it was every Sherman had it in the early production, it wasn’t only the M4A1
the Variants of the Sherman weren’t upgraded from each other, at least not for the First number following “A”, they were designing the factory production which was coming from either Dodge, Ford, or Crisler, and fitted their engine as they could have them in hand. the instant of producing an engine for each of the 50,000 Sherman built, the builders just kept producing their engines and installed what could be good in the tanks they produced.
to speed up the production, the Chassis was also produced with a method that was more fit to the ability of the different builders. that is why we ended up with 6 versions of the Shermans.
the gun’s mount was the same for every builder, but with time they realised they were vulnerable
in this case, i believe Meir had the M34A gun’s mount
to install an electric turret drive, they had to remove part of the armor and to fix the issue, they just strapped back the 20 or 30mm of armor, I dont remember how much it was but now extended forward, You can see it in another sherman, though i dont remember which one
Unpopular opinion, but this should absolutely be 2.3 at most. While this is an M4A2, it appears to be a late production version with the larger driver hatches that can also be found on the M4A4 and Sherman VC. From my experience, these are huge weakspots that can be penetrated by most enemies you encounter, and that’s even with the applique armor the former gets. So I don’t think the tanks of 2.3 would have much issue at all penetrating the frontal armor if they actually aim at these weakpoints.
And while there are still many light and unarmored vehicles at 2.7, this is around the point where most nations start getting actual armor, and even minor uptiers will make the 20mm useless against most mediums, let alone heavies such as the KV-series, Matilda, Churchill I, and ARL.
The M4A3 (105) is good because it has shells that bypass armor to kill or do critical damage to the aforementioned threats that it gets uptiered to, even at 3.0. This Sherman has comparatively terrible armament that relies on fire rate alone, something that won’t matter when it can’t even pen half of what it faces in the first place.
If this is an accurate depiction of how the 20mm was mounted, how much gun depression would you get before the drum runs into the front of the turret? I’m not sure you’d get the full -10°. Which makes me wonder if the Israelis would’ve mounted the gun upside down to account for that. There’d be a lot more room (both for depression and for not needing to elevate the gun to load a new drum) if the drum was on the bottom.
Regardless, definitely a yes for me. We need all of those 1948 oddities so that Israel can get Rank I to III in their tech tree.
it’s from the interwar period and France declassied their documents after 50-60 years. it only did,t get the stamp as it was not in the possession of the French archive at that moment. but it is declassified anyway, for a long time already (some 20-30 years)
the document is dated from 1939 and is listed in the Public french archive. they release it to who ever ask to see it but it need to have a physical visite
