Snow in South East England

[Allan Richards]

Well its been the deepest recorded snowfall in our area (North Kent) since 1964 with some 14 inches lying in the garden. I couldn't resist the chance to get the tanks out and started with the Tiger. Unfortunately it was usless as the tracks just completely bunged up with snow and were causing the drive train lot of stress. I did about 5 yards travel before this happened. The Sherman on the other hand motored through the lot without too much trouble. Occasionally the rear rollers picked up quite a coating of snow but the suspension compressed to compensate for this and the coating built up and got too thick and fell off. This makes me wonder about the full size tanks performance in deep snow and I think that the Tiger must have been a pain. In muddy conditions its got much more grip than the Sherman but once the mud starts to freeze the track system just gets clogged up. The Sherman has less overall grip and climbing capability but the more open design of its suspension means it can cope pretty well in the most extreme conditions. The models have a lot more power than the full size vehicles so in reality I think that the limiting case for ploughing through snow would be engine horsepower.

[Tom Jensen]

Hi Allan, I've heard other winter tank drivers say leaving the tank outside an hour or so to cool down before driving prevents the snow from sticking to the tracks and wheels. 14" might be too much even for our mighty Tigers to handle! Cheers from sunny Virginia!

[Steven Ford]

The track problem with Tigers made them notorious in snow. I'm amazed that the designers did not realise it at the time.

The Comet, on the other hand, would do very well I suspect.

My father-in-law drove a Sherman all over northern Europe (we've just collected his memoirs into a short book) and he recalls pirouetting down a long icy hill in the Sherman, with zero control, toward a column of trucks full of Yanks. No prunes required by anyone for weeks.

He also used a half track and reports that in snow they are fine in a straight line but hazardous in corners - they also had to throw a bucket of boiling water over the carbs to get them started in freezing weather.

[Allan Richards]

Tom,

The tanks live in the garage so they were well soake in the mins temperatures. I was surprised to some extent that the radio gear worked at the cold temperature but I had no problems with both models. On the other hand I had left my digital camera and a calculator in the garage and neither worked in the cold, hence no pictures of the tanks in the snow.

Steven,

Interesting facts on the Sherman and halftrack, there have been quite a few cars doing various unplanned manoevers around here as I don't think many people have much idea about driving in the snow. One guy stuck on the hill at the side of our house did'nt know how to put his 4WD into 4WD!!

[Steven Ford]

Allen

The general public - don't ya just love 'em! A hard frost and the whole of the UK goes into headless chicken mode.

It's a good job that there's you and me to keep the whole thing going.

Steve