Current and Finished Projects > Profiles and Pixels
Logan's Profiles - 8x8 Scimitar
Logan Hartke:
I thought about that, but I don't think it would be all that much of an issue overall. So, if you look at the front of the Ratel, the driver is seated in the middle of the vehicle and the superstructure is raised behind the driver and I intentionally cut it down at that point.
So, it's not like there's a 30 degree deadzone to the front, it's much closer to 10 degrees and you would just need to "hop" the barrel over the driver's compartment as you traverse, which is very easy to setup in the design as create the variant. You could very easily fire directly at targets in front of the vehicle, just not immediately in front of the driver.
Cheers,
Logan
GTX_Admin:
Your Ratel 85 reminds me of the real world Cuban BTR-100 which month a T-55 turret on a BTR-60:
apophenia:
--- Quote from: GTX_Admin on August 04, 2021, 01:55:02 AM ---Your Ratel 85 reminds me of the real world Cuban BTR-100 which month a T-55 turret on a BTR-60:
--- End quote ---
And, I would guess, with a similar rationale to Logan's Ratel 85 - being able to self-deploy over distance and at speed.
On Secret Projects, there's a thread on a whif 8x8 Ratel. Not sure how plausible that 8x8 would be if the Ratel's MAN truck components were retained. But, if it were feasible, that could be the basis for a T-55-turreted Ratel 100 :smiley:
-- https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/south-african-ratel-ifv-what-if.26641/
Edit: Had a go at an 8x8 Ratel: http://beyondthesprues.com/Forum/index.php?topic=351.msg187244#msg187244
Logan Hartke:
--- Quote from: GTX_Admin on August 04, 2021, 01:55:02 AM ---Your Ratel 85 reminds me of the real world Cuban BTR-100 which month a T-55 turret on a BTR-60.
--- End quote ---
I actually mentioned the "BTR-100" on the What If Forum a couple of days ago when the weight of the T-34-85 turret on a Ratel chassis was questioned:
It's something I took into account when I was looking into this concept. The T-34-85’s turret is 4800kg. The lowest weight I could find for a Ratel was the Ratel 81 mortar carrier, at ~16 tons. The highest weight seemed to be for the Ratel 90 at ~21 tons. I figured a normal Ratel with no interior and a cut down roof would be ~14-15 tons. Slap the 5 ton T-34-85 turret on there and you’re about at a normal Ratel 90’s weight. Now, the Ratels were all designed to be troop carriers, too, but this one is losing that capability entirely. A Ratel 90 had 3+6 configuration with enough food, water, and ammunition for a few days of operations. This would just have its crew of 4, so you’d get back 500 kg in personnel and their supplies.
I think maxed out, this variant might be pushing 23 tons, but that’s in combat configuration with crew, ammunition, fuel, etc. and do that seemed very comparable with a Ratel 90. Actually, one of my inspirations for this concept was the 8x8 Ratel Logistics variant. I was thinking about all the water and fuel it was designed to carry and figured that the base Ratel chassis had to have been pretty impressive and wondered what a similarly cut down 6x6 chassis could have been capable of. I figured it would be at least as heavy as a standard Ratel 90 once you loaded on all the crew and equipment, but probably not all that much more.
I had been reading about the South African Border War recently and some of the armoured vehicle development, and the difficulty in obtaining equipment from abroad due to the sanctions kept coming up when producing AFVs. It seemed to be a frequent source of bottlenecks. Reading about operations themselves, one topic that kept coming up was the small ammunition load on the Eland 90s due to the small size of the vehicle itself. Finally, there were a lot of complaints about trying to use the Ratel 90 as a tank when doctrinally it was supposed to be a fire support vehicle. That low pressure 90mm gun was a great gun for its purpose and was up the the challenge of knocking out T-34-85s, but struggled with T-54/55s. As for the T-62, SADF Ratel and Eland crews were quoted as saying that they didn't want to be on the same map as one.
On operations themselves, however, I read about T-34-85s frequently being captured. Now, the SADF was never able to make much use of them, and I don't think operating even heavily modified captured T-34s would have been worth the trouble. If the SADF could use the ZiS-S-53 85mm ammunition, though, I imagine they wouldn't have been quite as short on main gun ammunition in longer operations. As I mentioned, the picture of the 8x8 Ratel Logistics variant showed how stripped down the chassis could get and I didn't think you'd need the fourth axle for just a T-34-85 turret. I also checked the vehicle width versus a T-34-85's turret ring and there was no problem there, either. Obviously a T-54 turret would be far more capable, but that would also require considerably more extensive modifications to accommodate, as well as not being too frequently encountered in Angola until the mid-80s outside of the 10 seized in 1979.
Rhodesian T55 in the South African camouflage scheme.
https://samilhistory.com/2019/01/03/soviet-made-libyan-tanks-seized-by-south-africa-and-gifted-to-rhodesia/
Putting that on a Ratel would probably require the 8x8 logistics variant and be a much larger vehicle overall. For that, I'm reminded of the recent Cuban "BTR-100", but that would be a completely different project.
Cheers,
Logan
Buzzbomb:
Very interesting discussions.
My first thoughts were around how designs come around again.
A T-55 Turret on an APC chassis is a variant continuation of the Crusader turret on a Staghound armoured car.
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