Landships II

Max · Lieutenant

Mephisto A7v german tank

Tim R · Hero

Have it, it is a very good book, GET IT!!!

ATB

Tim R

Mark Hansen · Legend

I also have this book. They mention that there is a set of plans that you can get from the Queensland Museum which are different from the plans supplied with the book. I tried to get them about a year ago (I think) and they told me that they were out of print

Max · Lieutenant

Hi Mark,

do not know anything about upgraded plans.the plans on the pics are those I have. Seems the original ones (scale 1/25 and 1/12,5)

Max

Rhomboid · Field Marshal

Thanks for posting those plans, Max. Do they give any indication whether the underside of the engine compartment was plated over?

Mark Hansen · Legend

Max wrote:

Hi Mark,

do not know anything about upgraded plans.the plans on the pics are those I have. Seems the original ones (scale 1/25 and 1/12,5)

Max

Those are the plans that come with the book. On the first scan you can see where they offer "A more comprehensive set of three technical plans showing dimensions and internal details". The comprehensive plans were the ones I was after but are out of print.

J Fullerton · Captain

Rhomboid wrote:

Thanks for posting those plans, Max. Do they give any indication whether the underside of the engine compartment was plated over?

From what I have seen (plans from the Mephisto book, and photos of 542 Elfriede laying on it's side) there was no armour plating on the underside at all...not even covering the gas tanks.

Max · Lieutenant

No signs of armour plate on plans and other pics from the A7V laying on his side.

Max

Rhomboid · Field Marshal

Thank you for your replies, Joseph and Max. My photos of 542 overturned lack resolution, and it's difficult to make out this detail, since the suspension obscures the view of the underside of the chassis. Hundleby and Strasheim state that the underside of the fuel tanks was plated over, and this can be seen in some modern photos of 506. The underside of the gearbox is clearly not plated over. I was trying to avoid scratch-building the Daimlers for an Elfriede diorama, but it looks like this will be necessary if the underside of the engine compartment is open. Has anyone seen any aftermarket parts that might be a reasonable facsimile of these engines?

J Fullerton · Captain

Rhomboid,
What page (or chapter, at least) in Hundelby and Strasheim is the mention of plating for the gas tanks? I did a very quick check in the armor chapter, but didn't see anything, unless they meant the swinging hinged front and back plates.

I was basing my comment about being able to see Elfriede's gas tanks on the same rather blurry photos in H&S. On the one showing the front end and underbelly, there is a dark line running down the central axis of the tank at the front of the underside, just where the gap between the two gas tanks should be. If there was an armoured plate there, why not have just one piece, instead of replicating the gap?

Now, there is a central girder of sorts (segmented and far less robust than the two side girders) , but it is incomplete and doesn't extend all the way to either the front or the back, judging from the chassis diagrams in the book (I've misplaced my large blueprint from the Mephisto book at the moment). Therefore, my conclusion is that the dark line is indeed the gap between the two gas tanks themselves, and there is no plating on the underside.

As for the visibility of the engine from below, I have to wonder. There's a lot of struts and webs and stuff connecting the bogies to the frame, maybe they would obscure the view of a lot of the detail on the engine, and you could get away with some minimal work to suggest the bottom of the engine block?

Centurion · Legend

Given that a limiting factor on the number of A7Vs built may have been a the supply of armour plate its possible that there may have been an intention to armour the underneath but plate wasn't available. However one would have thought even mild steel would have been better than nothing.

Rhomboid · Field Marshal

You're probably right about modelling the engines, Joseph; showing the oil pans, crankcase and flywheels would likely be adequate. I'll confess to a bit of "model-fatigue" after scratch-building the gearbox, and I was looking for a "quick and dirty" solution to the engines.

The reference to plating under the fuel tanks is on p.44-46 of Hundleby and Strasheim. I've interpreted the dark line between the central underside girders as a shadow in the recess between the girders, rather than the space between the fuel tanks, but none of my photos show this area really clearly. The A7V suspension is a marvel of complexity, and it is unsurprising that Tauro chose to grossly simplify this part of their model. (All photos from Hundleby and Strasheim)

J Fullerton · Captain

Ah, now I see the section you mean.

"Towards the front, other girders joined the frames, two of which were boxed in at the bottom to protect the fuel tanks above."

