Some "rare" Belgian tanks - invasion May 1940

First some captured/abandoned Belgian T13 - tank hunters with a 40 mm gun.

 

Lovely pictures! Do you have any data on these tank-hunters?

 

I've already made an error the gun is 47mm.

This tank has a 47mm canon which fired regular and anti-armour rounds. It can penetrate 40mm armour from a 1000 meters.

The pictures you see here are all taken in the Ardennes region where four years later the Germans would launch their last ditch offensive.

 

Some additional info I looked up.

Crew 3

Physical Characteristics
Weight I: 10,080 lb
III: 11,200 lb
Length w/gun 12' 2.5"
Length w/o gun
Height 4' 6"
Width 6'

Armament
Main 47 mm
Armor Thickness (mm)
Hull Front, Upper 9
Max Speed 25 mph
Production 150 each

 

Thank you for the information!

Would you mind if I use it at the website at some point?

 

by all means

They are not personal pictures , I scanned them from a book.

 

Thank you!

 

Aah, the belgian tanks. If we had 2 panzer divisions of those, we would have stopped the germans.
(Very wishfull thinking, i know)

 

If we had used to money spent on Eben Emael we would have had 6 panzer divisions

These ACG tanks from Renault would have been the backbone of our Panzer divisions.

The utility tractors we used to tow our 47mm anti-tank guns could be used to give those armoured divisions artillery back up.

 

Yeah, a lot of money went into that fort and it lasted less then half a day

 

Wasn't that the one where the germans landed gliders on top of? Should have invested in some AA guns.

 

by the 1940 standard , this belgian armor looks good , how many were made ?
on the last photo the soldier on the right should be arrested for looking dumb

from " the armchair general " recent edition
eben emanuel was taken by eleven gliders , about a company !!
they had a dozen casualties , very cheap .

don't cry , the french had invested most of their national GNP in the maginot line ,
the germans spent most of the cement production of europe on the atlantic wall ,
fat lot of good that did all of them , too !

it seems that large defensive works are only useful to government contractors


.

 

Well, Operation Todt used forced labour and confiscated materials... I doubt many people grew rich off of that one.

 

The third pic down in the third post. That solider on right has a helmet that looks like its from ww1 :-?

 

I thought that Todt basically supplied the manpower whilst industrialists, politicians and companies came up with the schemes and plans. Many individuals and organisations benefited from this, even if the individuals directly providing the labour didn't.

 

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also there was an absolute army of design offices ,
for example the todt organisation , the whermach and the KM had each , several standards designs for blockhaus of different sizes ,modifed several times each ,
thousand of germans technicians were employed in design planning and quality control

it must have beat the hell out of fighting on the russian front

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Apparently the t13 & t15 (machine gun variant) were converted Carden Lloyd tankettes.

A couple of links -

http://mailer.fsu.edu/~akirk/tanks/bel/Belgium.htm

Have a read of panzermeyer's comments re the effectiveness of the 47mm gun.

Also -

http://www.avalanchepress.com/Belgian_Armor.php

 

.
Oh no !! an other carden Loyd tankette variant ,

How could such a crappy design be at the root of so many tanks variants,
the Russians thought it was a poor design and improved it ,
the Germans thought it was good only for training called it Mk 1 and dragged its sorry arse all over Europe
the Czech thought it was no good ,and made a version of it
even the snotty French copied it .

in every corner of the world it turned up
usually dismissed and improved at the same time !

.

 

You forgor Poles with TK series which were imperoved version of Crayden Loyd and scored some succeses in 1939 and of course Italians with their CV-29 (licence built Crayden Loyd) and improved CV-33 and CV-35 ( both renamed L-3)