M-22 Locust light/airborne tank
The M-22 was built to an U.S. Army request in 1941 for a tank that could accompany airborne troops. While such a tank would of necessity be quite light, it would be better than no tank at all. When production began in early 1943, the resulting tank looked a great deal like a miniature M-4 Sherman. To save weight, stabilization gear for the main gun and a hull MG, both present on the prototypes, were removed on the production models.
Now that the Army had an airborne tank, they weren’t sure what to do with it; the design was heavier than the requirement had called for and there was no aircraft that could carry the tank in a normal fashion (if the turret was removed, the M-22 could be slung under the wing of a C-54 transport, but this was hardly suitable for combat deployment). Fortunately, the British, who wanted a tank that could be delivered by glider and had soured on their own choice, the Tetrarch, took 260 of the M-22, which they named the Locust. At least a dozen were deployed by Hamilcar glider during the crossing of the Rhine on March 24, 1945. The M-22's retained by the U.S. were used for training. After the war, numbers of the M-22 found their way into the Egyptian army.
The M-22 has a crew of three. The commander and gunner sit in the turret, with the commander acting as loader and the gunner firing both guns and manually traversing the turret at x degrees per second. The driver sits in the body. The driver had a hatch on the front hull and the commander and gunner shared a hatch in the top of the turret. Small arms for the crew included three M-3 SMGs with 150 rounds each, 12 grenades and a tripod for the coaxial MG, which could be removed from the tank. The M-22 uses 6.4 gallons per hour at routine usage.
Subassemblies: Small Tank chassis with mild slope +3,
full rotation Small AFV turret with mild slope [Body:T] +2, tracks +2.
Powertrain: 143-kW HP gas engine w/ 143-kW tracked drive
train and 57 gallons fuel in standard fuel tank [body]; 4,000-kWs batteries.
Occupancy: 1 CS Body, 2 CS Turret Cargo:
1.5 Body, 0.5 Turret.
| Armor | F | RL | B | T | U |
| Body | 5/100 | 4/50 | 4/50 | 4/45 | 4/50 |
| Tracks | 4/35 | 4/35 | 4/35 | 4/35 | 4/35 |
| Turret | 5/150 | 4/100 | 4/100 | 4/40 | 0/0 |
Weaponry
37mm Medium TG/M-6 [Tur:F] (50).*
Ground LMG/M-1919A4 [Tur:F] (2500).*
* Can fire linked.
Equipment
Body: Small radio receiver and transmitter.
Statistics
| Size: | Payload: 0.7 tons | Lwt: 8.6 tons |
| Volume: 61 | Maint.: 69 hours | Price: $8,300 |
HT: 11
HP: 500 [Body], 75 [Turret], 200 [Each Track]
| gSpeed: 41 | gAccel: 3 | gDecel: 20 | gMR: 0.25 | gSR: 6 | GP: Very Low (4/5) |
Design Notes
The design purchased 45 TG rounds. The weight (and cost and HPs) of
the turret and chassis were divided by two to lower overall weight, which
still had to be reduced 13% to match historical weight.
Sources:
http://www.onwar.com
http://www.wwiivehicles.com