposes the tracks to damage from any rounds corrected for azimuth ("line") regardless within reason of range.

 

Once upon a time, so urban myth would have us, manned heavily uparmoured Cents were used as movers, but over time the risks to crews became too great and it was long out of practice by 1976 when I did my Scorpion gunnery course. It was often suggested that an officer guilty of high spirits in the mess would be nominated to command the mover, and that the New In Green (NIG is in no way racist when used by the army in this sense) trooper would be volunteered to drive it just to wind him up.

_____

 

* Lead (sounds like one of a pair of cities in Yorkshire, not a weight in a Zeppelin) is the amount you point the gun ahead of a moving target. For anyone who has heard the joke from Full Metal Jacket, this is what is being referred to.

 

"How can you machine gun women and children?"

"Don't give them as much lead."

[Adrian Barrell]

Always and never cannot be used in this context! I have near me the remains of the Boyton AFV range, built for pre-D Day practice. Some of the winch houses are stll there, substantial concrete structures and the stop banks are still littered with 75mm AP shot. My Cromwell was here at some point with the rest of the regiment.

 

They were certainly using service rounds there!

 

I have no doubt you are correct for more modern use.

 

I have seen mobile target Cents and Comets that were certainly manned but I understand these were subject to small arms fire only.

[Bazz]

I've seen the tgt Cents in action, they were used as movers for wombat. and the quote from FMJ is

 

How can you kill women and children?

 

You don't lead them so much.

[AlienFTM]

I've seen the tgt Cents in action, they were used as movers for wombat. and the quote from FMJ is

 

How can you kill women and children?

 

You don't lead them so much.

 

I was working from memory. I do remember that the Americans don't express it exactly the same as we do.

[AlienFTM]

Always and never cannot be used in this context! I have near me the remains of the Boyton AFV range, built for pre-D Day practice. Some of the winch houses are stll there, substantial concrete structures and the stop banks are still littered with 75mm AP shot. My Cromwell was here at some point with the rest of the regiment.

 

They were certainly using service rounds there!

 

I have no doubt you are correct for more modern use.

 

I have seen mobile target Cents and Comets that were certainly manned but I understand these were subject to small arms fire only.

 

I take your point. Earlier posters suggested a resemblance to Chieftain and Kirkudbricht in the 90s. How a range worked in this era will certainly have changed from how it was in D-Day. For one thing, during a hot war, the cost of repairing mover infrastructure is a price to be paid. During a Cold War or the so-called piece we now enjoy, government budgets have to be accounted. I am sure when 15/19H converted from Sherman to Comet in December 1944, no thought was given to using PRAC rounds when all that was available was service rounds.

 

When I discuss a service round, I'll confess to thinking HESH, as it was essentially the only service round we ever saw on Scorpion. There was Shell (HE) but because its effect was only marginally better as shell than HESH but its armour defeating capability was far less, so that a full load of HESH was of more use than any split of HESH and Shell.

 

Likewise AP, AP©, AP(CBC) and most other armour-piercing rounds other than HEAT were all obsolete having been replaced by APDS after the Second World War and I never gave them a thought.

 

Like I said, point taken.

[steveo578]

Adran Barrell

I suspect it was nothing more than a towed target.

 

 

Possibly but speculation exercises the grey matter- the reason I think there may be more to it is why bother going to that effort and ending up with a tank that doesn't resemble any service vehicle- consider that the Danish Universal carrier dummy tanks were a silhoette of an M24 -an in service vehicle. A towed target would be just as effective with a 40lb plate target welded onto a cut down ferret or even a Landy chassis.

 

Sometime ago I had a discussion with David Fletcher about the Comres Comet which had turned up on the OTA - and although at the time it was still under the 30years rule he found an interesting article in an old RAC Journal with a number of strange little concept tanks -with reduced turrets and/or oscilating turrets. Similar continental designs such as the French Leger EVEN look somewhat similar to the photo shown in post #1

 

 

Adrian Barrell

I have seen mobile target Cents and Comets that were certainly manned but I understand these were subject to small arms fire only.

