https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4tR1oipNmc&list=TLsvCzWqKLizipEH0qqUNnH2TW9u_RVpFD

This is a pretty cool video just up on You Tube of the Detroit Tank Arsenal building M3 Lees. Great shots of the machine tools and how the hull was rivited together. The narration is full of propaganda but over all the video really interesting.

Tom

Building the tank isn't amazing, it's the design of the machines that make the parts.

Ok... And? Where's the substance? I do agree but I'm just curious as to what this to do with much of anything...

Awesome find, Thomas. Love that they just started up the completed vehicle and towed the next one in line with it.

Plenty of diorama potential there.

Of course as a modeler youy don't have to be curious about how the machines you model are being built, but it sometimes helps in this hobby, and others certainly appreciate the find that Thomas posted.

Thanks Thomas, very interesting indeed!

Cheers,
Greg

Thanks Tom, I love this kind of stuff!

Sean

@MikeyBuggs: to me, it helps train my "moderer's eye".

I was able to see many useful details that will inform my modeling.

1) note some of the test run vehicles had sloppy white paint oversprays from the various hatch portals (obviously tidied up later)

2) note the sag of the tracks as the AFV moves fwd. With the front drive sprkt, you see looseness between the sprocket and the ground

3) you see "early" M3 Lee features such as the "pepper-pot" exhaust stacks

4) insertion of the 75mm cannon. Modelers often assume that back panel was riveted but in reality, it was affixed by screwheads to remain removable in order to access the cannon.

5) riveting of lower tub: just cool!

Just use the embed code next time. When at your youtube video, click on share, then click on embed...copy that code & paste it into your message here. It will show up like this___>>> vola!

Funny how the Army planners didn't listen to their own propaganda: at 1:20 the film states that "anti-tank guns are not mobile enough to counter attacking armor"(paraphrased) yet the Army was still insisting on towed AT guns as late as 1944.

Also how many people noticed that in the last clip (last 20 seconds) the tank furthest to the right looks like an M2 Medium.

I think you're right about the ID.

Possibly a range-safety officer's vehicle paralleling the tanks in the gunnery lanes as they move from each firing line down the length of the range. The live fire tanks were likely instructed to maintain a formation in line left to right and not get in front of or drop behind the safety vehicle as they were moving.

It'd be interesting to see a color photo of this. I wonder if the safety officer's mount was painted in some color like red or orange to make it more visible.

Also, it looks like there might have been some fixed superstructure in place of the turret. A logical use for an obsolete vehicle in a training environment.

Actually, the statement isn't true on it's face. The Germans used towed guns quite effectively right up until the end. The problem come with towed guns as part of an attacking doctrine that didn't have a correct AT doctrine. _Then_ they can't keep up. If you are totally on the defensive, they work just fine and are superior in many ways, being mush easier to hide and harder for enemy tanks to spot and hit.

The American switch to SP AT weapons has more to do, I feel, with false tank destroyer doctrine than whether towed AT guns were no longer useful. The doctrine put forward that the tank destroyer assets had to move around a lot and actively hunt down the enemy tanks. It _never_ worked like that and the anti-tank units really never found a place in the US Army until they started to be tasked more as assault guns than AT Guns. It wasn't formal doctrine, but served as an ad hoc doctrine. That said, because they were being given far more mobile tasks, the SP ATs became the favoured form.

In the Commonwealth formations, which were also in an attacking army, the AT doctrine was more classic and the towed guns remained useful and used right to the end of the war. SP AT guns were a much smaller part of Commonwealth armies and there was little clamour for putting all AT Guns on SP chassis.

It's unfortunate, but the US Army botched their AT doctrine from the begining and it just rippled through their use (or rather misuse) of those assets all through the war.

That the assets were towed or not was not the issue. That the Army insisted on towed guns or not was not the issue. The issue was the Army was misusing all its AT guns, towed or not.

Paul

Now all we need is a decent plastic kit of the Lee. Come on Dragon/Hobby Boss/Bronco get one released please.
By the way everybody, this is my first ever post.

Frankly I hope Dragon DOESN'T release the Lee. They'll probably release under the Black Plague label and it'll be screwed forever.

About the video: I did enjoy it. Very informative and you gotta love those old videos. Far different than today's.

Grzegorz: You do not have to be a jerk, even if a slight one, about my post. I didn't not see any link or video to anything. A simple "Michael, he posted a link to a video about the building of the M3 Lee..." would've been sufficient.

Roy: thank you but again, I didn't see any video in the original post.

And who is Thomas?

The more general problem is theoretical doctrines that are devised based on possible technical solutions rather than evolving existent doctrine to leverage existent technical solutions. In other words, some technological gambit is devised and a doctrine is created around it, the technology. The technology drives the doctrine rather than doctrine driving technology, adopting those technical solutions that work with the doctrine and discarding those that don't.

