Ram Mark II manual

[Matthew Noonan]

Originally Posted by Matthew Noonan

Australian archives delivered the item I requested today.

Once you pay for something and they scan it, they add it to the website so anyone is free to view them in the future.

http://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/Searc...aspx?B=1664990

Paid to have the other files checked with the hope they had more, but it's basically the same as the other.

http://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/Searc...aspx?B=4938371

The CWM's copy of the 1942 manual has gone missing unfortunately. But the tank restorer had a copy of the 1943 one which they were able to copy.

Nothing on the Armour values in it as others had said. The general description included "The armour of the tank consists both of armour steel plate and cast armour steel. The lower hull is of armour steel plate riveted to suitable structural steel members. The top hull and turret are entirely of cast armour steel of varying thickness."

Except for one blurb in the turret section which seems to contradict any other source for thickness.

"The turret is a one-piece casting of two-inch armour"

Manual Lists the Gun as being able to elevate to +20 and depress to -7.5

In Canada's pride, Roger Lucy talks about the pilot Ram II tested in November 1941 on page 39 and 40 and some of the issues they had with it such as location of elevation gear, turret basket problems and such. He states they had concerns with the limited gun depression of the main gun being -10 to the front and -7.5 to sides and rear. Fixing it would have required redesign of both turret and rear deck. Joint committee on tank development agreed on December 11 1941 that -10 was acceptable.

Then on page 66 he lists the gun as being able to do +20 and -7.5.


I know the turret front plate changed at a later date and the inner mantlet had some tweaks at various times as well, but was the change so large that they lost 2.5 degrees of depression to the front from the pilot?

The Ram I with the 2 pdr is another ? on gun depression, I am guessing it was roughly in line with say what the valentine could do -15. Hunnicutt lists -10 but I believe this is incorrect. There are documents listing depression over the engine deck being limited to -12 or so after fitting intake protection plates for example.


The manual has some lovely diagrams and semi decent pictures of the tank.

I edited one and removed all the arrows crisscrossing it pointing out components to try and make a cleaner image for fun.

h6bFQCh.jpg
i.imgur.com/h6bFQCh.png