| GrumpyOldMan | 26 Sep 2013 3:40 p.m. PST |
Hello All I was looking for information on US Marines in 1920s 1930s China and I came across this site – link On this page are pictures of a tank, by the looks of it on a flat car in China.
Any ideas on the identity of the tank? Cheers GrumpyOldMan |
| M C MonkeyDew | 26 Sep 2013 3:50 p.m. PST |
Looks a bit like a T-35 without its turret. It isn't but the suspension and side plating are awfully similar. |
| CorpCommander | 26 Sep 2013 3:55 p.m. PST |
It was clearly inspired by the Vickers E tank but gads that is fugly as hell. AT-26 of Naro-Fominsk tank brigade on the summer manoeuvres, 1936. Similar but no cigar.
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| zippyfusenet | 26 Sep 2013 7:45 p.m. PST |
I'ver never seen anything like that bow machine gun. The track unit looks like construction equipment. It looks like something from a pulp novel. A home made tank, that a warlord forced a captive engineer to cobble together for him from the parts of a heavy earth-mover and boiler plate. |
 Legion 4   | 26 Sep 2013 9:05 p.m. PST |
I think it is a prototype that came out after WWI ? |
| DyeHard | 27 Sep 2013 9:00 a.m. PST |
This vehicle has many odd features: The bow gun is similar to French design like the FCM-1A
The small turrets look like a US M1926 (T1)
link The overall look is more like the US M1921/M1922
link But the wheels and tread pattern is from none of these. |
| Mapleleaf | 27 Sep 2013 10:30 a.m. PST |
I think it is a fake used to confuse people at a distance. There are a number of factors that suggest this :
1. The size of the standing Marine suggests that the "tank" would be very cramped for an average sized Westerner.
2, Under high magnification you can see there are no teeth on the front wheels so how can they turn the track?
3. The wheels and tracks are perfectly clean and one color suggesting that it was never on a road or dirt The whole vehicle is too clean
4. The machine guns look like pipes with a cover attached by a chain
5. The bow machine gun does not look like anything like the US M1926 the1926 has a way of traversing the gun up down and across the marine does not and lacks a vision port
6. Cannot see any exhaust ports or anything to do with an engine exhaust
7 The rivets look very flush and too regular- no shadows or hilites |
| DyeHard | 27 Sep 2013 11:03 a.m. PST |
Mapleleaf maybe right, however: On point #1: It looks like an attempt at a Machine-gun Carrier. So the crew may well be seated. Compared to other Tankettes it has ample room for three or so crew.
On point #2: the front wheels are the idlers, the drive wheels are in the rear (in the Russian style) you can see the teeth. In this photo of the M1921
You can see that the front wheels are idlers as well. On point #3: It might be a maiden run. (not likely a war prize) On point #4: This prototype M1921 has a similar design, minus the cover.
On point #5: Good points. By eye, looks like bow gun is only 2 foot above grade. There may be a vision port obscured by the front wheel at this angle, but the MG would almost have to be controlled by the drives feet (does seem crazy) On point #6: This could be on the fare side (Look at the M1922 above, exhaust is only seen from one side. |
| Chris PzTp | 27 Sep 2013 9:28 p.m. PST |
From the view showing the rear it's hard to see how the rear wheels would have been powered. There doesn't appear to be much holding them to the hull. |
| Texas Jack | 28 Sep 2013 3:37 a.m. PST |
Maybe it was like that state-of-the-art Iranian fighter jet from last year. |
| zippyfusenet | 28 Sep 2013 5:41 a.m. PST |
On point #5: Good points. By eye, looks like bow gun is only 2 foot above grade. There may be a vision port obscured by the front wheel at this angle, but the MG would almost have to be controlled by the drives feet (does seem crazy) I've seen a design study for an American one-man tank where the driver/gunner lay prone and fired a bow MG. It lowered the profile considerably. Not sure whether they built a prototype for that one. |
| Legion 4 | 28 Sep 2013 8:35 a.m. PST |
I looked online and found nothing to match it … |
BlackWidowPilot  | 29 Sep 2013 10:25 a.m. PST |
Food for thought: 1) How tall is that Marine? 2) If the photo was taken in China in the '20s then it may very well be a one off improvised AFV made for one of the warlord armies. 3) The guns remind me of 6.5mm Fiat-Revelli machine guns. They were on the small side for water cooled weapons, and the existing primary sources suggest that a number of these weapons were sold to one or more warlords during the 1920s.
Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net
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| GrumpyOldMan | 29 Sep 2013 6:38 p.m. PST |
Hello All Thanks for the replies. There doesn't seem much concrete information on these. Just had a look back at the article and realised that the photos cover his whole career and not just China. Assuming that it is China, a modification of the Studebaker looks the most plausible of known tracked vehicles. Information I've found from forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=101&t=164782 In Steve Zaloga's Military Modelling 1983 Manual article "Armour in China" he mentions that when Marshall Liu Hsiang began forming the Armoured Car and Tank Corps there were 6 light improvised tanks. 5 of the 6 tanks were built on Cletrac 20 agricultural tractors with a single turret and a .303 cal. Lewis machine gun. The sixth one was built on a Cletrac 30 chassis and had a 37mm and a .303 cal. Lewis machine gun.
In 1932, KMT government sent Song Ziwen(宋子文) to the USA in order to purchase some armored vehicles. Unfortunately, Song was cheated by the Americans and what they sent to China were more than ten agricultural tractors. Chiang soon found out that they were totally not suitable for warfare. At last the Americans were made to convert them into armored vehicles with armor plates. Each vehicle had a French-built machine gun as its weapon. The Chinese soldiers called them'the obsolete tanks'. Maybe they are local or one-off imports. Cheers Vic/GrumpyOldMan |
| Legion 4 | 30 Sep 2013 11:24 a.m. PST |
That makes sense … maybe they were scratch-built so to speak ! |
 Bobgnar | 06 Oct 2013 9:18 p.m. PST |
A tank built on a farming tractor reminds me of the Sutton Skunk made from a Holt Tractor.
link
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| GrumpyOldMan | 17 Oct 2013 3:26 p.m. PST |
Hi All Had a reply from the original author of the article:- "Hi Victor,
Good question. One retired Marine tank commander friend of mine surmised it might be one of the experimental tanks made by J. Walter Christie. The problem is that the tank historians at Quantico don't think it's American, and that's supported by the label on the back written by my grandfather: "Tank used by Chinese forces." But then who made it? I wonder if we'll ever know.
Damien Cregeau" Still a mystery. Cheers GrumpyOldMan |
| BlackWidowPilot | 17 Oct 2013 10:46 p.m. PST |
Grumpy, that caption you've quoted fits my hypothesis that it was a one-off built for a Chinese warlord, probably using readily available commercial tractor suspension components and such with locally built bodywork to get the job done. IMHO if that Marine was six feet tall, and that contraption was built to take a Chinese crew, then it wouldn't necessarily be too cramped for a five foot something Chinese soldier to operate in to a reasonable degree of assumed efficiency. A delightful mystery this one; are there any other photos or descriptions known? Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net |
