Sherman Firefly - Tank Design & Development - Lost Aussie Connection
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- Опубликовано: 27 июл 2024
- A look at the development of the Sherman Firefly. As well as cover an essential Australian connection to this tank that has been forgotten.
w: armouredarchives.com/
t: / armouredarchive
f: / thearmouredarchives
Topics:
0:00 - Introduction
0:48 - A30 Challenger Mk1 - 17pdr Cruiser Tank
1:13 - M4A1 Shermans - 75mm Gun Medium Tank
2:09 - Recoil Test Rig - Lulworth 1943
2:34 - Raymond Briggs and Claude Gibb
3:08 - Barnes Wallis and William Kilbourn
4:07 - A13 Cruiser Mk III - Abandoned at Dunkirk
4:35 - A12 Matilda - In Australian Service
5:05 - Major William Watson and Alan Chamberlain
5:52 - AC1 Sentinel - Australian Cruiser Tank
7:20 - AC1B Turret - First 25Pdr Configuration
7:45 - AC1B Turret - 2nd 25Pdr Configuration
8:06 - AC1 Test Bed - Twin 25Pdr guns
8:33 - 17Pdr Testbed - Fitted to AC Mantlet
9:00 - Sentinel 17Pdr - Mounted on E1 Hull
10:20 - HMA No. 1 "MAYFLY"
You can find out more information in our blog article: armouredarchives.com/blog/she...
Sources:
Thanks to Thomas Anderson - From Australia for his assistance and research on the topic;
and Captain Nemo for extensive document research.
Correspondance between Ministry of Munitions and W.D.Watson 1945.
Bovington Tank Museum - Archives
Visual Inspection by Ed Francis (Armoured Archives team)
©Armoured Archives
#ShermanFirefly #WW2 #Tanks #MilitaryVehicles
If you want to read the original documents mentioned in this video, check our blog article: armouredarchives.com/blog/sherman-firefly-lost-aussie-connection
The link does not work on my iPad ?
I started to write a long missive about how proud stuff like this makes me of my home... but TLDR. Enough to say GO AUSSIE!!!!
Also nice pics of another fantastic Aussie invention at 4:40 the Owen gun, arguably the best carbine submachine gun of the war- still being used in Vietnam 20 years later. You could immerse it deeply in mud and it would still fire.
The sentinel with 17 pdr is at the Australian Armour & Artillery Museum in Cairns, QLD, Australia- Thank you for sharing a great story.
Well done Australia , straight forward and the right thing to do, thank you from the U.K.
Couple of small points - the suspension units on the Sentinel were modelled on the French Hotchkiss H39 design. A French tank engineer was in Australia (I can't find his name at the moment) about the time the Sentinel was designed and convinced the Australian designers of the superiority of the Hotchkiss over the US design.
The Sentinel hull was a one piece casting of Zirconium steel - why Zirconium? Australia had no known resources of Manganese at the time and it was found that Zirconium produced a superior cast product. No one else had managed to produce a tank hull as a single casting before this - even the French cast tank hulls were cast sections bolted together.
Nice Additional detail. Thanks
The two pounder gun made in Australia, with its unique stepped profile was developed with similar constraints regarding the availability of particular minerals.
I don't recall ATM which one we were missing, but the metallurgists figured out a way to make gun barrels without the mineral everyone else was using in their steel.
I have been into WW II armor since my father told me of his experiences in Europe in 1944/45. This channel is an eye opener even to me. Thank You for all your work.
Welcome aboard!
Excellent coverage of history not well known
ty Hilary :)
During my years working at Chullora Railway Workshops I became fascinated by the stories of the tanks "AC/Sentinels" that were built there during the war. Sentinels are still my greatest fascination. Great tanks never tested in battle.
I had no idea about the Sentinel and the 17 pounder. Fascinating.
Indeed it is. Maybe it's just me being an Aussie, but I do wonder why people are reluctant to give credit where credit is due.
@@BelloBudo007 - probably Churchill, I’m guessing.
@@TenOrbital Every one of Churchills brilliant ideas involved Aussie causalties,.Gallipoli,Greece,Crete,Syria,Singapore and the ABDA navy.
Just a note, as someone who’s gone through the Australian archives I think you may have accidentally confused the history between the Australian Cruiser programs need for 6-Pdr and 17-Pdr guns.
