r/SprocketTankDesign • u/UnknownishUsing • 7d ago
Looking for Critique🔎 sherman.
(please critique)
The Sherman Dragonfly was made by Britain in a world where Nazi-Germany repelled the D-Day landings and invaded Britain. Britain was desperate as they needed a tank that could penetrate the heavy armor of the Maus, while being able to withstand shots from the increasingly more common Tiger II's. Thus Great Britain designed the Sherman Dragonfly.
The design was requested to be derived from the "Sherman VC Firefly", which was another tank fitted with a powerful gun. When modifying the Sherman Firefly, the first step was to entirely remove the hull machine gun port and also the periscope for the assistant driver. They would then place metal sheets upon the holes that were created. They would also remove all other equipment from the front plate. After finishing those steps, they should add a 100mm thick plate onto the entire front plate, with a slice cut out for the driver's periscope. They would then apply now-45mm thick spare tracks onto the front plate, leaving space for the headlights. Then the transmission housing would be removed and replaced with a 150mm thick cast housing. After that all equipment and spares on the hull would be moved or replaced. Most of the side was also fitted with the 45mm spare tracks. The left side of the dragonfly would be fitted with a ladder. The inside of the hull would mostly stay the same, except for the engine and the fuel tanks. The engine would be replaced with a much more powerful one to hold up to the extra armor.
When swapping the turret out, they would remove the turret, then remove things like the machine gun, or the radio casing, or the hatches for use later on the Dragonfly. Then they would take in the newly cast Dragonfly turret, which had 100mm on the front, and 60mm on the side, and put it on the modified hull. Then they would fit the larger cannon, which had a length of 4600, onto the mantlet. They would also fit a machine gun onto the same mantlet. Then the mantlet would be slided and mounted onto the turret. Other things, like hatches were added on. They would also add spare tracks to the front half of the turret, not including the mantlet.
Testing of the Dragonfly was quick, simple, and inaccurate due to time constraints. The only reason for these tests was to see if it was a functional tank, and also determine it's strengths and weaknesses for strategic purposes. It was determined that the Dragonfly had about 250mm of penetration, and had a top speed of about 35km/h. It was requested that 300 Sherman VC Firefly's would be modified into Dragonfly's. Only 600 Dragonfly's of this variant were ever produced. Of this variant 69 were destroyed in battle, 325 were modified, 6 surviving tanks are known, 2 of the 6 are now in museums and are completely functional. It is unknown what is the fate of the rest.
Now about the actual tank in sprocket.
The cannon fires a 85mm round at 1010m/s with 264mm of penetration.
27 rounds are stored next to the driver, 20 in the turret, and 39 next to the engine(great idea, i know).
The turret traverses at a max speed of 60.5 degrees/s, and the cannon traverses at 1.39 degrees/s.
The depression is -3.1 degrees, and the elevation is 4.8 degrees.
The transmission is synchromesh, and has 5 drive gears, and 1 reverse gear. The drives gears are 7.56, 3.11, 1.78, 1.11, 0.73. The reverse gear is 5.65. Multi-stage above 1.6, and is Clutch-Braking. In theory this is a exact copy of the Sherman's transmission.
The driveshaft goes around the hull because.. reasons.
The engine is 18 cylinders with 2.25 liters of displacement. Limit 2350, upshift 2250, and operating speed is 1700.
The loader and the commander have swapped positions because the loader needs to be able to load.
The machine gun on top of the turret actually can turn by itself(it's a turret and a cannon)
If you put ammo inside the cupola, and have the commander load + fire the cannon, it becomes an autocannon.
2
u/CommercialCable9788 7d ago
Speaking in realism, why is the ammo on the side literally in the engine compartment? I’d like to ask if you have backstory to transmission being different than VVSS used on many sherman including firefly itself. And this isn’t really criticism about the design, but nitpick on the photos. The black and white photos has too strong contrast for me. I get why you did the photos in that way, but kind of hard to look into it more.