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I understand TD Doctrine Chat is played out, but could someone explain exactly how anti-tank guns wound up being used? Were the guns on them better than tank guns, giving them a range advantage (wikipedia reading suggests the answer is generally no)? Were they intended for primarily an ambush type role? Were the crews forced to 'shoot and scoot' to avoid having a bunch of angry rear end tanks bearing down on them?
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Feb 6, 2014 23:23
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:I understand TD Doctrine Chat is played out, but could someone explain exactly how anti-tank guns wound up being used? Were the guns on them better than tank guns, giving them a range advantage (wikipedia reading suggests the answer is generally no)? Were they intended for primarily an ambush type role? Were the crews forced to 'shoot and scoot' to avoid having a bunch of angry rear end tanks bearing down on them? Anti-tank guns were expedients. They were a way to get more anti-tank firepower on the field, and as tanks got better armored, the guns got bigger and better. The problem is, as they got bigger and better, their portability dropped and dropped. Also, infantry units got more integral anti-tank firepower as the war went on. From 1939-1945 AT guns were a vital part of all countries' defense against tank attacks. Most of these guns simply couldn't be moved quickly enough for "shoot and scoot" actions and sat in likely tank approaches. Early in the war, guns were spread out along the line in a cordon, but as it went on everyone realized it was better to concentrate them on likely approaches. Tanks are limited in their ability to use terrain and really preferred to be on roads to avoid bogging down and taking operational losses, so their ability to go in a mad rush and bear down on opponents was fairly limited. Keep in mind that most of the US tanks killed in Normandy were killed by anti-tank guns and panzerfausts, not enemy armor.
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Feb 6, 2014 23:38
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:I don't have any hard data on this and have no idea where one would get it, but is there actual evidence that the Commonwealth performed better against German heavy armor other than anecdotes? There isn't a ton of kill statistics, alas - the only ones I recall seeing grouped all cannon kills into one category. I don't think the British ran into any particular logistical difficulties due to 17pdr use, as far as I know. PittTheElder posted:I understand TD Doctrine Chat is played out, but could someone explain exactly how anti-tank guns wound up being used? Were the guns on them better than tank guns, giving them a range advantage (wikipedia reading suggests the answer is generally no)? Were they intended for primarily an ambush type role? Were the crews forced to 'shoot and scoot' to avoid having a bunch of angry rear end tanks bearing down on them? In the early war, towed anti-tank guns were generally better than those on tanks. Range wasn't really as important as penetration here. Later on, people figured out ways of mounting the better AT guns on to tanks. (The exception is the Soviets, who essentially always used the same guns for their towed guns and their AT vehicles.) AT guns were generally used defensively. Ambush positions, if possible, it was always good to conceal the guns as well as you can. It is a lot easier to dig out a concealed hideout for an AT gun than a tank, and if you get into a flanking position then that could enable the lowliest 76mm soviet gun to knock out the heaviest of panzers. There's some accounts of AT gunners that might give you some idea of their use. http://english.iremember.ru/artillerymen/8-eugenii-monyushko.html?q=%2Fartillerymen%2F8-eugenii-monyushko.html&start=6
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Feb 7, 2014 00:17
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Anti-tank guns had a few advantages over AFVs (armored fighting vehicles). The kind of gun you could put on a tank was limited by how much room was in turret, how large was the turret ring, how much weight the engine could bear, and so on. This meant that you could get bigger AT guns into the field than you could mount on vehicles, and they were also quicker to design and produce so you could rush them into service as a stopgap if some new enemy AFV made your existing weaponry inadequate. The German 7.5cm Pak 40 was in service in numbers quite some time before any German tank mounting equivalent firepower was available. They were also massively cheaper than AFVs, so you could build a lot of them for the price of a tank. They were also less bulky than AFVs and consequently much easier to camouflage for use in ambushes. The Soviets in particular were fond of what they called "anti-tank fronts", which was a camouflaged strongpoint bristling with anti-tank guns, defending by infantry with a good supply of anti-tank rifles, with the approaches covered by anti-tank mines and converging fields of fire. These were formidable obstacles. Finally, in an exchange of fire with something like a tank, a gun could usually sustain a higher rate of fire because the loader had more help and wasn't doing his work stuffed inside a cramped turret. Against all that, you had to of course weigh the fact that the AT gun