The Australian’s planned to install the 6-Pdr well before they attempted the 17-Pdr. Though due to the British tank crisis none could be procured, which is what made the Australian’s move to the 25-Pdr instead. The AC 1A was to be a 6-Pdr vehicle, whereas the AC 1B was the 25-Pdr variant.
Whilst they were planning the AC 3 Thunderbolt they quickly saw the need for a better hole puncher.
Another note is that no AC 1A or AC 1B tanks were ever built. They did prototype the 25-Pdr mounting in the AC E2, which was essentially the 2nd pilot vehicle. Similar to the AC E1 which was used to test initially the twin 25-Pdr and then again used to test the 17-Pdr.
The AC 4, also sadly never built, would have used the improved AC 3 hull and new engine, with some improvements such as an expanded turret ring.
A lot of this is sadly from memory as it’s been nearly 10 years since I looked through the archives and the laptop I had my copies of the records saved on died.
I have seen a Sentinel in Puckapunyal, Australia and in Bovinton UK, I think with the 25 pounder it would have been useful against the Japanese, who really had pathetic tanks. The high explosive 25 pounder would have dealt with these and bunkers, gun emplacements etc. The 17 pounder would have been a waste in the pacific theatre, when would you find 20 Chi-Ha tanks lined up for the one round to go through them all???
But I love that they helped Firefly become a reality 🙂👍
agree with all your points... pity they didn't see active service...
25pdr AP shell would have been more than enough for the pacific, and the HE shell would have been the duck nuts for infantry support.
To be fair, most Japanese tanks (particularly those which saw combat) were designed in the 1920s / 1930s to be light weight and engage infantry.
The reasons for this were to allow for shipping on vessels of the time and because they found faster tanks made for effective flanking andforward 'spearhead' style operations behind enemy lines and didn’t get bogged in the mud so easily.
Japan's industrial capacity was largely focused on naval and aeronautical production because it, like Australia, is an island nation.
In this context, it didn't make much sense to spend limited resources on building bigger, more heavily armed and armoured tanks. Even as a last resort home defence vehicle such remained true because much of Japan is very mountainous which is a hazard to effective use of large tanks like Europe's heavies.
Still, I think Australia should have pushed ahead with our own home grown tanks and we probably should today as well.
Very informative regarding the Japanese tanks! In truth, generally speaking, the Japanese tanks as they were lighter and were somewhat more suitable to "work" in the jungle but were hopelessly outclassed against the Shermans like in Tarawa or Iwo Jima but even at the border clashes against the Russians because of their flimsy armour and pop guns. You are correct to state that the Japanese were concerned with the weight so it could be easily loaded both on the trucks and barges or ships. In this the Italians held the same view!!
@@paoloviti6156 Indeed, although according to a doco I saw a few months ago, the Italians were also desperately restricted by available engineers and skilled welders and thus didn't believe they could commit to keeping up with tank innovations during the war (because they were focused on ship and aeroplane construction for a while what with the attrition of Mediterranean shipping). Not that Mussolini was eager to admit that!
I personally suspect the introduction of the Germans in the Italians' theatres of combat may have also influenced this.
I agree that both Italians and Japanese tanks were certainly outclassed by enemy armour, especially as more effective Allied models and like you say, even Soviet armour entered the fight against them. The divergence of military / design doctrine and of course, manufacturing capacity is always interesting.
wonderful, new info on the Firefly and it's Aussi connection presented in ya normal easygoing style, loved it.
An excellent video, of ingenuity, imagination and the kind of. "Thinking outside the box," mentality I like best. Showing that the idea of up gunning Shermans to deal with better armed, and armored opponents. Was not just an Israeli idea.
The Aussie designers responsible for sentinel were very forward thinkers. I was reading documents in the national archives a few years ago now from were they were discussing the program and the needs of the vehicles and even in the earliest stages of the program they said the vehicle must be capable of future upgrades to firepower as needed and then listed some examples. One of which was the 17pdr which at the time was a huge concept but they didn't end there. Australia had a lot of 3.7 inch AA guns (I think we made them here) and they listed that as a potential gun for the future of the program. The 3.7 is the gun used to be the 32pdr in the tortoise. Had the program made the mk4 and potentially a mk 5 some day the Aussies would likely have had the 32pdr equivalent gun tank years before the Brits had the tortoise. :)
The AC with the double 25-pdr turret is possibly my new favourite tank design ever
Two-fisted punching, like two-fisted beer drinking, must be an Aussie thing! Cheers to our brothers down under!!
