"Mark IV tank dimensions: Hull and track width?" Topic

I am undertaking a commission to do a Mark IV tank for Kallistra.

I am having some difficulty in finding enough data on the measurements, in both consistency and the right measurements.

Kallistra was good enough to provide me with the Osprey books on the Mark IV, but that – surprisingly – doesn't have a lot of numerical data. There is often a fair bit of variation in measurements for armoured vehicles at the best of times, bu in this case, because of the proportions on the Mark IV, it's a bit harder to determine what is right.

Principally, it's the width that is the most difficult to guage.

Models and technical drawings both seem to be a bit varied in the width of the hull (i.e., sans sponsons) compared to the overall width (i.e. the wdith of the sponsons), which is the only available dimensions I've been able to find.

From a fairly good photo in the Osprey book, I have been able to estimate that the hull is roughly, a little under three times the width of the tracks. This seems proportionally roughly consistent with the models and drawings I've looked at… But the actual dimensions are a bit more variable (over a millimetre variance at 144th scale).

With this being a fairly distintictive feature of the tanks, I obviously want to try and get this as "right" as possible.

So, it would be really useful to find out what width the tracks or the hull is; that way I can at least make a spirited attempt to get the proportions right!

Does anyone happen to know the width of those parts, especially the track width? (Or know a man who does?) If I can get something on that, I should be able to make a reasonable approximation for the hull width.

(A good deas-on front or top-down shot of the real thing would do, I haven't thus far been able to find a good one.)

Google Bradford German tanks Buy the book

According to my Airfix. Magazine Guide no 8 track widths are as follows:

Ausf C-380mm ( hull width 2850 mm)

Ausf F2- 400mm ( hull width 2880mm)

Ausf J-560mm, Ostketten (I asume that is wider tracks fitted to cope with conditions on Eastern Front, although as the J was a late model seems a bit pointless)(hull width 3290 with " skirts")

Hope that helps. 1/144 is my favourite scale for WW2, looking forward to seeing the finished article.

I'm guessing he means the Mk IV male and female tank. Early 20th century and all. That would make it decidedly British.

Ha, in that case I haven't a clue!

Sorry, folks, I wasn't very clear, was I? I meant the WW1 British Mark IV (in my defence, googling "Mark IV tank" brought up the British Mark IV, so I didn't think anything of it!)

My usual period is also Moderns, so I'm not all that familiar with WW2 – and especially earlier – so you will have to forgive me for muddying up my own inquiry!

Edit: Who asked this joker is indeed correct! (And beat me to the punch b a few seconds!)

@steamingdave47: thanks anyway!

MK IV posted above. You should be able to scale it any way you want. Also found a drawing labeled MK V.

World of Tanks is often very useful. They have 3D representations that can be spun about for better looks.

There is a Bradford drawing on the web- google mark iv
British ww1 tank scale drawing; might help.

There's a Haynes manual on the Mark IV British tank. Page 44 gives the track width as 8.75 inches. Length of 20.5 inches, which is actually the width as they were mounted at 90 degs. I'll have a look for the hull dimensions…..

Overall width for the male tank is given as 13ft 6in, or 4.11m.

Hope this helps, B

Depending on where you live, you could just go to the museum and measure a real one, drawings often have errors in them, either deliberate or accidental.

There is a Mk IV Hermaprodite on permanent display at the Australian War Memorial and you can walk right up to it, micrometer in hand to measure it. From time to time they have an FT17 on the floor too and currently the only original A7V is there.

I'm pretty sure the UK has a few Mk IV's that you can get up close and personal with too.

@BattlerBritain

Perfect! Much obliged, that was exactly what I was looking for!

This means I can get the track width pretty much exact, and then make a good estimate of the hull width (i.e. track-to-track width) from proportions from the Osprey sources.

20.5 inches converts to… 3.6mm at 144 – which actually perfectly matches the estimate I'd taken (I took the mid-point between the various technical drawings I've looked at)! So nice to know I was about as close as I could get.

(The overall width at 4.11m is also another useful source point; that seems to be the most common width given, so that's a good confirmation.)

@Who asked this joker, steamingdave47: ta, I'll look at that as well.

There is a MkIV at Bovvy if you need it.

There is a more detailed drawing in the Hanyes manual giving every dimension you'd ever need. It's on the inside cover of the book but is so detailed it's actually quite difficult to read.

I'd recommend you get a copy of the book. It's not that expensive ( less than 20 notes uk).

Beware of sources that just rely on other sources, that relied on other sources, that contained an error. When he was designing Whistling Death, J.D. Webster discover that nearly every reference had the wrong top speed for one Japanese fighter because way back, someone confused units and everyone copied it forward without checking. It's similar to "50% of all humans who have ever lived are alive today." The actual number was 5%, someone decided to write it as "5.0%," and someone else left out the decimal point.

