Operation Infatuate II: Sherman tanks at Westkapelle

[Alex van de Wetering]

Sorry Alex but I think that you are wrong. When viewed from the side of a complete dozer, the braces that set the angle of the blade are parallel to and lower than the top edge of the blade frame as seen in Michels photos. That fits in with the whole assembly being upside down on the beach. Also in the zoomed photo you can see the circular saucer shaped depth plates just behind the blade that help to control depth of cut.

Hi David,

I see what you mean....the blade and arms are indeed upside down and I was wrong. But, has the whole assembly been cut from the dozer with a torch maybe? As there seems to be something odd with the shape...(last kink towards the pivot point seems missing)

The arms actually pivot from the brackets that you can see from the outside of the tractor at a point about midway between the top rollers but quite low down. The weight of the tractor is carried by a big leaf spring pivoted to the sump on a normal tractor (I am not sure if it is a solid mount on these) which is higher than the blade arms so there is no need for the arms to avoid it. The underside of the arms are sloped upwards at the ends to give better ground clearance when the blade is up. In the zoomed photo you can see the circular saucer shaped depth plates just behind the blade that help to control depth of cut.

That's what I don't agree on; the arms on an Armoured dozer are shaped over the transverse leaf spring, as they would otherwise interfere with the spring. You can't curve the arms under the leaf spring, as that would very much limit the up and down movement of the arms and blade. The shape might be a bit different between D6 and D7, but you can see the idea here on the surviving D7 dozer.
Dozer blades that attach to the ouside of the dozer suspension don't have this problem obvisously, as there is no spring, so the arms can be straight.

Picture source: https://www.militarymodelscene.com/d7-rmoured-dozer