The US Army created a theoretical "Tank Destroyer" doctrine based on what was technically possible at the time. There was a disconnect between the reality of the battlefield (which other existing doctrines eventually evolved to master) and the theoretical doctrine - Tank Destroyer doctrine was based on what was technically possible - tank destroyers - which turned out not to be tactically or operationally viable.

However, the US Army was not the only army to fall in the "theoretical doctrine" versus battlefield reality trap at that time.

Those armies that insisted throughout the entire war on manufacturing and fielding "infantry" and "cavalry / cruiser" tanks made the same mistake. The same could be said for "heavy" and "medium" and "light" tank based doctrines. These other armies were just as stubborn as the US Army in clinging to their doctrines, even in the face of spectacular failures in France and the early days of the Eastern Front.

There is a large gulf between "revolutionary" doctrines and "evolutionary" doctrines. Rarely are the "revolutionary" ideas successful, and the historical race generally goes to the more conservative evolutionary approach.

New weapons are devised to perform the same doctrinal roles, just better than the existent weapons. Doctrine is incrementally changed to take advantage of the improved capability. The next new class of weapons advances capability again with doctrine taking advantage of those advances.

However, when entirely new weapons are devised (or imagined) that possess capabilities that are not part of existing doctrines, any new doctrines devised are entirely theoretical until proven (or disproven!) on the battlefield. The risk that you'll experience a spectacular battlefield failure is very high and the consequences are potentially existential.

"De l'audace, de l'audace, toujours de l'audace' is all well and good until the enemy is marching in the shade along your country roads.

Only rarely does some revolutionary doctrine, like "Blitz Kreig" or "Air Power", prove itself. Usually theoretical doctrines like "Tank Destroyer" or "Infantry Tanks / Cavalry Tanks" flop in the face of battlefield reality.

Sorry Michael but your post didnt say anything about not seeing anything. "Where's the substance?" is pretty broad statement that doesen't exactly say what substance you seek.

At that point your post seemed as much of a "jerk" as mine (if it ever was), Ericadeane understood your post the same way I did...

And Thomas is the name of the OP...

Cheers, Greg

PS. Ditto on the M3 Lee by black plague, but if you ignore the botched bogies, Academy M3 is a solid base kit though...

Thanks Tom. Really enjoyed watching that. Extremely informative and very interesting

Gary

It seems to me that various design teams at DML take different subjects. If you compare the M7 HMC Priest to some Black Label offerings, you see a difference.

If DML does an M3 medium tank, I would assume the cohort that's done the VERY nice M7s and Sextons would take the job. If so, then they'd be the top of the line for sure.

Academy has some basic errors in hull plate angles and sizes. Workable for sure, but annoying. I used the Academy M3 to make an M3A3 Medium and replaced both side walls.

I'd have to check academy M3 Lee myself against the plans, but I thought that the "wrong angles on hull plates" thing was an error on the part of one of early reviewers and has since been debunked?

Cheers,
Greg

Steve Zaloga shared a set of Ordnance Dept drawings with me. The Wydawnictwo Militaria book on the M3 Lee has a set of plans that match them almost exactly.

If you compare either of those with the Academy kit, you'll see that the Academy sidewalls about 2mm too high. I believe some of the glacis joint angles may be off too. I don't remember. It's been a long time.

I can't agree with that Roy. I have drawings of several of the individual hull plates. In particular, D38505, PLATE, Left, Sponson, is almost exactly the configuration of the Academy part F6. The real plate was 36-5/8 inches tall or 1.046 inches in 1/35. I just measured the kit part and it is 1.057 inches tall. That's an error of .011 inches, 0.28mm, 1%, or 3/8 of an inch full size. Now the rivet pattern is a off in height a little more but again, not by much.

The 36-5/8 dimension is repeated on the GENERAL DIMENSIONS, Elevation, Left Side drawing, D42947. (This is for an M3A2, but no matter.) I go with the listed dimensions rather than the drawn outline, simply because there's no requirement in drafting practices to be exactly scale. In fact, it's acknowledged that you can't be to scale and the rule is to never scale from the picture.

KL

Hmmmmm.... I wish I'd thought to consult with you before I cut plastic for my M3A3 then! Rats!

I think that you must have miss-remembered the error, as 2mm too tall describes the bogies on the Academy M3 Lee.

Even though taking what Kurt wrote about not measuring from the drawings and putting it in to practice has little chance of success for most because "modelling" publications rarely give anything more than basic dimensions of the subject, so you are left with just drawings, I measured my Lee's sidewall and the drawing in Militaria's book Roy mentioned and the difference is a bit less than 0.5mm, with the model being that bit lower than the drawing.

Additionally I think I had layed this part on the drawing before my hull was put together and the differences were nothing to speak of, its just that I started it 5? years ago or more ...

Cheers,
Greg

I missed that, but I got a later boxing of the Academy with corrected bogies, & waay better than the ancient Tamiya!

Maybe 3rd time lucky (or more correct??)