4 replies to this topic

[Arkady Vachon]

This came about back in our combined tabletop roleplaying and battletech games about ten years ago. To preface this, our unit was working out in the periphery at the time (The Magistracy of Canopus, actually, great for parties if you don't over do it), since we were kind of an adhoc group working our way up (to eventually get in the inner sphere action) On one job we were working on Astrokazy, and captured a company of Hetzers, but the AC-20s and the ammo racks for them were not in the vehicles (they had been mounted as emplacements and kitbashed onto other things, lol. Well, we also just happened to have a supply of Thumpers that we had captured some time back. So, a bit of mechanic work, refitting and cutting and we built these Hetzers into the ASV: Artillery Support Vehicle. The modification is simple, really, without the AC-20 and 4 tons of ammo the Hetzer has 18 tons of space available, which means with a bit of hull cutting and addition of a recoil spade you can have a Thumper Arty cannon and 3 tons of ammo. So we were never without some offboard artillery (though we sold some to our employers after we showed them how we did the modifications.) With the Tactical Ops Manual and the new, smaller Thumper Cannon you would have a 10 ton howitzer (basically) and 8 more tons to play with to make an onboard artillery vehicle. maybe really up armor, add more weapons, or something? Anyway, this worked for us, and excuse the big paragraph as I cannot seem to get my enter button to work on these forums.

[Skylarr]

Look at Strategic Operations pages 188 -189.

It is not a simple as installing a new weapon into vehicle. You cannot take the cannon out of an M1 Abrams and install an arty piece.

You saw 10 empty crit slots and replaced it with a weapon that needs 15 crit slots. Then you installed a spade that also takes up crit slots.

This is not feasible.

*Corrected the spelling of Abrams.

Edited by Skylarr, 29 May 2013 - 08:52 PM.

[Melcyna]

Skylarr, on 25 May 2013 - 07:22 PM, said:

It is not a simple as installing a new weapon into vehicle. You cannot take the cannon out of an M1 Abram and install an arty piece.

Fluff aside, technically you could in fact convert an Abrams (not Abram, it's ABRAMS, the name of the guy it was named after was Creighton Abrams, i swear no one ever gets the name correct... not even Americans, they always misspelled it as Abraham or some other deviant mutation of the name, their history grade must've been F)

into an SPG given enough time and effort.

We've been doing that to various tank chassis ALL THE TIME since WW1 and WW2, if the need arises (usually when the tank is obsolete and thus cannot contribute in direct tank role)

We don't do so with most current MBT chassis for the simple reason that we have more suitable chassis to use as a platform for SPG, but if we for some reason wants to... nothing stops us really, it would of course be an extensive work and certainly aint fast, but feasible.

And if the vehicle is designed for modularity, then the process can be done even faster... vehicles like Boxer for example in our world were designed to be completely modular and can be converted from an IFV, into an APC, into a 120mm mobile mortar, or a command vehicle in just one hour of work because all of the equipment necessary for each function are self contained within the modules that can just be interchanged as necessary.

Edited by Melcyna, 29 May 2013 - 09:05 PM.

[Skylarr]

Melcyna, on 29 May 2013 - 08:41 PM, said:

Fluff aside, technically you could in fact convert an Abrams

You cannot just take a cannon out of a tank and and place in an artie piece with out spending allot of time researching the design and testing the effects.

[Melcyna]

Skylarr, on 29 May 2013 - 08:50 PM, said:

You cannot just take a cannon out of a tank and and place in an artie piece with out spending allot of time researching the design and testing the effects.

True, but if you for example designed a turret housing the howitzer and built it according to a research based on the M1 chassis, there's nothing stopping you from doing it at all and converting M1 into an adhoc SPG by replacing the main turret with the modified howitzer turret, the chassis and the turret are designed as separate modules after all on most tanks including M1, usually so it can be replaced in the workshop quickly or to expedite repair and maintenance.

Note that in M1 for example, like with many modern western tanks, the turret houses pretty much all the firepower components of the tank, ie: the gun, the fire control system, the ammo stowage, all of them... (the ammo was specifically mounted on the turret and none on the hull to avoid catastrophic ammo detonation from destroying the tank and killing the crew)

The chassis on the other hand contains only the powertrain, fuel, driver, and the general automotive component of the tank.

This makes it easier to replace the weapon system if we intend to modify an M1 in a theoretical basis since essentially if you remove the turret, you have an almost clean M1 chassis.

How long it would take to do such conversion would depend entirely on how efficient one wants it to be, a tank technically has many things unnecessary in SPG role so many could be stripped off really but nothing stops one from doing it and succeeding at it given enough need and resource for it.

And of course, if the vehicle is designed to be modular in the first place... then this is even easier and like the Boxer example i mentioned above, can be done very quickly in the field.

Edited by Melcyna, 29 May 2013 - 09:45 PM.