was unarmored and not particularly mobile, which are pretty big disadvantages. As the war proceeded and AFVs kept getting bigger, better armored, and more powerful, AT guns began to wane in effectiveness. Lighter guns like the German 5cm, Soviet 45mm, and so forth lost their edge somewhat early on but kept being used because they were cheap, effective against lighter vehicles, and capable on occasion of damaging heavier ones to some useful extent. Meanwhile on the other end of the scale AT guns heavy enough to defeat any enemy tank they were likely to encounter started to push the limits of practicality. AT guns of about 100mm like the Soviet BS-3 could defeat virtually any practical tank out to 1000m but were themselves pretty unwieldy to deploy. In the postwar period, the AT gun became obsolescent because of some key technical advances. Firstly, the increasing mobility of tanks and mechanized infantry made it difficult for fixed guns to keep up. Even during WWII it was kind of hard for AT guns to keep up, but during the Cold War tanks got a lot more nimble very quickly. Secondly, other weapons systems emerged that fulfilled the same role more effectively. The early Cold War period saw the development of recoilless rifles that were much more compact and mobile than large AT guns, but could match their performance with powerful HEAT rounds. Still later, ATGM systems could fire precisely-guided HEAT missiles with great accuracy at even longer ranges, and did so in a package that could be operated by an infantry team. AT guns continued to be used, mainly in Warsaw Pact and Chinese service, but their relevance is sort of iffy and I think were mainly kept around for export purposes and a sort of "why not have that capability just in case", rather than being expected to be genuinely useful.
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Feb 7, 2014 00:22
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Fangz posted:In the early war, towed anti-tank guns were generally better than those on tanks. Range wasn't really as important as penetration here. Later on, people figured out ways of mounting the better AT guns on to tanks. (The exception is the Soviets, who essentially always used the same guns for their towed guns and their AT vehicles.)
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Feb 7, 2014 00:53
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:I feel like people get a big ole boner for the Firefly, which was no doubt an effective antitank weapon, but it's the usual War Nerd Hardware Boner. Consider this: production and logistics of incorporating the 17-lbr gun's ammunition in to the existing supply chain. Is it really worth it for the marginal increase in antitank capability, which comes at a direct loss in performance against all other items? People are really stoked up about tank-on-tank crime, but for the most part tanks were used as semimobile artillery or in direct fire against soft targets, houses and machine-gun nests. The logistic concerns were one of the big reasons as to why they didn't adopt the Firefly, but as Fangz said the level of improvement was far from marginal. The 17 pounder was a superb anti-tank weapon, and was only matched in US service by the 90mm mounted on the M36 Tank Destroyer and the very-late war M26 Pershing, both of which were in short supply. Obviously tank-on-tank combat was much less common than most people believe it to be, but the US did suffer from a lack of sufficient anti-tank weapons up until the last months of the war, by which point the German armored threat had effectively ceased to exist. KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Also the fact that the Commonwealth guys didn't even like it enough from a performance standpoint to have the ratio of Fireflies to other tanks be higher than 1 in 4. This was for a much different reason than you believe it to be-against tanks, the Firefly VCs outperformed the 75mm Sherman Vs by a country mile. The problem that the Fireflies had was that because of the high velocity of the 76mm projectile, it couldn't carry nearly as much HE as the relatively low-velocity 75mm guns. In addition, the Firefly also lacked a bow machine-gun, as they (And the bow machine-gunner) was replaced by additional stowage for ammunition. Thus, in standard practice the Sherman Vs would move ahead of the Firefly to engage infantry, and if a bunker or enemy tank was spotted the Fireflies would move up to engage it. PittTheElder posted:I understand TD Doctrine Chat is played out, but could someone explain exactly how anti-tank guns wound up being used? Were the guns on them better than tank guns, giving them a range advantage (wikipedia reading suggests the answer is generally no)? Were they intended for primarily an ambush type role? Were the crews forced to 'shoot and scoot' to avoid having a bunch of angry rear end tanks bearing down on them? One thing to mention about anti-tank guns in US service is that the US greatly overestimated their own anti-tank capabilities up until the invasion of Normandy. While the Germans and British were adopting the PaK 40 and 17 pounder anti-tank guns, for example, the US was just starting to put the British 6 pounder into service, replacing the antique 37mm AT gun. When the US finally upgraded to a larger caliber, they simply took a thirty-year old gun designed for coastal defense and stuck it on top of a mount designed for the 