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Hi All
My son and I had a trip over to the Isle of Wight today for a visit to the Military Museum and so there are now some more photos on Photobucket http://s607.photobucket.com/albums/tt15 ... 1-04-2012/
As the hulls there are stripped down to one degree or another, they give a different perspective to details that are otherwise more or less hidden. Some things are intreaging like the countersunk allen key bolts, are they correct as original or are they a later addition?
If anyone wants copies of these please let me know and I will send them to you on a disc or memory stick.
The magnetic chequer card strikes again!
Steve

Steve

Thanks for posting these photos - they are invaluable and I'd certainly be very grateful for copies. A few observations from first sight:

This turret lacks the splash guard or bullet deflector in front of the cupola. There are wartime photos of similar vehicles which suggests this is an early turret:



The hull hatches are tiny - getting out in a hurry, even with a surge of adrenalin would have been difficult, impossible if the gun happened to be over the opening:



I mentioned in my build log the chamfer in the early hulls. This picture shows that chamfer very clearly and is an early Type A hull which contrasts with the next one which is a post war Type B:






In the forefront of this picture is the main drive pinion.



There has been a fascinating exchange led by Steve Pannell on the WW2talk forum discussing why REME had to do a major programme of re-work in the field just as the Comets were reaching 29 Brigade who were desperate to get the tanks into action. Conventional wisdom had it that there was a problem with the track adjusters (ie the idlers at the front of the hull). The research has uncovered the possibility that it was the final drive pinions at the rear which had to be replaced en mass. The probability is that there was a metallurgy problem in the manufacture of the early batches of pinions, just what you don't need as a tank enters service. The thread is here:

http://www.ww2talk.com/forum/weapons-te ... fault.html

Thanks again Steve.

Regards

Stephen