British tanks in WWII never seemed to get everything quite right.
There always was a problem, either not enough firepower, too unreliable, not enough armour.
It wasn't until the 29th Armoured Brigade of the 11th Armoured Division received the
new Cruiser, A34, Comet, that finally the British could say that they had a tank that
had good firepower, reliability, mobility and armour all at the same time.
What they did come up with was a very well balanced, and arguably Britain's first first-class,
tank design.
Unfortunately, the tank came a little bit too late to have any great effect in the war
but that doesn't deny the fact that it was a very good design.
Starting at the front hull, you'll see that it's a bit of a throwback in design.
It's gone back to a vertical stepped plate.
An interesting feature you'll see is that the driver has a plug, or a hatch, they call
it the 'visor', and this is used in road marches in order to allow good visibility.
Because he does not have a hatch directly above him like most tanks, he will swing this
open and he'll be able to see straight ahead of him.
The downside, of course, is that this is a weak point in the armour.
The effect of 'edge effect' had not yet quite been figured out by that stage.
You will note that the driver's visor is angled inwards a bit like a plug or wedge, so that
in the event of a strike directly into the driver's visor, it is not going to push the
visor directly into the driver's face.
The 7.92mm Besa machinegun is located on the left hand side of the tank.
Now, of course you'll note that this was a tank designed for a ground war in Europe,
they put the driver right-hand-drive tank.
Starting with the A13 pre-war tank, Christie suspension was a common feature on British
vehicles.
Comet was the last of the line, anything after that was going to use Horstmann bogies.
There are five pairs of roadwheels on Comet, each one having a spring and shock absorber
behind the armour plate here.
Now, the downside with Christie suspension is that the springs take up so much room inside
the tank that there is a lot less room inside than would appear from looking at it from
the outside.
The other downside is that repair work on Christie suspension was terrible.
If a bogie, such as the American volute suspension system was damaged, it was very easy to unbolt
the bogie and send it out.
Christie suspension, unfortunately, any maintenance work, the manual stated that it had to be
done at a depot or workshop level.
It couldn�t be done by mechanics in the field.
In fact, the only thing the crewmen were really authorized to do other than fill the lubrication
points here, the nipples on the wheels, was to keep the shock absorber reservoir for the
springs inside the armour topped up.
So inside the sponson what we have here is a two and a half gallon reservoir for the
shock absorber fluid, there�s an equal one on the opposite side.
Other routine maintenance that was to be performed: Ten bolts on each side per roadwheel, make
sure they're nice and tight.
A feature at the time, the roadwheels on the right hand side tightened by turning to the
right, the roadwheels on the left hand side the nuts tightened by turning to the left.
This was actually a pretty common feature on vehicles at the time, although you won't
see it today, technology and design of nuts and bolts has improved so that 'rightie-tighty,
leftie-loosey' is common.
Another feature about the Comet that was different from the predecessors is we now have return
rollers.
Initially, Christie suspennsion just had the tracks rolling loose on top of the roadwheels.
Now, the problem with this is as the tanks got faster and faster, the shock of movement
of the roadwheels was such that it would throw the track up and hit against the skirting.
This process was called 'track slap', and in order to reduce this, they added the return
rollers and started tightening the track up a bit more.
Now I'm going to diverge here quickly and go on a bit of a rant.
Too many times have I seen unsupported suspension being referred to as Christie.
No!
Wrong!
Not the case!
You can have supported Christie suspension.
Case in point.
So if you're doing your AFVID test, and you look at a T-55 and you say 'Christie suspension',
as I have seen so many times, this is not accurate.
Torsion bar!