US Army M32B1 Tank Recovery Vehicle

[Tim Marlow]

Good start on this one Jakko.

[Guest]

Onwards and upwards! :upside:

Since the crane is going to be raised, I have pretty far upwards left to go

Very much to your normal posting about the actual vehicle, most enjoyable to read.

I thought I kept it a bit (too?) short here, but glad you liked it anyway

[Guest]

The small accessory set I mentioned earlier has finally arrived:



Not that I can start adding it to the model yet for quite a while, of course

[Guest]

Now with that here, I think it’s time for a bit more history of the kind that several of you appear to enjoy reading :smiling3:

Like others, the US Army recognised the need for vehicles to clear mines quickly during an attack. Where the British mainly tried rollers, ploughs, explosive line charges and flails, then mostly settled on the latter, the Americans mainly worked on rollers, in addition to keeping an eye on British developments and also trying all kinds of oddball things, including an adaptation of naval Hedgehog anti-submarine mortars and even a bunch of heavy-duty pistons that would pound the ground in front of the tank. Most successful of all these, though, seemed to be very heavy rollers. The first serious attempt was the Mine Exploder T1:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]n[/ATTACH]

This consisted of rollers made up of several large, heavy steel discs. Two rollers were mounted on the front of the M3 medium tank, and a third was towed behind it. It was soon improved by moving the third roller to the front, probably so that there was no risk of any mines ending up under the tank, and so became the T1E1.* However, that put a lot of weight on the front, so it was decided to use it with the M32 tank recovery vehicle instead, because it was envisioned that it could use its crane to take some of the weight, and the crane also came in handy for fitting and removing the rollers from the vehicle. The combination looked like this:

[ATTACH]453820[/ATTACH]

This had rollers made up of discs 122 cm in diameter, 5 cm thick and weighing some 580 kg each, resulting in a complete roller that weighed around 16 tonnes; it could clear a path about 3 metres wide. The combination appeared to work well enough, so 75 of them were produced in April of 1944 and most of them shipped to Europe. Units to use them were only formed in September that year, though, when 738 and 739 Tank Battalions (Special) were converted from Shop Tractors to Mine Exploder tanks. Each was to have 18 T1E1s, 24 T1E3s, 12 tank dozers, and 18 Shermans with 76 mm guns, but in practice were also assigned some British-supplied Sherman Crabs, and even a few Sherman DD (amphibious) tanks for the crossing of the Rhine in 1945.

The T1E2 had larger but thinner rollers than the T1E1, was also used on the M32, but not produced beyond prototypes. The T1E3 did go into production; it had even larger rollers than the T1E1, and was mounted on a regular Sherman tank. To improve mobility, the rollers were powered by means of a chain driven by the tank’s drive sprocket:

[ATTACH]453821[/ATTACH]

Under actual battlefield conditions, though, all of these tanks were very slow and bogged down extremely quickly in soft ground, like here:

[ATTACH]453823[/ATTACH]

On the left is a T1E3 that was clearing mines on a road on 19 December 1944; when some mines detonated, they blew out part of the road and caused the tank to slide into the ditch along the side of the road and it got very stuck. You can see the rollers have been detached from the tank to aid in its recovery, for which two M32B1s are used. Both of those M32B1s have a large horizontal bar with big eyes on the hull front, indicating that they are actually also mine exploders: that bar is where the T1E1 equipment attaches.

Oh, and since we’re discussing US Army experimental mine exploders here, I can’t really not mention this one:

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This is the mine exploder T10, which was an M4A2 Sherman tank with the front corners of the hull cut away so that 244 cm diameter rollers could be fitted, driven from the normal transmission, and a 183 cm one at the rear. This was not considered a success, oddly enough

* And here’s an aside on US Army equipment designations thrown in for free :smiling3: Since the late 1920s, equipment was principally designated by a short description of its function, followed by an M-number that started at 1 for every class of equipment. Thus, there was an M1 rifle, an M1 carbine, an M1 helmet, an M1 combat car (read: “light tank for the Cavalry”), and so on. There never really was an M1 medium tank, but there were M2, M3 and M4 medium tanks. Variants were indicated with an A after the number, followed by a sequential number to indicate the variant: M1 is the basic version of the thing, M1A1 is the first variant, M1A2 is the second, etc. (In the early 1940s, it was realised that this was confusing, so sequential numbering was mostly dropped. This is why there are light tanks M3 and M5, but not a light tank M4 — that was to have been the designation, but expected confusion with the medium tank M4 resulted in it being called the M5 instead.)

When there was some kind of substitution made for manufacturing purposes, but which made no functional difference to the item’s operation, a B-number was assigned. Thus, the M1 is a thing, the M1B1 is the same thing but with — for example — a part that was made in aluminium now being made in steel, or wood substituted for plastic, or something like that. This is why the model I’m building is an M32B1: the M32 uses the hull of the M4 medium tank, while the M32B1 is functionally identical but uses the hull of the M4A1.**

Now, T-numbers indicate prototypes; once it was standardised for service, it got an M-number instead, and often not the same as the T-number. For example, the Tank Recovery Vehicle T5 became the Tank Recovery Vehicle M32 upon standardisation. Similarly, variants or alternate designs of prototype items get an E-number instead of an A-number: the mine exploder T1 was the first roller device, the T1E1 was the second, T1E2 third, etc.

** If you’re following along, you may now realise that the Sherman’s designations break the rules. The principal difference between the M4 and M4A1 is how the hull is constructed, while that between M4, M4A2, M4A3, M4A4 and M4A6 is the engine. Neither of these affects the tank’s basic functionality, so they should have been M4, M4B1, M4B2, etc. Oddly, this logic was followed for the M32 TRV.

