French tanks in British service, Battle of France, 1941

[Jakko]

The H39 is now mostly done:

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I glued the extra shields around the armament, but of course had to cut the one on the right-hand side back a bit to fit over the new machine-gun mounting. The tools are partly from the kit, but all the green plastic is from an AFV Club Churchill, because I think the British would have wanted British pioneer tools on the tank. The rest of the green is paint, brushed into areas that will be hard to reach with an airbrush later.

Also, I scratchbuilt a mount for a mirror on the right-hand mudguard, simply replicating the one on the left using some plastic strip. This is because the A11 book mentions that a minor complaint about that tank was that it could only have a mirror on the right, which was useful in the UK but not in France, so it was requested to add one on the left, too. With these tanks, I've assumed it would be the other way around: there needs to be a way to move the mirror to the right for training in the UK.

What's still missing is four things: a British antenna (base), a British tow cable (rather than a French chain)m, the towing eyes and British smoke launchers. The latter are easy enough to make, except for the slight snag that I haven't found any tube or similar of a suitable diameter yet.

On the B1 bis, I sawed the gun from the turret and replaced it by an Aber 2-pounder barrel:

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That only just worked, because the new barrel is 2.8 mm thick and the plastic of the old one is about 3 mm. It's actually only attached to a sliver of the old barrel that's wrapped around maybe half the barrel ...

Incidentally, the muzzle is 30 mm in front of the gun shield. That's less than the full length of the Aber barrel, because I worked out from drawings how far it should go to have the trunnions in the same location as for the original 47 mm SA 38 gun.

[NARSES2]

Coming along nicely 

[Jakko]

I've been making British smoke grenade dischargers yesterday:

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After a lot of searching for suitable diameter pipe to make them from, I discovered that parts of the H39 sprue have approximately the correct diameter (which is 3.3 mm). I first drilled a 2 mm hole into this, then reamed it out to almost the full diameter with a sharp knife. The firing mechanism was made just like the real thing: by cutting down Lee-Enfield rifles The bracket is just some plastic card cut to size and glued to the turret. It still needs cables added from the trigger guards to a hole somewhere in the turret.

On the B1, I also added the Besa barrel that came in the Aber set with the 2-pounder. It simply sticks out from the B1's gun shield here, because by holding the plastic Besa next to the turret, it looks like there would have been enough space to have installed it this far forward on the real tank.

[NARSES2]

Neat work on the dischargers 

[Old Wombat]

Neat work on the dischargers 

Agreed! 

[Jakko]

And simplicity itself to make, once I found something of the right diameter anyway

[Jakko]

On the H39, I added two tow cables:

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These are cable eyes from (IIRC) a Tamiya Sd.Kfz. 221 with nylon string between them to make a total length of 12.5 cm, which is approximately the scale length of such British tow cables. They're just a bit too short to allow them to be fastened to the front and rear towing eyes, though, so I put them on the middle one instead, which seems a reasonable way to stow them to me.

For the B1, the brilliant idea (yes, indeed ...) came to me that by 1941, the tank might well have been welded instead of riveted in order to simplify production and increase protection against enemy fire. I used a couple of different knives to chisel, cut and scrape away a whole bunch of rivets:

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On the roof and around the 75 mm gun, I left them in place because on the real thing those were — as far as I can determine from photos — bolts with conical heads instead of rivets. On the right-hand side I also completely removed two strips with rivets, because with welded construction, strips like those aren't needed. Now I still have to add weld beads, over nearly all the seams that had rivets alongside them

I replaced the driver's hatch by a plate without hinges, but with two British periscopes from a Churchill on top. Another one of those little modernisations that seems plausible to me.

[NARSES2]

Both looking very good 

[Jakko]

Slow progress due to the welds not wanting to cooperate, though. I think I might scrape away what I made again and try a different method.

[buzzbomb]

Like the work on both models, nice thinking all way through.
The replacement of rivits for welds, will change the look, so really interested to see how that evolves.

I wonder for the B1 the feasibility to replace the hull French 75mm with the British 3 Inch Close Support howitzer for commonality of ammunition with other British tanks of the era.
I have done zero research on the capability of the two weapons, just a logistical thing for ammunition and training.
It is a big chunk of metal the French 75mm, I would envisage the work to replace it might not be effort for this backstory. It would give the same armament as early Churchill Mk 1/2 and for this backstory, perhaps the need to develop the Churchill disappears.

[Jakko]

The thing is that the British 3-inch howitzer was mainly intended for firing smoke. There was HE for it too, but that was rarely issued IRL. Of course, in an alternate history, the HE round may have become more prevalent, but doing a little research, the HE round for the French 75 mm ABS SA 35 gun used in the B1 bis had 50% more explosive charge than that for the 3-inch howitzer (90 g vs. 60 g), almost certainly making it a better weapon against infantry, soft-skin vehicles and fortifications. I think it's a cool idea, but I see this as a case of the British perhaps going the other way: adopting the better weapon instead of the one they already had.