Thank you from Straya. 😎👍
No problem 👍
I was unaware of the Australian contribution to the Firefly until now. The AC1 was one of my favorite tanks and the AC1 with the 25 pounder main armament looked very interesting. Thank you for sharing this as I learned a lot from it.
It's very interesting to hear about dirigable engineers and Australian railway staff working together on a tank project :D
Chamberlain was well renowned in Australia as an ural industrial engineer, who had his main engineering in farm tractor's.......my Mother and Father both worked on the assembly line building tractor's I the 1970's.
Very well done! One of my favorite tanks.
Thank you for the info, didn’t know the 25 pd was designated AC1B always thought it was the AC3
Australia's first homegrown 17 pounder tank Aussie 🇭🇲
Nicely done! Interesting side of the Firefly story.
Perseverance paid off , despite critics
Great work! Always nice seeing how things come together. Makes you wonder what happens, if the counter arguments win out and/or if the Aussies fail or are delayed in their contributions.
Really one of the most underrated tanks of the war. Would have loved to hear accounts of this beauty in action.
Superb detail and fabulous quality photographs. I read the book ‘Tank Action’, which mentioned there had been an aborted attempt to fit the 17lb gun into a Sherman and that it had later been achieved by others, however it didn’t provide anything like the detail in this film. Well done 👏👏👏
Really interesting stuff, thanks for sharing your hard work. 👍
My freind had a 17pounder serial number one in his back yard in a suburb of Adelaide Australia.
To my knowledge the term mayfly was first ascribed to the carriage mounted 17pdr AT gun simply due to the long barrel with rounded muzzle brake resembling the tail of a mayfly. This was changed to firefly due to the flash of the gun and was also used as a nickname for the Achilles 17pdr SPG. Woodcock is specific to the Sherman and is also a matter of resemblance to the bird with it's long narrow beak.
proably where it comes over from, in that a name will originate, and then get recorded without context, whhich will end up in another file and so on, so by late war we see docs with mayfly and woodcock used for firefly.
Great work mate, typical for Australia to have a go at something out of the box . ( “I say old chap you will never fit that gun into that space “ yeah righto hold my beer and watch this )
If only we had a engine of our own we could have had a formidable tank early in the war
Apologies for the reupload, RUclips decided to act silly and cut a portion of the audio.✌️
Great research on an important subject, me thinks.
I had no idea the Sentinel had been developed to the extent it was. It is surprising it never saw action.
Yeah, ahead of the curve, first 17pdr in a tank with the world's first fully cast hull. Would have had similar armour protection as a panther and had they got the proposed upgrades to the mk4 design at production it would have had 90mm of roughly 40 degree armour making it around 130mm thick los if I remember rightly.
Brilliant, thank you.
Fascinating.
Subscribed, and activated all notifications :3
Thank you for the fascinating history - particularly the forgotten and dead end development paths.
One question or request, would you be able to cover the various types of ammunition and how they came into use?
sure, i was working on a HEAT one but it gets a bit math-heavy and wasn't sure how well it would work
@@edfrancis712 I definitely second this. From AP to APCBC, HEP/HESH, etc., there is so much to cover. And, that doesn't even include the German 7.5/5.5 cm (and other) squeeze bore experiment or the English Littlejohn adaptor.
As an aside, and this might also be a bit math heavy, I'd be really interested in understanding at what speeds rounds start to fracture/splinter, depending upon bore size. I know that the 50 mm (and 37 mm) were phased out, in early/mid-ish war. Was that because physics disallowed longer barrels and rounds, thus increasing speeds to negative ends? Just seems strange that Light tank guns stopped evolving.
That was excellant i knew some of these tankers in the uk but never knew the australian 17 pounder conection
It's well known the Horstralians are only good at growing wheat and being convicts,
GREAT video!
Excellent, thank you..
Looks like a fine shot trap in the new turret design from the sides.
I'm looking forward to when you tackle the Valentine and all it's variants. Was it possibly the most versatile tank of the war?
yup, such a huge topic, where to begin etc. thats a ten part type vid -
nice work have just com across this vid I know peeps say the sentinel was not that good a tank but if it had came up against the japenese tanks it would have wiped them out even the 6 pounder gun against an ha go let alone the intended 17 pound upgrade
The problem with the UK throughout the war was bureaucracy, there were loads of examples of committees made up of so called experts who fiddled and farted around interfering and wasting time which led to delays and termination of development. This is a classic example of the "we know best" attitude, "it will never work we know best"
"Ehem it will work in fact the Aussies did it in 1942"!