105mm howitzer. The result was abysmal, as the 76mm M1 was heavier, less effective, and more difficult to use than any of its contemporaries. Now, here's where the TD doctrine comes in. So, to give everyone a brief refresher (I'm sure at this point that veterans of the old thread are already putting me on ignore), the American Tank Destroyer doctrine was designed to counterattack and defeat enemy armored pushes of the type seen during the German invasion of France. Using their high speed and portability, towed and self-propelled anti-tank guns would move to the site of a breakthrough where they would set up, ambush, and defeat enemy armored units. This doctrine was heavily encouraged by the commander of the Army's AGF (Army Ground Forces) Leslie McNair, who was also a major detractor of the M26 Pershing. Unfortunately, as it turned out the doctrine was inherently flawed, as it was entirely unsuitable for an army on the offensive, as the US would be up until the Battle of the Bulge. Now, at the Bulge the Tank Destroyer units got to serve in the capacity in which they had been designed, to varying degrees of success-while the self-propelled units did fairly well, the towed guns got slaughtered, lacking the mobility to take advantage of their substandard game. In other armies anti-tank guns had a much higher degree of success, mostly due to being more capable than the American weapons and better distributed throughout the infantry. Alchenar posted:I think the fact that finally convinced me was that if you compare the numbers of all the tanks on either side in Normandy, you realise there were more Fireflies and 76mm Shermans than Panthers and Tigers - ie. The Allies brought more up-gunned tanks to the battle than the Germans did. The Americans didn't even start fielding 76mm guns in Normandy until Operation Cobra and breakthrough out of hedgerow country. It's also worth mentioning that the 76mm on the Sherman was much less capable than the guns mounted on the Tiger and Panther, and about equivalent to the gun mounted on the later upgunned Panzer IVs. Considering that the Sherman was also much-less heavily armored than the Panther, the Allies, and in particular the US, were actually at a much greater disadvantage re: Anti-Tank weapons. Regarding your second point, the US did later field a tank that could take 88mm shells to the face and give absolutely zero shits, the M4A3E2 "Jumbo" Sherman. They only made 250 of them, however, and the tanks were in exceedingly high demand throughout the War. Panzeh posted:Keep in mind that most of the US tanks killed in Normandy were killed by anti-tank guns and panzerfausts, not enemy armor. While this was generally true throughout the war, it's important to keep in mind that Normandy was not tank country. It was mile after mile of reinforced hedgerows, and the Germans couldn't have asked for better defensive terrain suited for anti-tank weapons. Italy was much the same way-in an Army study, they found that only 2% of US tanks were killed by enemy tanks, and the vast majority were killed by enemy anti-tank weapons.
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Feb 7, 2014 01:21
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Acebuckeye13 posted:While this was generally true throughout the war, it's important to keep in mind that Normandy was not tank country. It was mile after mile of reinforced hedgerows, and the Germans couldn't have asked for better defensive terrain suited for anti-tank weapons. Italy was much the same way-in an Army study, they found that only 2% of US tanks were killed by enemy tanks, and the vast majority were killed by enemy anti-tank weapons. Does Italy have hedgerows too or is it that its terrain has a different type of tank impediment? This is an honest question, I have no clue if Italy is bocage country or not. I'd have figured that being mountainous alone would have made it a pain in the rear end on the attacker, especially if they're engaging your tank from the heights. also: Can we make it a rule that armor on armor engagements be called tank on tank crime because it is funny as gently caress. Frostwerks fucked around with this message at 02:08 on Feb 7, 2014 |
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Feb 7, 2014 02:03
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Italy is rocky hills with sometimes roads cut through them. It is not good tank country ignoring the fact that it's not wide enough for strategic maneuvering.
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Feb 7, 2014 03:17
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The biggest advantage of an anti-tank gun is not penetration or anything like that. The Germans kept making bigger and bigger anti-tank guns that managed to be hilariously ineffective. The mark of a good anti-tank gun is its small size. Take the Soviet 45 mm model 1932, for instance. A crew of two or three guys can lug that thing around, set up a few camouflages positions in some bushes, and then spend the entire day pounding enemy armour in the side without being seen. That's one of the reasons the Soviets never ordered the 17 pounder AT gun from the British. Yeah, the penetration was good, but the thing was heavy as gently caress and impossible to push around a battlefield. Of course there were heavier guns (A-19, ML-20), but those weren't being wheeled out into direct firing distance unless something was very wrong.
