Priest Kangaroos in Italy?

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally posted by Andrew Tomlinson
Of course these were different from the NWE fit, which often had the extra side 'armour' from the deep wading mods.

A deficiency of the first production version of the M7 105 mm HMC was that the ammunition stowed vertically in the ammunition racks was partially exposed above the side armour. On later production versions this was rectified by adding hinged armour plates which could be raised on the sides and the rear of the fighting compartment to protect the ammunition.
In British/Canadian service this deficiency of early M7s was rectified by adding fixed armour plates to the hull sides. The plates were fitted using bolts, slightly overlapping with the original side plates. The thickness of the plates is unknown, although thicker than the hull sides is unlikely. (On British Cruiser Tanks many sections of 14 mm plate was used, this is only slightly thicker than the 0.5" hull side so that would make a good guess.)

Courtesy of Peter Brown, a drawing of the additional armour with deep wading kit goes attached.

Hope this helps,
Hanno