Sometimes you just have to get on with it and make it work, ask the Aussies they did.
Brits: 17 pounder? Can't be done old chep.
Aussies: Gimme a beer ...
Australian walks up to a Sherman, “that’s not a gun”.
I always thought that the name Firefly was in honour of the Groucho Marx character in "Duck Soup". 😝
Slow turret of firefly makes it a hit and reverse retreat type of strategy. German tanks takes hits chasing it. Game Coh2 is how I play the Sherman firefly to take on king, tiger and panthers. Greatest chess ww2 strategy game.
Thanks, very interesting
Glad you enjoyed it
If I were William Watson I think I'd leave off my CV the fact I was involved in the design of the Covenanter tank
Churchills probably had 105mm 17 pounders not 76.2 6 pounders as stated if I recall correctly.
another lost aussie connection is the work done and submitted by Lancelot De Mole well before WW1 about the TANK ......he saw what a tracked vehicle could do over all types of terrain on a battle field ..........his model of the idea sat in the war ministry gathering dust until the carnage started to make them think again ..........and then once the concept was taken up they took the credit
ahh yes, i have a fair few photos of De-Moles model he built, post ww1 there were a lot of claims as to who came up with various aspects, most of them were divied out to the old guard and many names lost. there are a series of new books by Andrew Hills, which is coverign some of these lost names and figures from the archives.
De Mole's actual working model is in the Australian War Memorial collection, I saw it on my first visit to the AWM many decades ago - as far as I know it is no longer on display. At the Treloar Annex (storage) the second model AC hull fitted with the 25pdr turret, called 'Thunderbolt' according to the AWM, is stored and used to be able to be visited on their annual Open Day. Its construction was paid for by one family of farmers, a plaque commemorating this is affixed to the glacis.
Go the Aussies 👏🍻
May I ask,are going to do a video about the Flying Elephant project?
Cheers,
A Hungarian Tank Enthusiast.
i have 20 pages on flyign elephant, shes cool, the downside is lack of good photos for a vid
excellente - your videos continue to dazzle, like a shiny roast chicken! any chance of a vid on the k-wagen? cheers!
Certainly! Added to our pipeline. 👌
@@armouredarchives8867 thank you! you do good work!
The Sentinel 17 pdr id one of three Australian tanks available to play in World of Tanks
have you watched + inside the tank about the sentinel +
Part of me wants to revel in the thought of the carnage that would ensue if a AC IV sentinel met a light japanese tank in the pacific....
Very thorough presentation 🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺
_Mammoth Tank Assembled_
I wonder if the Americans ever tried adding 2’-3’ onto the barrel length of the regular 75mm for additional velocity ?.
Chieftain Talks: M4 Sherman & 76mm
ruclips.net/video/r_8vx5yqZpU/видео.html
They had enough trouble getting the 17pdr into a Sherman turret, how the devil did they think they'd operate one in a Sentinel?
An interesting article,others I have read("The Chieftain")has said that notwithstanding the amazing technical feat of getting the Sentinel made,the ergonomics of the design were dreadful,and would have made it unusable
aww i dunno, ive been in worse. nick is a lanky oik tho so most thigns smaller than a barn are a tight fit :P
The Mk3 ‘Thunderbolt’ Sentinel, mounting the 25 pounder, increased the turret ring to 69”, so the tight turret encountered by The Chieftain in the Mk1 at Bovington was solved. Chas. Rewalt and Co. were the engineering firm who came up with the fitting. Major Watson is considered a legend here for his work. The Sentinel was designed with interchangeable undercarriage matching the US M3 Lee/ Grant. The Cadillac engines were locally made, and it had a crash box as no synchronised cone making machinery existed in Australia. All tanks are incredibly expensive to manufacture and maintain, so following assurances from US Gen. McArthur that US vehicles were already dispatched, the Curtain Government halted production at 66 vehicles. Unfortunately, the Stuart and Grants arrived a year later, and although the Stuart was used, and took a hammering at Gona and Buna, the main role for US tanks was training, the Army quickly finding out a vehicle life span of approximately 600 miles on the American tanks. They wore out quickly, and the Sentinel, and British Matilda could do better than that. The final Pacific campaigns were conducted using the Matilda received in late 43. Not surprisingly, Australian Army Jungle tests, using Sherman, Churchill, Chaffee, Matilda on Bougainville in 44 showed the superiority of the Sherman in all aspects, it was never supplied in any numbers to Australia. Cheers.
