Quote:
Originally Posted by SeaSlugs
why waste steel on a car roof when it can be used to make a T34 tank. Towards the end of the war Russia was running outa everything. 2 men to 1 gun 15 rounds to share.
Picture and caption is kinda confusing as its says "Gaza" which is in present day Israel (aka friggin hot so open car made more sense and lighter to not get stuck in sand as easy) yet the Ruskies never got to north africa - too busy with Germans on the eastern front. Germans, US, Brittish did duke it out in north africa so if those are German markings it makes sense.
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We Australians were there too, in fact, it was an Australian invention that broke the deadlock over there.
As each side got anew shipment of tanks, they would get stuck into the other side and the front would move back and forth. That went on for quite a while till engineers in Melbourne, Australia worked out how to make a steel casting much larger than ever before. Up till then, the largest was about the size of a football. With the new technology, a tank could be made in three castings, the floor (chassis), the body and the turret. We didn’t have the industrial capacity to take advantage of it so we showed the US how to do it and tanks started to come off the production line like sausages. The allies were then able to maintain a greater supply of tanks and the Germans were defeated. That allowed our troops to head home where they were very badly needed to stop the Japs. Churchill tried to “steal” them for Britain and let Australia fall. Our PM told him where to go and the troops arrived back home just in time to stop the Japs on the Kokoda trail. Churchill is still reviled here!