GHQ Models Forums

Hey you experts out there I need some help... which direction does a mine flail tank's drum spin?

I need to know for an illustration I'm doing.

Wow! Talk about trivia.

From memory, I believe the direction of rotation is the same as the facing of the vehicle.

In every motion picture I have seen of flail tanks, the drum rotates forward at the top, so that the flails beat down on the ground farthest from the hull of the tank.

Don S.

Donald M. Scheef wrote:In every motion picture I have seen of flail tanks, the drum rotates forward at the top, so that the flails beat down on the ground farthest from the hull of the tank.

This is also as I have seen.

The drum beats in the same direction it would be rotating in if it were a wheel propelling the tank forward. The reasoning was two-fold as I understand it.

First, this allowed the balls to strike well ahead of the drum. That's important, because it was the striking that tended to detonate the larger anti-tank mines, rather than dragging the ball and/or chain across the surface, which might detonate smaller anti-personnel mines. When the strike did detonate a big mine, the detonations threw the balls around violently. Best to have all that occuring as far away from the tank as possible. If reverse-rotated, that would be happening between the drum and the tank. Bad juju!

Secondly it helped to propel the tank forward a little. Not much. But better than driving the tank backwards, as a reverse-rotation would do. By having a traction-pull rotation it tended to raise the bow of the tank upwards, taking stress off of the front bogies. If there was a contra-traction it would tend to push the bow of the tank downwards, stressing the front suspension bogies (always a point of stress, as most of the armored weight was over these wheels) and putting all the valuable bits, like the front bogies, closer to the boom-booms. Again, bad juju.

At least that's how I understand it.

Thanks everyone for getting me in the right...ahem... direction!

Sorry Guys, but You are wrong !
The direction is awy from the vehicle, not towards it.
If You are standing on the left side of the vehicle, facing towards it, the direction is clockwise.
It would be very unwise to throw the exploding mine you just digged out of the ground against the tank.
Have a look here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCb57VkyYU8

Very interesting...nice to see how a modern mine flail works compared with an older system. In my case using the modern method like the German vehicle does would work out better.
The vehicle I'm designing & illustrating is for an SF setting (Battletech to be exact), which I'm sure makes some folks here shake their heads in disgust. But look at it this way, I'm promoting "tankism" and am trying to be accurate according to military science.

RaccoonEmpire wrote:which I'm sure makes some folks here shake their heads in disgust.

Not me!
I´m very interessted in SF tanks!
Please show them!

"The vehicle I'm designing & illustrating is for an SF setting (Battletech to be exact), which I'm sure makes some folks here shake their heads in disgust. "

Not me. One of my favourite games is Renegade Legion: Centurion. They have a really neat concept of a mine clearing tank called the Remus.

I have a friend who is a Nova Cat tank junkie and he wouldn't mind seeing what you do.

Me, I'm a medium mech or fast heavy mech person myself. 6/9/6 or 5/8/5, no slower.


Are you going to use the GHQ parts to create it? I've used the infantry (even though they are out of scale) and the vehicles as it gives me plenty of variety.

WargameHub wrote: Are you going to use the GHQ parts to create it? I've used the infantry (even though they are out of scale) and the vehicles as it gives me plenty of variety.

Isn't BTech about 1/300? That's not too far off from GHQ's 1/285. I know I've used both GHQ and Battletech scenery pretty interchangeably. http://xveers.deviantart.com/art/Russia ... -131693774 has an OOP Battletech office building on the left, with a spare front door from another company... It looks pretty to-scale to me

The vehicles are to scale, it's the infanty that's not. I'm not sure what scale they really "count as" but the GHQ infantry is 8mm and is out of scale to most 1/300 or 6mm buildings so they seem more like PAL suits. If you check the GHQ infantry is also out of scale to the GHQ vehicles. Although with the scale creep on some of the mechs (Thor and Loki anyone?) 10mm would work at times

The vehicles are dead on though.

For all those that wanted to see how the minesweeper art project came out I've attached a link to the DeviantArt page it's on.

It's called the Mastodon.
http://artraccoon.deviantart.com/art/Ma ... -141943166

I was also called upon to design a bridgelayer as well, so here's it's link.
It's called the Horatio.
http://artraccoon.deviantart.com/art/Ho ... -141566214

Hopefully you all enjoy them.