Obscure WWII Tanks

Hi,

What are some extremely obscure tanks that no one has heard of?

prinzeugen

 

I wouldn't say 'no one', depending on nerdiness, but a few mildly obscure WW2 considerations to get things rolling (lazily grabbed from the thread that was my Internet home for a long time - many many more peculiar vehicles there). Not necessarily 'tanks'.

Neubaufahrzeug:
View attachment 24886

SS-KI
View attachment 24887

M6:
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AC4 (Sort of Sentinel, but not really) :
View attachment 24889

 

Try here, lots of them including my favorite as well as Green Slimes's, The Bob Stemple MBT. The German's did not recognize it as a tank and so it was able to get very close and knock out Tigers ! & 2. Unfortunately the journalist also failed to recognize it so little publicity. An unsung hero of WW2......The first stealth tank !
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=bob+semple+tank&id=2638FDBD9136CD7FA4BD722F91561437D1E48BB1&FORM=IQFRBA


Gaines

 

There would be no info of a tank which no one has ever heard of...

There are some freaky french super heavy tanks, but they are not "obscure"...

 

the Marmon-Herrington's. Most of what people think about them is wrong, and over 700 of them were built.

 

Rich, their light tank looks pretty dorky ( Is that a proper military term ?) but the medium, I assume a Mk 2 looks plausible for the early war period.
Thanks, I had forgotten them. The Mk1 anf the Semple, at say 5 yards would hve been quite a battle.(

 

I would say one of the most obscure tracked vehicles that drove von Poop & I mad for a few years trying to ID it was the Bagtignolles Chattillon DP 3.

http://ww2talk.com/index.php?threads/help-tracked-afv-id-answer-bagtignolles-chattillon-dp-3.2549/

 

The French tank above is huge ! Glad the soldier was standing there for scale. Indeed a strange looking beast.

A fiend of mine upon seeing his first Citroen said it looked like a car designed by someone that had never seen a car. That tank must be similar !

Gaines

 

I was always fond of the Marmon-Herrington commercial tanks. The USMC experimented pre-war with small numbers of very light Marmon-Herringtons, the turretless CTL3 and CTL6 and the turreted CTM. Some CTL6 and CTM were used briefly in Samoa during the war. The little CTLS was a development of the CTM, a typical pre-war type light tank, with thin armor and machine gun armament. The Dutch bought some and used them briefly in the NEI in 1942. Those that didn't make it to the NEI in time wound up in Australian hands and were used mostly for training. Other CTLS still in the States and originally offered to the Chinese were appropriated by us. Apparently a few were sent to the Aleutians. The CTMS was a proper light tank with a 37mm gun similar to the M3 Stuart, while the MTLS was a larger light medium-cruiser type with twin 37mm guns. The Dutch used both the CTMS and the MTLS in the West Indies, while Mexico, Ecuador, and Guatemala also got some CTMS. Neither the CTMS nor the MTLS appears to have seen action in WWII, but the Dutch used some CTMS in the NEI postwar against the Indonesians. They were all funny designs, with riveted plates and vertical volute suspension very similar to that used by US Army tanks. The 37mm gun on the MTLS and CTMS was not the same as the US Army M5 or M6 but a special automatic type developed by the American Armament Corporation and the MGs were not M1919A4s but a Colt commercial type.The Chieftain's Hatch (below) has an interesting and highly derogatory report on the MTLS by Aberdeen Proving Grounds.

http://www.overvalwagen.com/tanks.html
http://anzacsteel.hobbyvista.com/Armoured%20Vehicles/marmonherringtinph_1.htm
http://www.oocities.org/marmonherrington/usmc.html
http://worldoftanks.com/en/news/21/The_Cheiftains_Hatch_MTLS/

 

Then you will like these picture too.


The french tank designs weren't bad, far superior to the british designs. When you look at the M3 Grant and the M4 Sherman you can see a lot of Char B and Somua S35 in them. Just remember the Renault FT-17 which was the first proper tank with a turret.

France had half the population of Germany, they were often trying to equal quantity with quality. These super heavy tanks were all experiments of an era when they were obsessed with the Maginot line, pillboxes and fortifications.

 

Have never see that monster. Is that the crew ? They have the leather helmets but 13 men ? I bet it would make all of 5-6 kilometers an hour !

Great picture.

Gaines

 

12 men crew:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Char_2C

10 were built, it wasn't an experimental tank!