@@dougstubbs9637 I don't think that the Sherman was found superior in the Australian jungle tests, the US made it clear that they wanted Australia to have Shermans but the Churchill was chosen instead. However it was not immediately available so the Matilda wad used and found to be very satisfactory. Thanks for the rest of your info, it was amazing what Australia was able to do during WWII as far as armaments and supplying allies go.
He also said the ergonomics were bad in the Hetzer, didn't stop it from being successful.
What on earth is the big round bulbous/hole in the centre of the tank hull below the mantlet,looks quite a strange thingamejig.
It was an opening for mounting the hull machine gun.
A strong gun in a ZIP tank
I still struggle to understand why the brits didn't simply take the design plans of the AC Sentinel and more importantly the AC Thunder and put them into production right away.
These were far superior to any WWII British design, and they came from a part of the British empire already built tested and verified
It really baffles me
a mixture of pride usualy, but also adding a new tank to a production line takes time, as you have to either increase factory space, often not possible, or phase one series out, close the line, rebuilt for the next ones, and start over- takes about 9 months. then on top you need to do the same with the casting sites. make sure the other smaller firms are geared up to produce parts from wiring to gearing. and get it all in one place, add in evaluation and testing etc and its about 1.5 years on average (still much quicker than today)
@@armouredarchives8867 thanks
I've watched the video on panther armor and if I understood correctly, perhaps the British factories were not geared towards casting armor and if so, producing the cast aussie designs would've necessitated either industrial transformation -which isn't really an option, or redesigning the tanks to be of welded plate construction in which case it's the same as designing a different vehicle anyway
Thanks again
I'd be so pissed if I were Germany that the firefly was so freaking effective for being so simple.
devs plz nerf
Would love to know what the US interference was that probably robbed us of a war winning tank design.
They might have been our allies, but............
We didn’t have the necessary industrial base being a colony of Britain.
Those nasty lefties then had the hide to establish a car industry using a US company.
The mad monk fixed that sending Holden packing.
Of course that took Toyota with it so the Hyrbrid factory the gubenment had just paid for went also.
We don’t even make nuts and bolts here now.
‘Clever cunts’
Don't think Mayfly is a good name for a tank. They only live for a day.
It isn`t german but sherman.
Not being English I have no idea of what 25 or any "#pounder" could be! Saying "replacing the basic Sherman's 75mm cannon with a #pounder one" means nothing if (for whatever reason) you refuse to provide us with the caliber in question??
pound is a unit of mass, 1 kg = 2.2 pounds. In this case the mass referred to is the mass of the munition. I don't know the diameter of a 17 pounder but from other sources I have been told it was a comparable weapon to the German 88 mm.
@@grogery1570
I too know that 1 kg is 2.2 pounds (Sadam Hussein weighed a little over 200 pounds, for example) but that does no good when determining diameter. In reality one has to know each of those canons in particular. But again, even if the two canons have the same diameter their effects can vary drastically.
I could be completely off base here, but the term 'pounder' makes me think of naval guns from the days of ships of the line, and wonder if there maybe some sort of carry over in that context. Not of course was a 17 or 25 pounder using round shot.
Two pounder tank gun was 40mm, six pounder was 57mm and the 17 pounder was 76mm. Their muzzle velocities were 2600, 2340 and 2,980 feet per second respectively. As you pointed out it’s not just the diameter of the barrel.🦊
@@grogery1570 it was still a 76mm gun just with a more powerfull charge a harder tungsten armour piercing round and a much faster muzzel velocity it equalled the german panther tank gun
Heaven save us from Naysayers, with short attention spans....
The 17 pounder is 105mm not 76.2mm
no its really not
American stupidity in not adapting their own Sherman to fireflys - seemed they did much better in upgrading aircraft than tanks.
They had the 76mm upgun which was acceptable, but uptake was deliberately limited for logistics.
Shermans equipped with 76mm M1 are ready before D-day infact it was already in UK the reason why they didnt bring it is because battalion commander didnt want to due to time to train crew to use the 76 and logistic and the 75mm do just fine based on their exprienced in Italy. So learn more before calling some nation dumb
@@billytheshoebill5364 Absolutely, using words like stupidity only makes the user look stupid.
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