|
xthetenth posted:In some regards the Grant was the Sherman as built by people who didn't have access to a working turret that could fit a 75mm. They wanted to build Shermans but they didn't have everything done so they built the Grant. It was also a pretty decent way to tool up factories for the later designs before they were really finished with them, while still producing something that would at least be reasonably useful. It had a ton of faults if looked at as a MBT, but if looked at as an infantry support vehicle that could be cranked out for foreign use under Lend/Lease and then the production lines rapidly switched over once the Sherman was finished, it makes a lot more sense.
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2014 20:22
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 16, 2024 17:36 |
|
|
Alchenar posted:If we're doing the 'compare medium tanks in WW2' thing again then I think it's worth pointing out that perhaps the most impressive thing about the Sherman is that it's an entirely wartime design. The PzIV and the T34 were both designed pre-war and while upgraded and up-gunned remained largely the same tank. In comparison other German and Soviet tanks designed during the war have tremendous problems all over the place. I find it more impressive that T-34 was a pre-GPW (though not pre-WW2) design and still continued being useful and upgradable to the very end of war. It must be the only medium tank capable of that in the war - Britain and France didn't even have anything comparable to begin with. Pz-IV had met its limits by 1942/43 and the final IVJ was actually a downgrade. Russians could have transferred to T-43 or started a transfer to T-44 before the war ended but that would have come with the expense of disrupting production and with T-44, also logistical problems. In 1943 it would take on average 4.5 hours for Germans to churn out two Pz IVs and one Panther. In the same period nine T-34s would have rolled out of Russian factories. It's crazy how lopsided the industrial war was.
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2014 20:25
|
|
|
Adolf Hitler posted:We have destroyed - right now - more than 34,000 tanks. If you or one of my generals had stated that any nation has 35,000 tanks I'd have said: 'You, my good sir, you see everything twice or ten times. You are crazy; you see ghosts. If you're at all interested in World War II, listen to the recording of Hitler speaking to Mannerheim. It's the only known recording of Hitler speaking informally. Here's a video with English subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVqxoA52kjI
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2014 20:34
|
|
|
Nenonen posted:I find it more impressive that T-34 was a pre-GPW (though not pre-WW2) design and still continued being useful and upgradable to the very end of war. It must be the only medium tank capable of that in the war - The same thing could be said of the Sherman. Production started a few months before Pearl Harbor and it served with the US through Korea, where it did pretty well against T34/85s. If you bring in foreign service you've got all the upgrades the British did to it during the war, and the things the Israelis did with their Shermans is nothing short of amazing.
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2014 20:35
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:It was also a pretty decent way to tool up factories for the later designs before they were really finished with them, while still producing something that would at least be reasonably useful. It had a ton of faults if looked at as a MBT, but if looked at as an infantry support vehicle that could be cranked out for foreign use under Lend/Lease and then the production lines rapidly switched over once the Sherman was finished, it makes a lot more sense. The Russians got a bunch of Lees from Lend-Lease. They were...less than impressed. I believe it's nickname was the "Coffin for Six Brothers." Thing was absurdly high-sided.
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2014 20:39
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:The same thing could be said of the Sherman. Production started a few months before Pearl Harbor and it served with the US through Korea, where it did pretty well against T34/85s. If you bring in foreign service you've got all the upgrades the British did to it during the war, and the things the Israelis did with their Shermans is nothing short of amazing. The US didn't have to do all this while moving all their factories hundreds of miles, and shipping all their workers to the front lines, though.
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2014 20:40
|
|
|
MA-Horus posted:The Russians got a bunch of Lees from Lend-Lease. They were...less than impressed. I believe it's nickname was the "Coffin for Six Brothers." I doubt anyone will argue that it was a great tank, but it was never designed to be a great tank. It was just a tank. It was an intermediate design from the get-go, something useful to do with factories while they ironed out the last of the wrinkles in what became the Sherman. The whole reason it existed was to rapidly make good the armor losses that the Brits suffered when they abandoned northern France; they originally asked us to produce their designs in our factories, but we told them no because of how disruptive retooling would have been once we'd gotten the Sherman under way. As a plug to make good the horrific British armor shortfalls in 1940 and 1941 it was adequate, and having it was a godsend in N. Africa. Fangz posted:The US didn't have to do all this while moving all their factories hundreds of miles, and shipping all their workers to the front lines, though. So? No one is saying the russian designs were bad, I was just making the point that the Sherman was another example of a pre-1942 design that stayed useful through the post-war period. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Aug 8, 2014 |
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2014 20:50
|
|
|
Nenonen posted:I find it more impressive that T-34 was a pre-GPW (though not pre-WW2) design and still continued being useful and upgradable to the very end of war. It must be the only medium tank capable of that in the war - Britain and France didn't even have anything comparable to begin with. Pz-IV had met its limits by 1942/43 and the final IVJ was actually a downgrade. Russians could have transferred to T-43 or started a transfer to T-44 before the war ended but that would have come with the expense of disrupting production and with T-44, also logistical problems. To be honest when you think about access to raw materials like ores and oil, you can see how lopsided that aspect of the war would be from the outset without major force projection from countries like Germany and Japan. The US and Russia had domestic sources, Britain had imports from colonies and allies. Germany simply would never have kept up without insane kill:loss ratios and incredible ability to secure assets and supply lines. When you consider the disparity in material access, it becomes clear why Germany had to delve into crazy technology applications to squeeze the most out of what they had. It wasn't smart, because fancypants interleaving road wheels will get hosed up by a crude tank shell and your tank becomes a pillbox all the same. The difference is that the Russians can go raid a farm for tractor parts whereas your Panzer crew needs to have their poo poo hauled back home.