So the question is 'what did they mean by "boxed in"?' Does that mean a plate of some sort, whether bullet resistant or just designed to prevent a tank puncture by jagged terrain? I confess it does sound like it to me. But the chassis diagram on p.44 shows that there is no girder over the center of either the gearbox or the gas tanks (there's a single line, which I take to simply indicate the central axis rather than actual hardware of any sort).

I don't quite understand what you mean by 'shadow in the recess between the girders'...a shadow caused by what? The central girder further back? That ends with the cross girder that boxes the rear of the gas tanks, which I would expect to sit on the lip of the various girders, which wouldn't leave any room for light to show between the rear girder and the gas tanks. I'm also not sure whether the light source (which seems to be coming from above more than anything) would cast a shadow from the central girder straight forward like that.

So maybe there was an intention to box the fuel tanks in with a plate, but for whatever reason it didn't happen or was removed, on Elfriede at least?

Edited to add: Ah, scratch all that! Now that I look again at the prototype photo, I see that the fuel tanks were further back than I thought. They're not over the very front most section which has no central girder, they're over the next compartment back which does have a central girder, and also above the first bogie framework (the two girders which cross the breadth of the chassis and rest on the bogie springs).

So therefore, there may very well be an armor plate under the tanks, but would it look much different from the tanks themselves from a modeler's perspective? Simpler to build than recreating the edge curvature of the tanks, I suppose. But I'm still baffled as to what the dark line in that photo of Elfried is. I don't think it's the (normally) vertical gap between the fuel tanks as seen from the front, since the angle doesn't look right....

-- Edited by J Fullerton at 04:41, 2006-10-28

Peter T · General

If I understand your question right, then you don't mean the shadow on the underside of the fuel compartment, but the dark strip just behind the front swinging plate in the foto on p. 54of Hundleby and Strasheim. I have the same foto in a slightliy better quality. an there is a small strip full of bolts clearli to be seen ...

J Fullerton · Captain

Indeed, that's the shadow that I meant (I misunderstood where the fuel tanks were actually located earlier), and now I can see that Rhomboid's first photo above, 'Elfriede sand pit', has more detail than the Elfriede photos in H&S.

Not super clear, but I can readily believe that I'm seeing a bar or very shallow girder with bolts on that picture. I don't understand why that piece of the frame isn't represented on the chassis diagram, but maybe the diagram was an early draft, before that bit was added. I wish I could find the blueprint that came with the Mephisto book to see if it's shown there.

I'm also curious now about what the flat panel that the bar with bolts is attached to...are we seeing straight up to the floor of the crew compartment? Or is that the same horizontal armored bottom plate that protects the fuel tanks? It would make sense if it extended all the way up to the front of the frame (covering the empty section that I at first thought held the fuel tanks) since that would also protect the front vertical side of the fuel tanks from stray fragments or ricochets.

Rhomboid · Field Marshal

Joseph, I think the rivetted or bolted bar running fore-and-aft along the centre of the front section of the chassis joins two sections of plate covering the underside of the chassis; in other words they are a continuation of the plate(s) under the fuel tanks. The corner of one of these plates can be seen in the photo showing the idler wheel. The floor of the fighting compartments was attached to the upper side of the chassis. Looking at the photo of Elfriede overturned, the floor of the aft fighting compartment, which should be visible above the gearbox, is lost in shadow. In contrast, the underside of the front compartment is much lighter in tone, suggesting that it is plating underneath the chassis which we are seeing, rather than the floor above. Why it was felt necessary to plate under the chassis between the first and second cross beams is not clear; I am unaware of any component of the tank which occupied the space in front of the fuel tanks. Perhaps this space would have been used in the Gelande-wagen.

Peter T · General

As Rhomboid writes correct, the plates under the fuel tanks covers the underside of that front compartment too. This compartment was something like a box for tools and weapons (sorry for my bad English) and ist to be seen at p. 50 (picture above). On the upper side of that compartment was a large hatch in the floor of the fighing compartment under the seat of the gunner.
As the fighting compartment was attached to the upperside of the chassis, you would still have to do a lot of scratch-building, i.e. the various girders, the Daimlers and the gearbox �
Most of that informations I got from the book �Sturmpanzerwagen A7V, Bernhard & Graefe Verlag, ISBN 3-7637-6243-4.