Re: BMGs, CMGs,AAMGs,TMGs,whateverMGs
 

BTW: not quite relevant for SPMBT, but for those interested in curious bow mounted weapons, check out the Finnish Vickers tanks from 1940. These had been ordered from UK unarmed, with the intention to mount in them domestically manufactured weapons. For reasons that are still a bit unclear to me, the weapon chosen for the hull mount was an SMG!

Griefbringer

Re: BMGs, CMGs,AAMGs,TMGs,whateverMGs
 

AFAIK Finland was quite short of weapons so why not? BMG was anyway more a suppression weapon and it was important that it fires hail of bullets, no matter how accurately and most of times at relatively short ranges. So let's mount SMG and use HMG on field mount somewhere.
Btw SMGs were planned as main weapon of Czechoslovakian light fortifications in dense spots - where the neigboring pillboxes were just 50-150 meters apart, it was considered adequate replacement for LMG. Unfortunately just few tests were carried out before the Munich.
(And didn't some Italian tank use OVP twin SMG?)

Re: BMGs, CMGs,AAMGs,TMGs,whateverMGs
 

No clue about that - I considered the infantry usage of the twin SMG with a gunshield funky enough (though also pretty clumsy).

Then again, a number of tanks of various origins also had pistol ports in the turret, pointing at various directions, for crew to discharge their personal arms at enemy getting too close for comfort.

Griefbringer

Re: BMGs, CMGs,AAMGs,TMGs,whateverMGs
 

Maybe I can offer some clarity then. Visibility beyond a few hundred meters outside Lapland and Ostrobothnia would be a rarely seen luxury. The rest of the country is pretty much dense forest. water or urban areas. The bow SMG makes perfect sense to me given the terrain the tanks were likely to be used.

I had the luxury of having a laser range finder in my use during my conscript service and other than in the live firing ranges where the visibility has been deliberately increased by hacking down the forests, being able to measure further than 150 meters away was really rare.

- Koh

Re: BMGs, CMGs,AAMGs,TMGs,whateverMGs
 

Hey, I come from Helsinki, I know how the visibility is like here.

I am not really sure what the late 30's tank doctrine was, but I presumed that the attempt would have been on using them on somewhat open areas (eg. places with lots of fields) rather than in the middle of the forest - though in the 1941 offensive they were not sent into the relative open areas in Karelian Isthmus, but to the less open areas north of lake Ladoga.

Presumably the SMG was removable, so when the crew would dismount/bail out, they would have a handy weapon for close-range defense. Then again, the Red Army tankers were expected to bring the DT MG when bailing out of a tank, that would have provided them with a more firepower to keep enemy heads down when making a retreat.

Representing stuff like that in SPMBT or SPWWII would not really work, with only one possible crew set-up. And besides, it would lead game players to possible use their bailed out crews in an unnecessary aggressive fashion, rather than getting them back to the safety of the depot.

Griefbringer