M247 Sergeant York

The US Army’s first useful self-propelled anti-aircraft gun mounting was the M19 Gun Motor Carriage based on the chassis of the M24 Chaffee. The turret of this manually operated system, armed with two 40-mm Bofors guns, was later modified and installed on the chassis of the M41 Walker Bulldog light tank to produce the M42 …

The German ‘Wirbelwind’ self-propelled anti-aircraft gun

Despite developing Blitzkrieg tactics, the Germans were as slow as the other early WWII powers in developing self-propelled anti-aircraft artillery. This stemmed in part from the German leadership and armaments industry’s primary concern with the development and manufacture of offensive weapons. Yet it was also a result of their belief that their breakthrough forces could …

The anti-aircraft cruiser – the British ‘Dido’ class

The ‘Dido’ class of British light anti-aircraft cruisers comprised 11 ships (three built by Cammell Laird, two by Scotts, two by Hawthorn Leslie, and single ships by Fairfield, Stephen, Chatham Dockyard and Portsmouth Dockyard), and there were also five generally similar ships of the ‘Bellona’ class, sometimes considered a sub-class of the ‘Dido’ class. The …

The anti-aircraft cruiser – the US ‘Worcester’ class

The world’s first powered, sustained and controlled aeroplane flight had been made only in 1903 by the Wright brothers. Furthermore, technical developments were made only slowly up to the start of World War I (1914/18),where many pioneers foresaw the emergence of the aeroplane as a weapon. The potential of the aeroplane as a war machine was …