I need some help with understanding the variations of M4 75mm turrets. I'm mainly modern armor modeler, so I don't have many references about Shermans. I found partial information in various sources, but still don't have a clear picture...

So far I know that there were:

- low bustle turrets, associated with small hatch hulls
- high bustle turrets, associated with large hatch hulls

- turrets without loader's hatch (on Fireflies they had rectangular hatch added)
- turrets with oval loader's hatch

- turrets without thicker right 'cheek' (machined inside, these had applique armor plates added)
- turrets with thicker armor cast in on right front of the turret

Now some questions:

1. Were low bustle turrets ever used on large hatch hulls? Or high bustle turrets on small hatch hulls?

2. When was the oval loader's hatch added? Did all high bustle turrets have this hatch? How common were low bustle turrets with the oval hatch?

3. What exactly was the history of cheek armor? I understand that turret was machined inside to make room for some gun related mechanism and this meant that armor was thinner in this area, but was it done to all early turrets and can it be considered a flaw in original design? Or was it some later modification of the gun mount that forced this change? In other words: did all early turrets have thinner right cheek armor (before they had applique armor plates added) or only some?

4. When were applique cheek armor plates introduced? Were they applied in the factory to newly manufactured low bustle turrets or only added to older turrets? What was earlier: intruduction of thicker cheek armor turrets, or application of applique armor plates to earlier turrets?

5. When was thicker cheek armor introduced? Did all high bustle turrets have thicker cheek?

And finally does anyone have clear photos or illustrations that show the difference in the shape of turret between early turret without thickened cheek and later turret with thicker armor cast in there? I would like to be able to recognize the type of turrets on photos, but currently I don't quite know what to look at...

Thanks in advance for your help!

Pawel

My understanding is that the high bustle turret was designed to give clearance to the large hull hatches. So a large hatch hull would usually have a high bustle turret.

Robin ..true that that was the reason for high bustle turret but there were quite a few composite M4 that still received the low bustle turret but with the thickened cheek armor and no pistol port ..
2)I have heard that there might have been a few low bustle turrets that had the hatch but this would be very very rare and I have never seen a picture of any..
3) It was a flaw in the design and yes there was a weak spot on the early turrets ..
4) This was done both on the production lines and also in England before D-day most Shermans were up-graded with hull and turret applique armor .
5) the thickened cheek started with the low bustle turret without the pistol port and so I imagine that all high bustle turrets do have the thicken cheek.

Check out this article and there are a few more here...
http://www.usarmymodels.com/ARTICLES/Sherman%20Corner/turretcheekarmor.jpg

Rick

Top picture on this page shows a low bustle turret on a composite hull

http://mmcalc.tripod.com/Shermans/ETO_Composites.html

Thanks for your replies!

Now a simple question.

Take a look at this tank: http://photos.kitmaker.net/showgallery.php/cat/14409

It is M4A2 with low bustle turret with no loader's hatch and with pistol port. What about cheek armor?... Does this turret have thickened cheek armor?

Pawel

Wow, Pawel ... all those pics and not one of them answers your question.

Looking at this head-on shot, I'd say there might be a cheek bulge, but I don't see anything definitive -- no shadow, no "flat spot" that is sometimes visible, no lower edge, etc.



On the other hand, the hull has welded applique, but not the turret. That might be an indicator that the cheek bulge is there. Of course, this is a display tank, which may have been cobbled together from the parts of several tanks ... so I guess all my speculation may be irrelevant. What you really need is a good shot of the side of the turret from a higher angle (you would be able to see the lower edge of the bulge about flush with the top of the bullet splash ring on the hull).

I guess this hasn't been much help.

Just to mess with your head some more, the tank is an M4, not an M4A2, the twin rear doors (photo 15) and the large hatch behind the turret over the cooling air intake (photo 17) are give aways.

Can't really tell about the turret cheek.

I concur that the tank pictured is an M4 with the intermediate bogies (non-upswept).

Quite an early one too, the Direct Vision flaps are just about visible behind the applique on the driver's hoods. It's obviously been reworked at some point with a gun crutch, vision cupola and .50cal stowage mounts at the rear of the turret.

And the suspension has pillow blocks too....

I have an issue of Military Modelling magazine that has an article about this with illustrations to boot. I could scan it for you if you want and e-mail it to you.

Some low bustle turrets were used on wet stowage M4A3(75). There have been several pics posted on the net showing this. I believe they were pics of vehicles in the 4th or 6th Armored Divisions. One theory behind this is that when some of the M4A3(75)D were being converted to M32B3's they had a bunch of turrets left over from the conversion. At the same time, there was a shortage of high bustle turrets due to lack of casting capacity so they upgraded the low bustle turrets with applique, vision cupolas, etc and dropped them on the wet stowage M4A3 hull.




The oval loader's hatch was standard on all high bustle turrets. During the remanufacturing process, it was retrofitted to many dry stowage turrets. There has been some photographic evidence of remanufactured dry stowage turrets showing up very late in the ETO.




The inside of the turrets were machined out to make room for the gyrostabilizer. You can consider it a design flaw. Until the thickend cheek turret was produced, applique armor was added at the factory and retrofitted by the end user. I'm not sure when the thickend cheek came into being. Kurt Laughlin, where are you?






Applique armor came before the thickened cheek.




Not sure when it was introduced but all high bustle turrets had the thicker cheek armor.




See my website: M4 Composite for a turret with thickend cheek armor. There's also one with applique turret armor: M4A1
I'll have to check the other M4A1 on my site next week to see if it has the thickened cheek.

Chris "toadman" Hughes
Toadman's Tank Pictures

I too concur that it's a M4. Can't really tell about the cheek bulge. Of note is the second pattern of bogie skids. You never see this type of skid in any of the kits.

Chris "toadman" Hughes
Toadman's Tank Pictures

Yes, it's M4 of course - I don't know what I was thinking... I may not know all details of 75mm turrets, but I know M4 from M4A2 :-)

Thanks for all the info Chris! Looks like I need to plan another trip to MVTF and take some WW2 armor pics this time :-)

Pawel

I Pawel,
I can't help you in your questions, cause I'm not so skilled, but I give you the link of "Formations Models", wich produce an expanding range of excellent conversion kits for 1/35 Sherman... all kind of turrets and hulls... In my opinion their quality is amazing.
http://www.formationsmodels.com/

cheers
Tom

Thanks a lot, but I know excellent Formations products already. The point is that I'm not researching this to build a model, so I don't plan getting any aftermarket stuff

Pawel