 

 

Photo of the Bovington Ram which seems to be a "mover" and was possibly a British conversion- perhaps replacing an earlier type possibly based on the Matilda.

 

 

Comet ETT as a range target there is a preserved one I think at the Royal Hussars museum. there also seems to be 2 different build standards the preserved one has heavy additional armour. apart from the Cent there was also a Conqueror which carried a target above its turret -with its gun removed so possibly a mobile target. The ETT were used for shooting at by the early ATWG missiles such as Vigilant and as mentioned inert Wombat -although most firing would be done with the ranging MG. Carl Gustav has also been mentioned but that seems unlikely as I don't think there is a true inert round for the 84mm RL- but I could be wrong -I've just never seen one.

 

The USA built ETT too laterly based on M103 tanks (used to trial inert Tow missile but certainly used M4A3E2 Jumbos just after WW2 to be shot at by up to 50cal ball and possibly inert RLs. The Israelis also used a heavily modified Sherman- which is in the Latrun Collection

[morris c8 fat]

There is a booklet on evil bay that states this is a Spartan http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll !

Item Item number: 390254939828

Edited October 24, 2010 by morris c8 fat
forgot item number

[morris c8 fat]

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?VISuperSize&item=390254939828

[steveo578]

as both your links are giving problems

 

 

 

 

 

Steve

[challenger]

Possibly but speculation exercises the grey matter- the reason I think there may be more to it is why bother going to that effort and ending up with a tank that doesn't resemble any service vehicle- consider that the Danish Universal carrier dummy tanks were a silhoette of an M24 -an in service vehicle. A towed target would be just as effective with a 40lb plate target welded onto a cut down ferret or even a Landy chassis.

 

Sometime ago I had a discussion with David Fletcher about the Comres Comet which had turned up on the OTA - and although at the time it was still under the 30years rule he found an interesting article in an old RAC Journal with a number of strange little concept tanks -with reduced turrets and/or oscilating turrets. Similar continental designs such as the French Leger EVEN look somewhat similar to the photo shown in post #1

[ATTACH=CONFIG]35938[/ATTACH]

 

 

 

Photo of the Bovington Ram which seems to be a "mover" and was possibly a British conversion- perhaps replacing an earlier type possibly based on the Matilda.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]35939[/ATTACH]

 

Comet ETT as a range target there is a preserved one I think at the Royal Hussars museum. there also seems to be 2 different build standards the preserved one has heavy additional armour. apart from the Cent there was also a Conqueror which carried a target above its turret -with its gun removed so possibly a mobile target. The ETT were used for shooting at by the early ATWG missiles such as Vigilant and as mentioned inert Wombat -although most firing would be done with the ranging MG. Carl Gustav has also been mentioned but that seems unlikely as I don't think there is a true inert round for the 84mm RL- but I could be wrong -I've just never seen one.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]35940[/ATTACH]

The USA built ETT too laterly based on M103 tanks (used to trial inert Tow missile but certainly used M4A3E2 Jumbos just after WW2 to be shot at by up to 50cal ball and possibly inert RLs. The Israelis also used a heavily modified Sherman- which is in the Latrun Collection

 

The Ram was recovered from a scrap yard in Holland by the LAD of the 17/21L in the eighties. The request from the Yeomanry was for a Sherman so they could restore it as a gate guard. REME sent off to recover one and they came back with a Canadian Ram. I got onto the Tank Museum and told them the story, they acquired a Sherman for the Yeomanry and the museum got the Ram. The ram had been in service with the Dutch Army prior to being dumped. I have a picture of it sat next to a Challenger when it was waiting in Munster. I will dig it out.

[challenger]

Here is one of them although a bit blured, I will keep looking.

 

[Balmae]

The mock up was developed with others as prototypes of a lite weight 20t two man AFV for the first Air Drop trials!

[eddy8men]

good to get a bit info on this odd target, can you tell us how you came by the information. cheers