The OQF ( Vickers ) 3.7 inch AA gun in the AT role ?

Yeah, second that, also Moving The Guns, and a couple of others. He gets on Discovery Channel quite a bit for some of their not-quite-so-accurate documentaries as well.
Oli

 

Tony - how much did they cost you - i've Amazoned and they are looking for around 140 quid for the two of them.

 

Sorry to jump in when you asked Tony, but I've found them at
http://www.mysimon.com/The_Universal_Ta ... tag=txt&q=

And Athena books (Terry Wise) is where I got mine from couple of years ago, sign up and you get a free hard copy catalogue (or at least you did when I was lad ), he has a rotating stock of mostly second-hand and usually hard-to-get-hold-of stuff. And he used to to a book search as well.
Good luck.
Oli

 

Changing the subject, but staying with the 3.7" A/A gun. Can anyone tell me what vehicle was it's prime mover during 1941/2?

 

You guys might be interested in the following.

It comes from Major General Scobie's plans for the break out from Tobruk, scheduled for 21 Nov '41 and intended to link the fortress garrison with Auchinlecks troops approaching from the frontier to the East.

It is directed to a 3.7" A/A Battery.
" Having moved from the Harbour to the Pilistrano site, you have four tasks.
(1) To afford AA protection to the fiels & medium positions in the East & central sections of the corridor.
(2) To provide harassing fire on El Adem airfield, thus denying the enemy unlimited freedom to land either troops or supplies.
(3) To carry out counter battery fire and harassing tasks as requested by the CRA.
(4) To engage such fleeting opportunity targets as seem worthwhile & provident.

At all times, anti-aircraft targets are to have priority"

It would seem that the 3.7" was going to be used as conventional artillery as well as anti tank artillery in this role.

 

Just come across a Canadian report that states that the 3.7 was used to great effect in the ground-fire role using air-burst munitions. So at least the Canucks had sense to ignore the rules and use what they had.
I also found (from somewhere else, but lost where) that the 3.7 gun itself had a weight of ~500 kg more than the 88. Which means that we really went over the top on making it an AA piece.

 

actually the 3.7 inch weighted 9300 kg in travel mode and 8900 emplaced. The 88 flak 18 variants weigthed 5100kg on wheels and 3700 kg emplaced. I think this is one of the things that made using the 3.7incher as an at weapon impractical, but not conclusive as the 88mm flak 41 wheigted a whopping 11 tons in travel configuration.

I vaguely remember that there was something with the mount or the sights that made direct fire impossible wih the 3.7inch but i cannot rember what or where i read that.

aglooka

 

Yes, that's the gun plus carriage plus sighting gear plus everything else. The ordnance itself (breech, barrel etc), as I said is about half a ton heavier than the 88.

 

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indeed, but you'd need to drag all that extra weigth into position in order to use the guns unless an enw at mount was developed


aglooka

 

Skua wrote:

That was the first post on this topic: could the gun have been vehicle mounted? Hence, I gave the weight of the ordnance only.

 

sorry, missed that part

aglooka

 

In 1942 a 3.7 inch gun was mounted on a RAM. The vehicle was meant to be for AA-use, but the project was stopped.
I think a self propelled AT-gun could have been made without major difficulties, after all Germany put the KwK 43 on the chassis of a Pz.III.