I recently posted some quick & dirty tank concepts on
my profiles thread, but in case anyone didn't see them there, I thought I'd post the relevant profiles here, as well. The following images are only mockup concepts, not finished profiles. I made them for my own reference and hadn't intended to post them anywhere, but I know there's a number of tank buffs on the forum and I thought they might be interested in the concepts.
There isn't a real backstory to these. I have a few Excel files that I update pretty regularly where I have outlined my "ideal" Table of Organization & Equipment (TOE) if I had my pick of WWII equipment. It's just a little exercise that I use to help me evaluate the relative merits and disadvantages of equipment in WWII. It also helps to understand the problem of things such as "why did Germany use so many different types of trucks?"
Anyway, to permit the interoperation of different types of equipment, I do allow myself a limited amount of equipment swapping for comparable armament, engines, radios, etc. So, here are some examples of the designs I've gone with.
This is the final variant of the Sherman, which would be my standard medium tank of the war.
The initial 1942 M4A1 would be almost unchanged from the historical vehicles. I haven't given it a ton of thought, but I'd likely replace the M3 75mm gun with the 7.5cm KwK 40 from the PzKpfw IV, extend the turret bustle a little bit
à la Firefly to better accommodate the longer 75mm gun and the radio, and that's about it. The standard turret is fine, the VVSS suspension is fine, and the R975 engine is fine, at least for mid-WWII.
Very soon thereafter, however, I'd switch to the M4A2 with the GM 6046 engine and the M4A3 with the Ford GAA engine. The lower silhouette of these engines would allow the switch to the lower hull height of the M10 tank destroyer. For this, imagine an M10 hull, but with the hull machine gun and thicker frontal armor of the Sherman retained. I won't bother showing a preview of this, because the forum's very own wandering engineer mocked up a very similar concept himself
here.
By 1944, however, there are even better options available. For the armored divisions, at least, I'd adopt the
torsion bar suspension of the M4A2E4. As soon as possible, I'd also switch the gun out for the British QF 17-pdr, supported in smaller numbers by howitzer armed tanks for HE firepower. I'd adapt this to the "T23 turret", eventually upgrading that to the "Jumbo" turret, again extending the turret rear to account for the 17-pdr's greater recoil. Finally, I'd increase the frontal hull armor to 102mm by 1944, also like the Jumbo. Unlike the Jumbo, however, side armor would remain the same as the standard tank in an effort to keep the overall weight down. In case anyone is wondering about all these modifications, they were all incorporated on Sherman variants at one point or another. For example, for the last year of the war, Patton had his Third Army Shermans fitted with the glacis armor plates from knocked out tanks, effectively doubling their frontal armor.
I mentioned earlier that the Fireflies would be supported by howitzer-armed tanks to make up for the Firefly's lack of HE firepower. Due to my choice of standard army howitzer, this gun would be the Soviet U-11 122mm howitzer. It is scaled to fit and seems to work pretty well. This would also be the standard armament for Sherman engineering tank variants.
Anyway, I thought some of the forum's tank buffs would like to see some of these concepts since the modifications really affect the appearance of the vehicles, especially the Sherman. It also emphasizes how much like a Lego kit the Sherman was given all the different pieces they tried on it.
Cheers,
Logan