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Colin Macgregor Stevens wrote:
>Don't forget the amphibious conversion of the British Tetrarch tank that
>Straussler worked on (see Wheels & Tracks). These light tanks (in
>non-amphibious mode) were also used by the British Airborne in gliders for
>D-Day. I recall reading that at least one tank fell through the bottom of
>the glider while passing over the English Channel on the way to battle. I
>can't recall if it was 1944 June 5/6 D-Day or 1945 March Rhine Drop (which
>would have been a US built Locust). By the way, the crew were probably in
>the tank at the time.
Straussler used one Tetrarch for his first DD prototype, but dont forget a
number of Valentines (about 600) were also DDed.
However, these DD Valentines were only used for training the DD crews, and
were never used in ops.
It seems that the British DD crews were issued with, and trained in the use
of, submarine escape apparatus, in case of problems.
Cheers,
Ron the Frog, on the sunny banks of the Paraguay River.
There are three kinds of men:
Those that learn by reading,
The few who learn by observation,
And the rest of them who have to pee on the electric fence for themselves....
-- http://personales.conexion.com.py/~rolgiati/ --
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Apr 04 2000 - 21:57:21 PDT