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Feb 7, 2014 04:09
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By the the 17 pdr's timeframe the 45mm gun is antiquated and useful only as a light infantry gun, anyway. What's curious is that Russians didn't attempt to add some longevity to it by copying the German Stielgranate-41 which, daft as it was, turned a puny ATG into a potent close range tank killer. Not very useful once they had Schrecks and Fausts, but Soviets could have used something like that...
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Feb 7, 2014 04:22
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Ensign Expendable posted:The biggest advantage of an anti-tank gun is not penetration or anything like that. The Germans kept making bigger and bigger anti-tank guns that managed to be hilariously ineffective. The mark of a good anti-tank gun is its small size. Take the Soviet 45 mm model 1932, for instance. A crew of two or three guys can lug that thing around, set up a few camouflages positions in some bushes, and then spend the entire day pounding enemy armour in the side without being seen. That's one of the reasons the Soviets never ordered the 17 pounder AT gun from the British. Yeah, the penetration was good, but the thing was heavy as gently caress and impossible to push around a battlefield. Yeah, the death of the antitank gun had mostly to do with the fact that modern ATGs were just too heavy to move without a truck and that's a big liability in combat. The US forces in the pacific kept their 37mm guns because they were more practical than the 57mm, which required a tow to move.
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Feb 7, 2014 04:36
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Nenonen posted:By the the 17 pdr's timeframe the 45mm gun is antiquated and useful only as a light infantry gun, anyway. What's curious is that Russians didn't attempt to add some longevity to it by copying the German Stielgranate-41 which, daft as it was, turned a puny ATG into a potent close range tank killer. Not very useful once they had Schrecks and Fausts, but Soviets could have used something like that... The model 1942 was a little more capable, and even the older guns could still pop a Panther or a PzIV in the side. Even a Tiger, if they had APCR.
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Feb 7, 2014 04:51
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Panzeh posted:The US forces in the pacific kept their 37mm guns because they were more practical than the 57mm, which required a tow to move. That probably had more to do with the Japanese tanks being armored in tin.
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Feb 7, 2014 05:14
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Panzeh posted:Yeah, the death of the antitank gun had mostly to do with the fact that modern ATGs were just too heavy to move without a truck and that's a big liability in combat. The US forces in the pacific kept their 37mm guns because they were more practical than the 57mm, which required a tow to move. They were also up against Japanese tanks, so they probably didn't need anything bigger than a 37mm.
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Feb 7, 2014 05:14
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The Americans were helped along by horrendous reliability problems in German AFVs, but I think a lot of american deficiencies were made up for with an artillery battery for every battalion. Tanks ahead? Shell the poo poo out of the area! Tanks attacking? Shell the poo poo out of the pre-designated area!
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Feb 7, 2014 06:26
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:The Americans were helped along by horrendous reliability problems in German AFVs, but I think a lot of american deficiencies were made up for with an artillery battery for every battalion.
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Feb 7, 2014 06:50
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If I know tank chat, this is ~the point bewbies or someone posts up the whole first to hit correlating with winning more than armor or penetration... Then in a few posts Hegel takes us back to the Early Modern and the milhistpers regain control of the thread.
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Feb 7, 2014 06:53
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the JJ posted:If I know tank chat, this is ~the point bewbies or someone posts up the whole first to hit correlating with winning more than armor or penetration... The funny thing is, it's not first to hit, it's first to fire. One of these days I need to purchase a copy of Armored Thunderbolt for myself instead of relying on the library copy, since it has some hilarious facts and figures from studies the Army conducted during and after the War. For example: Let's say an armored column gets caught in an ambush. For the individual tanks in that column, their chance of survival decreased by half every six seconds.
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Feb 7, 2014 07:06
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Even if your armor isn't getting penetrated (or catastrophically failing) being in an armored vehicle that is taking hits is A Bad Thing. Internal spalling can occur and concussive effects will be inflicted upon the crew, potentially leading to their deaths. And of interesting not regarding the 17 lbr vs the 76mm M1A1 (Not the older 3"), The Chieftain over at World of Tanks just posted up the results of the US Army's evaluation of the two as well as the 90mm M3. In general the 17 lbr was found to be a bit awkward and cumbersome, which is to be expected with how it was basically kludged into the M4's turret. As for its use in WWII, the Americans didn't really encounter all that many of the German Cats and most of the supposed advantage was due to the fact that the Germans were typically on the defensive, not any inferiority of weapon systems.
