I am offering a free custom Matilda Mk II Scorpion tank with shipping to a lucky, astute member on this forum.
The conditions are as follows:
Must be a member as of today- Sept 12, 2017
Must provide a new statistic or fact about the Scorpion. In other words: if the first response was that it was a flail tank, the next response must be something different. Eg: caliber of gun, weight, battle details etc...
I will put all eligible names in a Canadian Para beret and have my daughter draw the winner in two weeks (Sept 26, 2017). Any members that post a pic of a Scorpion tank from WWII will have an additional ballet entered in the draw. I am tech challenged and cannot post a pic on this forum yet.
IMO-This is a very cool model made by a local artist to which I have added realistic chains on the flail mechanism.
I would appreciate the winner posting a pic, but this is not required to win the model.
Post by mnnorthstars on Sept 13, 2017 10:34:45 GMT
I didn't know what a flail was or what it did. According to what I could find, it was a rotor attachment on the front of the tank that was used to clear antipersonnel mines. The 42nd and 44th Royal Tank Regiments had 25 of these at El Alamein II.
Post by armchair general on Sept 15, 2017 0:32:25 GMT
"The Scorpions achieved enough success at El Alamein for Middle East Command to ask for permission to equip 500 tanks with the Scorpion. Permission was granted to convert 300, but it isn’t clear how many were completed, or how many of these were Matilda Scorpions.
Scorpions were also used on the attack of the Mareth line in 1943."
-Richard, J. April 7, 2015. Maltida Scorpion I. Historyofwar.org
The operator sat in an armoured box mounted on the side of the tank. (It appears in the picture above) Though the mine clearing process was slow, such a dust cloud was raised by the activity that the tanks were obscured from vision. In fact, the operators had to wear gas masks while in use
To you from failing hands we throw the torch be yours to hold it high. -In Flanders Fields. John McCrea
Post by cavalrywolfpack on Sept 16, 2017 23:25:44 GMT
Interestingly, while du Toit came up with the idea for the flail, both the Chief Mechanical Engineer of the 8th Army (Captain Norman Berry) and Lieutenant-Colonel Mill Colman made similar designs out of what they had off-hand while waiting for the prototype to go into production. In other words, experiments were being made with these both in Britain and by active-duty tanks. Now to see if this image will work; I got a pic of the flail in action!