[Guest]

As usual, work is going slowly because I have to try and work out all kinds of details that are missing, from not enough information. A stroke of luck is that someone sent me a scan of the technical manual for this vehicle after I asked some questions about it on Missing-Lynx, which has filled in at least some of the gaps. As for actual building, I added a basic driver’s compartment from the AFV Club 17-pounder M10 kit I bought the other day:

[ATTACH]453885[/ATTACH]

That’s the lighter green parts, for those wondering In the left sponson, I added two water jerry cans, made from Italeri cans with lids from a Rye Field Model Sherman, whose actual cans were not as good but the Italeri jerrycan set only includes fuel-can lids, not those for the water cans. The opposite sponson needs to be filled with 81 mm mortar ammo packing tubes, but Tasca doesn’t provide enough, and in any case those are too long and won’t fit. I need to find some material of about 2.5 mm diameter that I can cut into enough packing tubes for both here and inside the superstructure.

On the inside of the roof, I added a Tamiya M1 Thompson submachine gun, because it’s sort of visible through the hatch. The plastic below it is because on the real vehicle, there was a rack for magazines for the weapon there, and the gun was strapped to the underside of that. As the rack itself is out of sight, it doesn’t need more detail that this, but bits of the gun can just be seen. (The Tamiya weapon is not well-detailed, but it’s clunkier than the better alternatives I have, and that’s more important here than it being a perfect replica )

Here’s a comparison shot with earlier, which shows well how obvious the lack of interior for the driver’s compartment is:

[ATTACH]453886[/ATTACH]

It needs more stuff added, mainly the drive shaft, but these few parts fill a huge hole in the model.

[Jim R]

Hi Jakko
Thank for the historical background. I'm one who finds it interesting. That "earthworm" aftermarket stuff should make this a very unusual model. I've never heard of BoldDivision. You're making good progress, understandably slow with the research and scratching parts.
Jim

[stillp]

I need to find some material of about 2.5 mm diameter that I can cut into enough packing tubes for both here and inside the superstructure.

Cotton bud (Q-tip) shafts?
Pete

[Guest]

Thank for the historical background. I'm one who finds it interesting.

Cool, I’m clearly not writing it for nothing, then

That "earthworm" aftermarket stuff should make this a very unusual model.

Also a very big model … Especially since I intend to have the boom up.

I've never heard of BoldDivision.

Neither had I until a few months ago, when someone wrote an article about some of their products in the magazine of a club I’m in. I checked out their site and found it’s mostly “Wehrmacht 1946”-what-if, which is interesting but not something I feel a need to build (right now, anyway ) but also some real-world things you don’t find anywhere else AFAIK — like this T1E1.

You're making good progress, understandably slow with the research and scratching parts.

I find it odd that Tasca included a good deal of the interior, but missed out things that are just as visible. Finding out what’s supposed to be there, and finding parts to make it from, are a good deal of work. For example, I need to find at least five water bottles (the kind American soldiers wore on their belts), but have only scrounged up two so far …

Cotton bud (Q-tip) shafts?

Oh, good idea, I hadn’t thought of that yet. I’ll need to go look round the house if there are any and take some callipers to them

[Guest]

For the mortar round tubes, I did more research and found dimensions: in 1:35 scale, they should be about 16.3 mm long and 2.8 mm diameter. I looked at cotton buds, as suggested by Peter, but the ones I had were far too small in diameter. By a stroke of luck, though, the turret sprue (H) has runners 2.8 mm diameter So I cut it into pieces with clippers, scraped off the thin mould lines and then used my RP Toolz guillotine to cut it into thirty, 16 mm lengths.

I put eleven into the turret, with bits of plastic strip to replicate the spacers of the real thing; it still needs a strap that goes over the tubes, though. The other nineteen are in the hull:

[ATTACH]453977[/ATTACH]

If these had been parts I had purchased, I wouldn’t have put nineteen in but only as many as needed to give the impression of a full hull rack. However, this is sprue, so …

In the lower hull, I then added a drive shaft and the cover over the chain that drives the winch:

[ATTACH]453978[/ATTACH]

This isn’t meant to be totally accurate, but mainly to give the impression that the stuff that should be there, actually is. The bit between the chain cover and the transmission is just a piece of something that I found on my workbench, but which serves nicely to fill the otherwise very obvious gap between the drive shaft and the transmission.

[minitnkr]

Great blogging.

[scottie3158]

Jakko,
Looking good.

[Jim R]

Mortar tubes from sprue and precisely to scale :thumb2:

[Graeme C.]

Looking good Jakko, you're putting a lot of effort in to the interior, I just hope it can still be seen when it's closed up.

[Caustik Filth]

This has been a fab posting Jakko and loving the detail, and the detailing your on your build too! Great stuff
Rob

[Guest]

Thanks, all When I build or detail an interior, I always keep dry-fitting the outside parts and look through the holes in them so I don’t end up building too much stuff that will never be seen again. This is part of why I went for the AFV Club parts for the interior: it lacks the control handles, pedals, instrument panel, floor plates and all sorts of other stuff that’s there in a Sherman driver’s compartment (see page 16 of this Tech Manual for the M4A4 for a good view) — it’s basically the same for all Sherman variants and derivatives) but nearly all of that wil be out of sight on this model, so there is no need to add it. The Academy M10 and M36 tank destroyer kits do include a much more complete interior, and would have been a better choice had I wanted to leave the front hatches open. As it is, all I really still need to add to the driver’s compartment is the parking brake lever (see the TM link above).

The same goes for all the other interior bits: I’ll add what’s clearly visible, and some stuff that’s sort of visible, but not all of it and not with as much detail as the things that are easily seen