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Feb 7, 2014 08:53
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Arquinsiel posted:There's an anecdote in one of Stephen E. Ambrose's books, I think Citizen Soldiers, from an artillery officer about an infantry unit calling in an artillery strike on a "suspicious haystack" because there was totally a Tiger hiding in there you guys! So the battery just treats it like a normal fire mission, ranges in, and blows the haystack to poo poo. Then decades later at some regimental reunion or something similar the artillery officer meets the guy who called it in, and finds out that there actually WAS a Tiger in the haystack, and he wasn't just having a laugh ruining some dude's field for no reason. Site note: Allied and Soviet reports of destroyed Tigers (and, on Eastern Front, Ferdinands) exceed the actual number of Tigers built or operational by a significant factor. There were about 1400 Tiger I's and 500 IIs built. Patton claimed that the 3rd Army destroyed almost 40 % of all Tigers ever built (about 800 pieces). That's a large number, since Germany apparantly deployed only about ~250 Tigers (I+II) in the entire Western Front, and out of these almost 40 were lost during Operation Goodwood.
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Feb 7, 2014 09:22
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Taerkar posted:Even if your armor isn't getting penetrated (or catastrophically failing) being in an armored vehicle that is taking hits is A Bad Thing. Internal spalling can occur and concussive effects will be inflicted upon the crew, potentially leading to their deaths. I wouldn't go so far as to say that the Germans had a "supposed" advantage. The Panther was literally invulnerable from the front from the the 75mm gun, and only vulnerable to a very specific shot from the 76mm that took advantage of the shot trap formed between the turret mantlet and the upper hull, which was eliminated in later models of the Panther. Add in the high-velocity 75mm, and you have a tank that can knock out the enemy tank before they can even hope to get flanking shots. In a vacuum, at least. In reality, of course, Sherman crews enjoyed a massive qualitative and quantitative advantage over the Germans, especially as the war went on and the Allied crews got better as the German crews got worse. During the Battle of Arracourt, for example, the 4th Armored Division's M4 Shermans (Of which none were carrying 76mm guns) managed to defeat a huge German armored push, taking out 86 tanks and SPGs (Mostly brand-new Panthers) at the cost of only 25 Shermans and 7 Wolverines and Hellcats. Relating to my last point, it is a bit of an exaggeration to suggest that the US didn't encounter many of the German Cats. The Tiger was obviously a rare sight, but the German Army fielded a significant number of Panthers on the Western Front, as it was intended to be the replacement for the Panzer IV. While the anti-armor mission was secondary to their mission of supporting the infantry, American tankers did run into German tanks with some regularity, and often paid the price for the Sherman's relatively thin armor and weak gun (And, up until later models, the ludicrous positioning of the ammo stowage). One other thing to note is that when comparing the Sherman's combat history, you can't look at just the American experience. The British made extensive use of the Sherman, and saw far more combat with it against German armor than the Americans did, especially during the Normandy breakout. Unfortunately I can't go into much detail on the British experience since I still haven't gotten around to ordering the books I've been meaning to read, but there was a very good reason as to why they thought the Firefly was necessary, and it was the same reason why the M36 Tank Destroyer soon found itself in such high demand-when German armor was encountered, the 75 and sometimes even the 76 just weren't good enough to do the job.
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Feb 7, 2014 09:30
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It's probably worth mention that the Sherman had one serious advantage over a Panther in a tankfight as far as acquiring targets quickly goes that isn't as well known as the slow, ungainly Panther turret. The Sherman's gunner had a set of unity periscopes that he could use for visibility when the tank was moving and for when he was acquiring targets, while the Panther gunner was limited only to his gunsight, which meant he was looking for things with a tiny field of vision compared to the Sherman gunner.
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Feb 7, 2014 09:45
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I remember reading a lessons learned type document, where the primary complaint against the sherman was the weak gun. The tankers wanted a gun that could penetrate reliably.
