Being busy with Otazel ,I put on the studs for the spaced armour plates on the roof, with the much appreciated help of the drawing of "MK1nut" on this subject.
Only to find out that I couldn't install the sponson jibs anymore....... so I left a couple of the studs off.
Could it be possible that these studs were also used to fix the jibs in position?
A *very* good question that has been plaguing me too...
I know there is mention on the forum of studs *possibly* being omitted from roof panels that seem to coincide with the jib mounts on *Male* tanks but unless there were always 1 Male tank flanked by 2 Females there'd be a hell of a pickle if ever the sponsons did need to go on / come off. This kind of 'idealism' does smack of the sort of blinkered and impractical 'logic' command level was notorious for... but I cannot help hoping you could drop a jib down onto a space armour stud to get the sponsons on / off any tank by itself.
Look at Gaza... 8 Mk.I tanks only. The 2:1 Female to Male ratio breaks down right there... Surely jibs could be fitted to Females and *all* Female Mk.I's apparently had complete sets of roof studs.
I want to model HMLS Tiger myself, and would be so much happer if I could 'jib' her up, being as my Mk.I Male is going the Supply route.
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"You there on the port!". "S'gin actually, but thanks for noticing [hic]".
I believe that the studs for the blast pannels were not permenantly fixed to the roofs of the tanks.They could be removed and replaced at will.
If you look at the close up pictures of the studs, you can clearly see that there are 2 nuts mounted to each stud. To me that is clear evidence that the studs could indeed be removed and replaced whenever this was required.
I will try to explain...
Each stud consisted of 4 parts:
1. A standard bolt/screw, that was pushed through it's hole in the roof from the inside of the tank.
2. A piece of pipe that acted as spacer, was then pushed over the bolt from the outside.
3. The first (lower) nut was then used to fasten the bolt/spacer assembly to the roof of the tank.
4. Finally the second (upper) nut was fastened on top of the lower nut. In the original design it the second nut was intended to fasten the blast pannel to the premounted studs. The blast pannel would then have been sandwidged between the 2 nuts.
Considering that a lot of bolts had to be removed and replaced in order to remove or to replace the sponsons on the Mk.I and Mk. II tanks, it would not have been so much extra work to remove and replace the spaced armour studs too.
After all, the grenade screens/roofs in France also had to be removed before the sponsons could be removed...So why would the crews not have been required to remove and replace the burst plates and studs too?
A lot of spanner swinging was needed to prepare these early tanks for rail transport and then again for battle...So in my opinion the removal and replacement of the studs was a small matter.
I also believe that the jibs and sponson trailers were standard equipment for the Mk.I and II tanks, and that the jibs could be mounted to both the male and female tanks. And that this equipment accompanied the tanks wherever they saw service, Gaza and also France.
In Ian Verrinder's book, " TANK AKTION IN THE GREAT WAR", on page 43, the method of how the sponsons were removed for rail transport is explained quite clearly.