If at all possible, see if someone can measure one. Keep in mind that there might be significant size differences among vehicles due to "silent" design changes or inconsistent manufacturing.

Bovington is a bit far, unfortunately, coming from Derby.

(I *am* intending to go to Bovington at some point, possibly next year and I intend to take my camera, possibly purchasing a selfie stick (to try and get enough elevation for top-down shots), talking to them in advance and attempt a really good photo walkaround of my own, though of what vehcile will be determined; but that'll basically be as part of a weekend holiday with my parents.)

I use technical drawings as a basis for my models, but I try and primarily rely on photos of the real vehicles – there's quite a few places now that do walkarounds with modellers in mind: e.g. Prime Portal and SVSM, which are usually the first places I check now. As with all these things, you start to get a feel for doing it by eye, and while I can do it pretty much all that way, it takes much longer. Sometimes, when the technical drawings are wrong (and they sometimes are), you end up doing it by eye anyway, but usually they are least give you a rough start.

(For most normal tanks, that's usually plenty sufficient.)

If I have to, I use secondary sources (often pictures of 1:35th scale kits) to see what exactly it is I'm looking at, especially on those hard-to-get too-down shots. The 35th scale crowd, in particular, often have a much better ideas of what the real things looks like than I do (because even moderns is work, my hobby period is scifi!) and will go to quite extreme levels of fiddle to get the details right (which is informative, since you often find out which models are "wrong" compared to the real thing. I think the most amusing time I encountered that was with the T-72, where they had about eight different manufacturer's turrets and they were all slightly different).

I always try and use a variety of sources where possible, though, to minimise the sort of copy-paste errors. (In fact, the OP problem sort of came up because I HAD a greater variety of sources than usual, but with regard to that specific issue, it meant I was more aware of the variation between the sources. That is to say, I had more rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!)

That said, this is also the first time I've ever done anything this early.

As an aside, the Mark IV is also quite astonishingly painless to model by comparison, once that dimensional issue was sorted. I like all the nice, flat easy shapes; none of that complicated tedious wibbly three-dimensional curves and funny hull shapes that categorise a lot of Cold War stuff. (I just finished work on the T-64A and that was painfully difficult). Apparently, really early or very recent AFVs are where it's at – it's those tedious ones in the middle that are the difficult beggers…!

Apparently, really early or very recent AFVs are where it's at – it's those tedious ones in the middle that are the difficult beggers…!

Yeah, the recent-production tanks all went to big flat panels for the composite armor, and early tanks were all flat plates of rolled steel welded together.

But those dang tanks with cast parts!!! All the compound curves!!!

Yep, there's quite a bit of variation between tanks even ones that come off the same production line. It also has an effect on variation on armour thickness in that you can't always say that a tank has an armour thickness of x, coz it just doesn't.

All you can say is that it's x +/- a bit of jitter.

Russian tanks are a good example.

Those T-72 models you found variation on: could be there was variation in the original dimensions from the vehicles that were measured for the model.

I know of one other instance of something you might expect to have similar or exact dimensions for each example across the range but not actually having so. The old RAF Nimrod patrol plane: when they looked at upgrading them they found that each plane had unique dimensions which meant that each plane would require bespoke fitments, increasing the costs considerably. Essentially each plane had been hand made.

Hope this helps, B

Yes, I've found especially with the soviet tanks, there often isn't much of a concensus between dimensions!

When I did the T-55, it was very early on (one of the first moderns vehicles I did) and it wasn't until I'd done the T-72 and we'd got both models ot at a convention, my oppo noticed that my T-55 model was the same size as the T-72, instead of being smaller.

I went back and very carefully checked everything. For the T-55, I couldn't find two websites that gave the same dimensions! It hadn't helped that, as far as I could determine, I'd apparently used the largest size I'd found for the T-55 and one of the smaller ones for the T-72.

After some calculations, I came to the conclusion that in my initial scaling, I had just kicked a couple of numbers a decimal place or two in (0.x74 instead of 0.x47 or something) and the T-55 was actually out by 5% in length (so 15% by volume). Which doesn't sound a lot, but it makes all the difference.

Fortunately, I was able to scale the T-55 to 95% quite easily, as 0.05mm off in the linear dimensions was within most of the tolerances, and I only had to scale a few bits back to minimum wall thickness.

(Typically, scaling down is vastly more time consuming than scaling up; scaling down any serious degree, you have to not only re-hollow the model out and adjust the minimally thin parts to maintain wall thickness, but also adjust the height of the surface detail. Scaling up usually only means that you can afford to make some of the parts that were at minimum thickness (and thus oversized) proportionaly smaller.)

So, often, if in doubt, I use the Wikipedia dimensions, on the basis that a lot of that data comes from Jane's, on the basis that if it's wrong, I'm at least in good company!

Give Bovington or the Imperial War Museum London a ring (there is a Mk IV at the latter too). I bet either would be more than happy to measure for you and pass the information on.

Robert