VICKERS MK6B's resto

[Peter Samsonov]

Wow, great work so far! I am writing an article on early Canadian armour for Warspot.ru, and I'd love to mention your restoration efforts. Where did you get the tanks? Do you know their history up until that point? Any background information on them would be awesome.

[Mike Cecil]

Colin,

More likely a No. 101 (Aust) set, which went into quantity production by AWA in 1939/40. There is some info in Wireless for the Warrior Volume 1. The Vickers Mk6A Tanks ended up at the AFV School at Puckapunyal, and there is strong evidence that the WS 101 (Aust) was in use at the school at the same time.

Mike Kelly should be able to provide more details about the set and its Australian production. It was based (?) on the British WS No.1.

Magnificent job you are doing

Mike

[Mike K]

Would they have arrived from the UK with wireless sets installed ? I would say highly unlikely .

Not much room inside the turret for a wireless ! The 11 set and its ancillaries are fairly bulky and not easy to fit in the turret . The UK 11 set manual does describe a AFV installation with a intercom system option but no specific tanks are mentioned .

The 101 set was around for sure. Being a slim design it may have been used .

This pic is a scene up near Seymour . A 109 set in a carrier . I would discount the 109 set being in the MkVI as the 109 is too large.

A good read is " Tanks in the East" authored by Kerr , he was in the 9th Div cavalry reg. in Syria . He describes his units Vickers tanks going into battle with the Vichy French .

[colin jones]

Mike, I read somewhere that the tanks were fitted with a very limited amount of the No 7 radios and very few if any still exist. I was also told that there was under 100 of the radios made in total. If that was the case then I can certainly understand why there is next to none left. I am yet to verify the information. There would certainly be enough room at the back of the turret to fit a smallish type radio as the No 7 from what info I have was smaller that the 11 or 19 sets.

[charlie fitton]

(Now we get to see him make one of those...)

[Mike Cecil]

Hi Colin,

The No.7 set was British and only a few were built according to WftW, Vol1, which goes on to say they were fitted to Light Tank Mks 2, 2A, 3 and 5, so presumably not fitted to Mk6A.

The WS7 was pretty much a failure, with production ceasing in 1936 - a year before the few tanks Australia ordered arrived in Australia. Plus newspaper reports of the time mention that the tanks were to be fitted with wireless communications in Australia. For a time, they were certainly equipped with a voice tube between the CC and driver (which evidently didn't work because of the noise of the engine in the driver's ear!) So I think you can discount the No.7 ever getting to Australia: Mike Kelly, what do you think?

The No.9 set was the one that superseded the No.7. Complete it weighed 192 pounds, and measured 41ins long, 16 ins high, 12ins deep. According to WftW, these sets were fitted into the turret bulge of the Mk6A in the UK, with the two 6V batteries in the well of the turret turntable. The WS 109 was the version made in Australia. The dims were 16.5ins H x 25.5 ins L x 10ins deep for the set, and 13.5 x 14.5 x 8.5 for the power supply, the whole unit weighing 201 pounds. It went into production in late 1939. (WftW V1)

An Australian-built set would be the more likely, I would think, but unless you can locate some images or paperwork to show exactly which set was in use in the Australian Mk6A, this is all conjecture boiling down to the 'most likely'.

Mike

[David Herbert]

Regarding the driver's seat: they look identical to the driver's seat of a Canadian Ram tank. The design of these was inherited from the Canadian built Valentine tanks which were a copy of the British built Valentine. Very similar seats were used in Daimler Mk1 armoured cars and quite a few British commercial vehicles of the period.

You have done a great job of reproducing it, and well done for not "simplifying" it to save time. Actually that applies to everything you have done so far - brilliant !

David