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Feb 7, 2014 14:25
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xthetenth posted:It's probably worth mention that the Sherman had one serious advantage over a Panther in a tankfight as far as acquiring targets quickly goes that isn't as well known as the slow, ungainly Panther turret. The Sherman's gunner had a set of unity periscopes that he could use for visibility when the tank was moving and for when he was acquiring targets, while the Panther gunner was limited only to his gunsight, which meant he was looking for things with a tiny field of vision compared to the Sherman gunner. Didn't a lot of the Germans fight with the commander hatch open? Carius did it a lot and he said that the Russian would have had a lot less losses if they had been doing that as well? From what I read about Yom Kippur, the Israelis lost a lot of commanders to artillery fire, since they were fighting with the commander's hatch open, so it must have been in practice for a long time.
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Feb 7, 2014 14:36
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Fighting with the commander's head sticking out of the turret is a huge trade off in terms of getting your highly trained and specialized tank commanders killed really fast in return for visibility advantages. If a Panther is running around with the commander's head sticking out of the target, congratulations! You have now turned your invulnerable tank killing monster in to something that a guy can disable with a SMG (or more likely, via a near-miss or non-penetrative hit from artillery or other tanks).
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Feb 7, 2014 14:54
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On the other hand, the visibility gained is a huge increase in situational awareness, and for many commanders could mean the difference between seeing and not seeing the anti-tank gun that's about to shoot at your vehicle. I seem to recall that US tankers were actually encouraged to fight with their hatches open, partially for the visibility advantage, and partially so that commanders could use the potent .50 cal machine gun mounted on top of the tank against any target that looked remotely suspicious.
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Feb 7, 2014 17:55
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Cardiac posted:Didn't a lot of the Germans fight with the commander hatch open? The commander isn't the one shooting. He could be standing on the back of the tank with a radar receiver and it still wouldn't help the gunner acquire targets. Imagine looking at a Where's Waldo book under a honey-encrusted microscope, somebody who can't actually see where you're looking barking descriptions at you, and you're a Panther gunner. And to be fair, the Panther was pretty inept at fighting infantry. It's on the stupid spectrum of "high-velocity needle gun" and it's too big and clunky to hide and maneuver at close ranges.
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Feb 7, 2014 17:57
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Acebuckeye13 posted:On the other hand, the visibility gained is a huge increase in situational awareness, and for many commanders could mean the difference between seeing and not seeing the anti-tank gun that's about to shoot at your vehicle. I seem to recall that US tankers were actually encouraged to fight with their hatches open, partially for the visibility advantage, and partially so that commanders could use the potent .50 cal machine gun mounted on top of the tank against any target that looked remotely suspicious. A lot of the use of that .50 was actually to direct the main gun's fire, oddly enough. Yeah, fighting unbuttoned was a considerable advantage. Also having a powered turret traverse without the engine on was useful in a lot of situations.
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Feb 7, 2014 17:57
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Kate Beaton just posted about the history of plastic surgery in the world wars with links to a BBC portal and stuff. It is much more interesting than tank destroyer chat, everybody go look at it so we can talk about it instead. 
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Feb 7, 2014 18:45
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Acebuckeye13 posted:I wouldn't go so far as to say that the Germans had a "supposed" advantage. The Panther was literally invulnerable from the front from the the 75mm gun, and only vulnerable to a very specific shot from the 76mm that took advantage of the shot trap formed between the turret mantlet and the upper hull, which was eliminated in later models of the Panther. Ehh... if there weren't any quality issues with the armor then probably, but German armor plates had a bad tendency to fail when they shouldn't. Slim Jim Pickens posted:The commander isn't the one shooting. He could be standing on the back of the tank with a radar receiver and it still wouldn't help the gunner acquire targets. Imagine looking at a Where's Waldo book under a honey-encrusted microscope, somebody who can't actually see where you're looking barking descriptions at you, and you're a Panther gunner. The TC does play an important part of target acquisition. Typically the TC would make the initial spotting with his circular arrangement of optics/scopes, then that is passed on to the gunner, the problem with the Panther is that while the TC had a pretty good arrangement of optics: the gunner only possessed a targeting sight, not a general use one (panoramic?). I believe it was said that the French found it took about 25 or so seconds for the gunner to acquire and engage a target, whereas a tank with both the general sight and the zoom sight for the gunner would allow for him to make the general identification of the target before switching to the tighter one. quote:And to be fair, the Panther was pretty inept at fighting infantry. It's on the stupid spectrum of "high-velocity needle gun" and it's too big and clunky to hide and maneuver at close ranges. The 75L70, like other high-velocity weapons (17 lbr, 88L71, and to a lesser extend the 76mm M1 and 3" gun) tend to require thicker-walled shells to endure the stress of being fired. That results in a smaller HE charge and often less than ideal fragmentation. The higher velocity makes precision shots a bit more accurate (There's a report of a British-capture Panther hitting individual windows of a building with HE shells), but it results in a less effective round against the main threat of a tank on the offense, low-profile ATGs. Also the general size of the tank and the length of the gun were liabilities as well. The Panther is just plain BIG. Taerkar fucked around with this message at 19:35 on Feb 7, 2014 |
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Feb 7, 2014 19:30
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There's another problem. Without an unmagnified sight, the gunner wouldn't be able to see while the tank was moving. There was a late war program to develop a stabilized gunsight to help with that, but it never got done afaik.
