Post by Admin on Dec 1, 2019 21:11:39 GMT
[The Ram Tank actually had a hull mounted individual machine gun turret more visible when the turret was removed and the vehicle used as a Kangaroo APC. But this is rather obscure. ]
I am going to guess this is about someone using terms and not understanding what they mean. This is in no way a criticism, it’s simply an acceptance that terms are specific and not well known by most folks as there’s no need to know them, but it’s helpful to learn them for discussion and some precision of thought.
Only a very few tanks had hull mounted machine gun turrets during world war II. Many simply had hull mounted machine guns so we’ll go with that.
Why don’t modern tanks have hull mounted machine guns like the one’s in World War II?
With certain improvements, like 1. better communications that allowed the driver to communicate with those in the turret, 2. faster, electrically driven turrets which were more responsive, 3. better communications removing the need of a separate radio operator, and 4, the acceptance of the more efficient 3 man turret, with a better reliance on the coaxial machine gun, the weak point and limited traverse hull mounted machine gun was no longer needed just as the up armoring and better design eliminated the need of the assistant driver.
It’s fascinating how duties were piled upon a position and it was felt it was critical to have that assistant driver/radio operator, and hull mounted machine gun operator, but with improvements, that busy post became superfluous. That likely seemed inevitable to some experienced tankers, but utterly shocking to others.
One cool thing was this:
It was a cool concept, but it was figured out rather quickly, you needed to have the driver focused on DRIVING. Having the driver focused on the necessary direction, the lay of the land, and obstacles and driving toward the target directly wasn’t the best option, better the driver stayed on course as you had a turret with a gunner and commander to deal with targets in passing.
Later M3 Stuarts eliminated these machine gun mounts, and covered them over, and later the points were simply not there and it was a plain plate. Pulling the machine guns provided the crew with extra storage or places to mount things in a very cramped tank.
