Thursday, February 20, 2014

Benach M1935 Fast Tank preview

As maybe a few still recall, some time ago we had started working on the blueprints of an ignote Catalan tank project, that had been developed around 1935 in the same factory later producing the IGC Sadurní tank and carriers. Well, we're happy to show you our ultimate design of this obscure tank, that we've dared to name as Benach M1935 in behalf of its designer.
20IGV002
Our ultimate design is not as futuristic, star-wars-like as the first sketches made, but we find it to be quite more consistent according to blueprints. After having abandoned our starting concept of an egg-shaped tank, a number of features look technically feasible and likely now --such as the driver vision port, that in the tank egg version aimed to the right side rather than ahead; the new volumes concevied do allow now a reasonable amount of room left for driver, gunner and side machine gunners to stay together without hindering to each other.
Benach blueprints
A few features else have been added on our own, such as side hatchets for crew, vision ports at dome or rear hatches/radiator grill at the rear. True that none of them is shown on blueprints, but we've otherwise believed them logical and likely.

The sketches above show the tank running on tracks; we're now preparing some renderings on what would the tank look like once thse are removed.

4 comments:

Ignacio said...

Looking great!

BTW, I'm not a real expert on the subject, but to me it looks like the driver does not have room enough with the forward gun on that central position. Had it ever been built, I bet the gun had been moved a bit to the left side...

Soldadets said...

Hi Ignacio,

Likeliness was our main concern from the start. This is why we discarded previous, more egg shaped designs --as futuristic and cool it might be, such profile would have meant a real nightmare for driver!

A second challenge we've had to face is the lack of measurings or scale specifications on the blueprints, or the patent. After some thinking, we discarded giving to our Benach M1935 the same dimensions of Christie's M1932, but making it a bit smaller (supposing it to be some 4.5 m long instead of 5.5 m).

If so supposing, it would be same length as Russian BTs, but substantially wider than these. There would be room more than enough at front for driver and gunner, then :)

1stOctober'17 said...

per l‘absència de reblonat jo diria que anàveu ben encaminats amb la forma d'ou

Soldadets said...

No, no podia ser ovoide --a no ser que el propi dissenyador s'hagués equivocat fent els plànols, cosa que sembla força improbable.

Fixa't en les ogives de les MG laterals. Si la forma hagués estat ovoidal, la vista frontal del tanc no les mostraria com ho fa. Això ens va fer adonar que no era ovoide.