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Feb 7, 2014 20:30
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xthetenth posted:There's another problem. Without an unmagnified sight, the gunner wouldn't be able to see while the tank was moving. There was a late war program to develop a stabilized gunsight to help with that, but it never got done afaik. The problem with WWII era stabilizers is even if the gun/sight is stabilized, you aren't. You're moving with the tank and over rough terrain you're getting thrown about just like everyone else. A complaint about the stabilizer found on American tanks was that its independent movement in the turret made it a working hazard. Speaking of which, Hunnicutt said that the vertical stabilizer in the M4 was widely unpopular but those who drilled/trained in its use found it to be a great advantage. Does anyone know who those people were, and any comments they had about it?
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Feb 7, 2014 21:49
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El Perkele posted:Site note: Allied and Soviet reports of destroyed Tigers (and, on Eastern Front, Ferdinands) exceed the actual number of Tigers built or operational by a significant factor. There were about 1400 Tiger I's and 500 IIs built. Patton claimed that the 3rd Army destroyed almost 40 % of all Tigers ever built (about 800 pieces). That's a large number, since Germany apparantly deployed only about ~250 Tigers (I+II) in the entire Western Front, and out of these almost 40 were lost during Operation Goodwood. This reminds me of the absolutely hilarious kill claims that the Japanese made throughout the war. They claimed to have sunk the Enterprise no less than like 5 times. According to the Japanese reports we would have lost like 20 carriers and 15 battleships. Some other funny claims were the official Soviet press reports on battle casualties during Barbarossa. I've gone through all the covers of the New York Times during the war and the official reporting coming out of the Soviet Union during 1941 was basically Baghdad Bob on steroids. Even though the Germans were advancing a thousand kilometers into Russia the communist press insisted that the Germans were losing some absurd number of soldiers, like 5 to 1, compared to the Russian forces. IIRC the official count on German deaths according to an end of year report was like 5 million German dead. Shimrra Jamaane fucked around with this message at 23:47 on Feb 7, 2014 |
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Feb 7, 2014 23:41
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:This reminds me of the absolutely hilarious kill claims that the Japanese made throughout the war. They claimed to have sunk the Enterprise no less than like 5 times. According to the Japanese reports we would have lost like 20 carriers and 15 battleships. Some other funny claims were the official Soviet press reports on battle casualties during Barbarossa. I've gone through all the covers of the New York Times during the war and the official reporting coming out of the Soviet Union during 1941 was basically Baghdad Bob on steroids. Even though the Germans were advancing a thousand kilometers into Russia the communist press insisted that the Germans were losing some absurd number of soldiers, like 5 to 1, compared to the Russian forces. IIRC the official count on German deaths according to an end of year report was like 5 million German dead. Fairly regularly throughout the Battle of Britain both sides would claim kill numbers that were in excess of the number of aircraft that were operated by the opposing side on a particular day. One day in particular the Germans claimed more aircraft shot down than there were operational RAF single seat fighters.
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Feb 7, 2014 23:53
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How does this sort of over-reporting even happen? I can sort of understand it for ships and planes--if multiple craft are engaging one enemy, they may each claim it for themselves and it may end up reported as "one each" instead of "one between us"--but for army units it seems like under-reporting enemy damage should be more frequent, since you can't confirm, e.g. a tank or gun that is heavily damaged but withdrawn in good order, then found too damaged to economically repair and scrapped, or enemy soldiers that retire in good order but of which most are sent home due to battle wounds. Aside from pure propaganda, I mean.
