From: Steve Grammont (islander@midmaine.com)
Date: Mon Jul 01 2002 - 01:07:36 PDT
Hi Nige,
>Are you referring to the "Armoured" Weasel used by the French in Indo China
>before they withdrew? I have seen pics of these, I think the M29c
>amphibious version had some armour protection added - but the amount was
>limited so they didnt sink.
Hmmm... I have a bunch of pictures on the Weasels used by the French.
There is even a book which details their employment in which a modeler
did a synopsis of, including pictures. No mention of there ever being
armor added, but of course this was only one source. Do you have any
idea where I could find pictures of what you saw?
I still can not fathom how enough armor to be worth anything could be
mounted on the Weasel and still have it perform up to snuff. And on top
of that, the French built their own tracks which are roughly double the
weight of the originals. They found the US tracks did not last long in
the environment of SE Asia so they made their own really heavy duty,
robust track. This means that the vehicle already had... I dunno... 400
extra pounds added? When you are talking rated capacity of 1200 lbs...
that doesn't leave a lot left over for armor, not to mention the crew and
supplies/radios it was designed to transport.
I can see adding something to protect the driver from branches. Most
pictures I have seen taken during the fighting in the forested border of
Germany show Weasels with smashed windshields. I am going to speculate
that someone, at some point, thought it would be good to put something
more than glass up front to take the abuse of branches and so forth. I
would think this to be rather important for jungles. However, I would
hesitate to call this "armor" if that is the case. I would call it
"shielding". The difference being one is designed to protect against
ballistics, the other simple impact.
In any case, there is only so much the Weasel can take in terms of
weight. It was built rugged for its intended employment, but it is just a
bunch of sheetmetal welded together on a minimal channel iron frame.
This is why the US Army's testings of it as a weapons platform were
disappointing. The recoilless and 37mm guns they mounted on it shook the
thing to pieces :-) I've seen the test footage, and I wouldn't want
anybody doing that to one of mine!
Steve
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Fri Aug 16 2002 - 11:23:40 PDT