External Mounted Guns

[JAZZ]

Two early efforts to mount external guns on MBT's

Gremany's VTS-1
Sweden's UDES-3? Marder IFV

 

[JAZZ]

French Hotchkiss - Im sure is another external mounted type. Allbeit in a turret.

 

[smurf]

Jazz said

French Hotchkiss - Im sure is another external mounted type. Allbeit in a turret.

I don't think so. See pictures, with clearly an observation cupola in the turret roof, and less clearly crew entering by the turret. But it must have been a bit of a squash for a crew of 3.

 

[JAZZ]

Re: External Mounted Guns-Jupiter

Anyone know much about South Koreas Rotem Jupiter. Is that a 105mm or 120mm Gun??

 

[ReHerakhte]

Jazz said

French Hotchkiss - Im sure is another external mounted type. Allbeit in a turret.

I don't think so. See pictures, with clearly an observation cupola in the turret roof, and less clearly crew entering by the turret. But it must have been a bit of a squash for a crew of 3.

If I remember correctly, the Hotchkiss LFU vehicles only had a two-man crew. The LFU in the colour picture has a low-pressure 90mm gun with auto-loader. The LFU vehicles were also known as ELC (Engin Leger de Combat) and were designed as a family of lightweight (around 7000kg), air-portable combat vehicles but they were not accepted for service. The Cavalry Museum at Saumur has a few examples on display (which is were the colour picture is from I believe).
What I find quite interesting about these vehicles though is the French camouflage scheme, which looks like a version of the WW2 German 'ambush' schemes.

Cheers,
Kevin

 

[CJGibson]

Would the Rifle, Multiple 106 mm, Self-propelled, M50 (Ontos) count as having external mounted guns? It sported six 106mm recoilless rifles. There was also the "Project Prodigal" studied in the run up to the British Chieftain with two 120mm recoilless rifles IIRC.

KB

 

[smurf]

Project Prodigal was a complicated thing, with a variety of layouts.
An early one (1968 - the first?) was COMRES 75, a Comet with an externally mounted 20pdr. The rounds were in two long tubular magazines either side of the gun.
There is a chapter on"Configuration of Tanks" with several external gun examples in Ogorkiewicz' "Technology of Tanks" (Vol II)

 

[dan_inbox]

Would the Rifle, Multiple 106 mm, Self-propelled, M50 (Ontos) count as having external mounted guns? It sported six 106mm recoilless rifles.

I would count it.

And the Japanese Type-60 had 2x 106mm RCL.

 

[smurf]

ReHerakhte said

If I remember correctly, the Hotchkiss LFU vehicles only had a two-man crew.

which is quite right. I didn't check, and assumed there was a driver in the hull. But it's 2 crew both in the turret. There were other versions of this French concept with 4 or 6 recoilless guns, externally mounted.

 

[Ranger6]

"South Koreas Rotem Jupiter. Is that a 105mm or 120mm Gun?"

Jazz,

I've seen both guns mentioned in different publications and websites. I think (pure conjecture) that -- like the K-1 MBT -- the Koreans are trying both to see which works best. But, note, I'm waiting for my new edition of Jane's Armour and Artillery, hopefully the book will have more details. I'll follow up asap.

Ranger6

 

[Graham1973]

This recently posted video on the Armoured Archive YouTube channel shows that the idea of a tank with an externally mounted gun actually dates much closer to the end of WWII than most people think. That said the loading system the British designers came up with in 1951 is definitely overcomplicated and failure prone.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0dw32rPUu8

 

[Lucifer]

Two early efforts to mount external guns on MBT's

Gremany's VTS-1
Sweden's UDES-3? Marder IFV

Can you please share some detailed analysis of these tanks ?

 

[Voltzz]

AFAIK the second vehicle is misidentified, its the UDES-19 not the UDES-3

 

[sferrin]

 

[riggerrob]

Externally mounted 20mm cannons were installed on the Swedish Pbv301 armored personnel carrier, West Germany Marder infantry fighting vehicle and the Dutch variant of Food Machinery and Chemical Corporation (USA) M113-and-a-half Lynx. The Dutch installed auto-cannons during a mid-life overhaul.
They all shared a low, domed, crew-commander's hatch surrounded by vison blocks. The auto-cannon was mounted on a slim pylon that allowed the cannon to fire over shrubbery while the rest of the vehicle remained hull-down behind cover.

 

[HalfACupOfRice]

Can you please share some detailed analysis of these tanks ?

From what I've gathered from poking around German blogs and German Wikipedia with the help of google translate:
The VTS-1 was part of Germany's Kampfpanzer 3 (3rd generation tank) project along with the VT1-1 & VT1-2. It was intended to explore the concept of a " top-mounted turret tank with automatic loading system...". It was tested from 1977 to 1981. Supposedly some of the tests were also to determine the viability of upgunning the Marder 1 chassis and would thus contribute to the development of the Begleitpanzer 57 (take this point with a grain of salt however cause there seems to be some conflicts with the dates of development).

On the technical side of things the VTS-1 is extremely bare bones. It's essentially a RO L7A3 ripped from a Leo 1 placed on a simple mount providing the bare minimum for traverse.




The gun mount does seem to incorporate a sight fitted right under the gun


They also did seem to raise the roof of the hull slightly where the gun was mounted and presumably the gunner and commander sat.


As for the stated autoloader they wished to explore, the program ended before a autoloader could be implemented onto the VTS-1, not too sure how they were going about developing an autoloader for the gun mounting but if I had to speculate it would probably be something similar to what the Swedes would develop for their UDES-19.