Righting a few wrongs

I notice in a few blogs i follow information placed there is some times incorrect and my friendly attempts to put the right info there leads to me put on moderation so its easier to do on my own

So lets start with

THE MALQUSITION

the last post was a welcome break from running down every thing second  life has to offer called

THE UNTITLED MEMORIAL DAY ARTICLE

while the majority of the post is informative the main error comes with this statement

(It also had a secret. While other tanks made use of levers and bars to control motion and took an average of six months to train a man to drive the Sherman had a steering wheel, a pedal for breaking,a pedal for accelerating, a clutch and one simple gear level, arranged as you might find on a car. Basically if you could drive a car you could drive a Sherman.)

i replied to it correcting the error and mal replies posting a gyayo link picture of what is supposed to be the driving compartment of a sherman tankhttps://gyazo.com/836b61f4d98605513abe04f6a1d94fd8

sadly its not the picture shows the driving compartment of a tiger 1 tank (link here showing this )  http://weaponsman.com/?p=22319

The sherman tank has always had steering levers not a wheel, basically the same chassis/gearbox used from previous M3 grant/lee tank,so saving production costs and making of new jigs etc

the above picture is the sherman driving position that never changed from the first production model right up until the last M74 arv`s were built in the early fifties,my real life work is restoring ex military vehicles and tanks , shermans in various guises included so i have a vast knowledge on this subject

#9 The Crew And Their Stations: The Human Part Of The Tank, How They Lived, Worked, And Fought

Also the part about the panzerIV  requiring extensive mods to cope with bad terrain is not true, the panzer IV was the germans equivelent of the sherman but with a much more capable main gun out ranging the allied 75mm by a long distance,not surpassed until the british fitted the 17 pounder gun in the sherman firefly that could engage any axis tank on equal terms

Next we move to Second life Airmenship next with the page on the B17 flying fortress

(Than why put more than one engine on a plane ?

Let’s use the B-17 as an example 17 used 4 Pratt & Whitney R-1690 Hornet engines at 525 HP each for a total of 2100 HP a single engine that delivered that power was not available at the cost needed to be charged for the bombers so 4 smaller more economical engines were used to total the needed 2100 HP and for the inconvenience and extra danger of having multiple engines a little extra power was added   (for example 4,  500 HP engines would have been enough)  The sort loose one engine your probably  fine if you are a good pilot but  loose two it is time to think about an emergency landing)

for some one that is a historian and knows plenty about aircraft a bit of knowledge should be gained before writing an article

The B17  used Wright R-1820 Cyclone 9 engines of 1200hp each not P&W hornets as stated above and as for fitting one large engine had it have been cheap enough ,would love to see the size of prop needed to gain sufficient thrust . During the war B17`s quite often came back from raids with two engines out and landed safely in majority of cases ,all down to pilot skills