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Feb 8, 2014 00:04
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Davin Valkri posted:How does this sort of over-reporting even happen? I can sort of understand it for ships and planes--if multiple craft are engaging one enemy, they may each claim it for themselves and it may end up reported as "one each" instead of "one between us"--but for army units it seems like under-reporting enemy damage should be more frequent, since you can't confirm, e.g. a tank or gun that is heavily damaged but withdrawn in good order, then found too damaged to economically repair and scrapped, or enemy soldiers that retire in good order but of which most are sent home due to battle wounds. It's part perception issue (he wasn't there after I shot at him, so I must have dropped him!) and part 18-25 men under high stress having bravado/bragging going on.
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Feb 8, 2014 00:11
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the JJ posted:Then in a few posts Hegel takes us back to the Early Modern and the milhistpers regain control of the thread. Scenes from camp life from Niklas Manuel's sketchbook. So many early modern soldiers were also artists (whether amateur or, like Manuel, professional) you start to wonder if it was a thing. The women in the middle have their skirts hiked up and belted underneath the excess, since it's impossible to work or walk long distances with them dragging on the ground at their full length--the woman on the far right is done for the day and has let her skirts down, and you can see how massive these things were.  16th century soldiers and military women tramped the length and breadth of Europe in what looked like ballet flats, and you'd wonder how long these flimsy little things lasted. Didn't they wear out? Yes. You can see the replacements in the panel on the right.  Pikes have a number of uses:  Many representations of landsknechts were idealized physical types. Some weren't. (The first one's attributed to the Master of the History, in the Albertina; the description was on the following page)   Edit: These pictures are all from JR Hale's Artists and Warfare in the Renaissance, which I recommend except I have no idea how much it costs since one of my advisors gives me all his old books for free. Art books can be disgustingly expensive, so get it out of a library or something. Edit 2: Never mind, about thirteen dollars used. Get on that poo poo. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Feb 8, 2014 |
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Feb 8, 2014 00:18
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Most casualties are caused by artillery, and it's really hard to estimate those unless the battlefield falls in your hands and you go through the trouble of counting all the disfigured bodies. There may not even be more than minced meat scattered across the terrain!  There's also a difference between official kills and what you might as well consider as kills. Eg. tank kills didn't count unless the tank burned, blew up or was captured. But it's practical to also report the ones which were penetrated and forced to be abandoned by crew, possibly causing crew casualties and at any rate keeping the vehicle at repair shop for a week or more.
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Feb 8, 2014 00:32
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Cardiac posted:Didn't a lot of the Germans fight with the commander hatch open? Not specifically sticking your head out of the hatch, but one of the reasons the T-43 project died was the discovery that superior visibility is what the T-34 needed to increase survivability, not more side armour. Davin Valkri posted:How does this sort of over-reporting even happen? I can sort of understand it for ships and planes--if multiple craft are engaging one enemy, they may each claim it for themselves and it may end up reported as "one each" instead of "one between us"--but for army units it seems like under-reporting enemy damage should be more frequent, since you can't confirm, e.g. a tank or gun that is heavily damaged but withdrawn in good order, then found too damaged to economically repair and scrapped, or enemy soldiers that retire in good order but of which most are sent home due to battle wounds. When a tank is blown up (even if it's an actual irrecoverable casualty), you have infantry, tankers, AT gunners, and ground attack pilots all claiming kills. Maybe you shot at the tank, didn't penetrate, the crew got concussed, you drove away happily, the crew recovered, and kept going. Maybe you missed the enemy tank completely and it stopped for a completely different reason. Maybe you shot at a dead husk and detonated its ammo rack or set the gas tank on fire, that certainly looks like a kill. There could be lots of reasons. Pure propaganda ones are the most fun though. It's always great fun to discover a Tiger SS battalion claiming destruction of many tanks when fighting units equipped with no tanks, or declaring a decisive victory over anything from a brigade to a corps and then withdrawing for repairs while the supposedly destroyed unit presses on.
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Feb 8, 2014 04:03
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ProfessorCurly posted:The problem with WWII era stabilizers is even if the gun/sight is stabilized, you aren't. You're moving with the tank and over rough terrain you're getting thrown about just like everyone else. A complaint about the stabilizer found on American tanks was that its independent movement in the turret made it a working hazard. I've seen the unity periscopes on the Sherman mentioned as being useful on the move (not the gunsight though, if I remember right the benefit of the stabilized gun was mainly having it pointing near where you might want it to be).
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Feb 8, 2014 04:23
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