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2014 20:52
|
|
|
FAUXTON posted:The difference is that the Russians can go raid a farm for tractor parts This isn't true at all. The difference between Soviet pre-war agricultural tractors and even the earliest of wartime AFVs is. . . well, gently caress, it's total. That's like saying you could raid a 1930s era Ford tractor for spare parts for a Sherman.
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2014 21:04
|
|
|
It's even less true than saying you could raid a Ford for parts, because there might be the tiniest chance of finding a part that would fit an A57 Multibank.
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2014 21:25
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:The same thing could be said of the Sherman. Production started a few months before Pearl Harbor Not quite. The first M4 prototype was finished in August 1941 but that's not the same as serial production, let alone deployment.  Meanwhile in Soviet Russia... The first prototype A-20 with 20mm sloped armour and a 45mm gun was built in May 1939 and A-20G aka. A-32 with 76.2mm gun followed in June. In July-August 1939 both prototypes passed factory and field tests. In December 1939 Red Army approved the A-32 design with 76.2mm gun (note: the weaker L-11, not yet the F-34 we all know and love) but with 45mm sloped armour, calling it A-34. From February to April 1940 the first two A-34 prototypes participated in test drive from Kharkov to Moscow and back. On June 7th 1940 the T-34 was put into serial production at factory Nr. 183 in Kharkov. The first four tanks of the initial batch of 10 were finished by the end of that month. This is a full year before German invasion. By June 1941 there were nearly a thousand T-34s in service. Now a thousand Shermans wouldn't have helped at Pearl Harbor, but it's quite a difference in preparedness. But it makes sense. By that point Russian tankers had been involved in a civil war in Spain, two major battles with the Japanese, and wars in Poland and Finland, and Red Army was actively preparing for a war with Germany. US armored forces were a late comer, and that's just as amazing: in practically no time at all they went from "herp derp, there's another land war in Europe, figures!  " to "hey Winny & Joe, we have more tanks than we can deploy ourselves, can you take some off our shoulders?  "
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2014 21:41
|
|
|
Just watching a programme on BBC called Our World War that's a dramatisation of the first day of the battle of Mons - two of the characters are a Royal Engineers sapper and corporal, and the sapper keeps calling the corporal 'sir'. Is this normal? I was under the impression NCOs got huffy if they were addressed as 'sir'. Is this some kind of Royal Engineer peculiarity or is it an inaccuracy?
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2014 21:42
|
|
|
Has any NCO in real life ever objected to being called sir now? Well, aside from the Russian Civil War era Red Army.
|
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2014 22:02
|
|
|
Alchenar posted:If we're doing the 'compare medium tanks in WW2' thing again then I think it's worth pointing out that perhaps the most impressive thing about the Sherman is that it's an entirely wartime design. The PzIV and the T34 were both designed pre-war and while upgraded and up-gunned remained largely the same tank. In comparison other German and Soviet tanks designed during the war have tremendous problems all over the place. SU-152? IS series? There's more to Soviet wartime tank design than the KV-1S and T-44. Alchenar posted:The US army went from having virtually nothing worth the name to having something that at a minimum was a par with the medium tanks of the time during the war. Yeah having the Pershing a year earlier would have been really helpful but that's a different argument. Wasn't it possible to transport and supply something like three Shermans for every Pershing? The Pershing was not a good tank at all.
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2014 22:07
|
|
|
Owlkill posted:Just watching a programme on BBC called Our World War that's a dramatisation of the first day of the battle of Mons - two of the characters are a Royal Engineers sapper and corporal, and the sapper keeps calling the corporal 'sir'. Is this normal? I was under the impression NCOs got huffy if they were addressed as 'sir'. Is this some kind of Royal Engineer peculiarity or is it an inaccuracy? In that 1970 Waterloo movie, all the British guys are addressing almost everyone as 'sir', including Wellington speaking to others. Might just be a British class thing, although for all I know those people might actually have been Knights of various orders, and 'sir' might be the correct word.
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2014 22:13
|
|
Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
|
SeanBeansShako posted:Has any NCO in real life ever objected to being called sir now? Some NCO's you do call sir, at least in the CAF. Master Warrant Officer and Chief Warrant Officer, namely.
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2014 22:24
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:This isn't true at all. The difference between Soviet pre-war agricultural tractors and even the earliest of wartime AFVs is. . . well, gently caress, it's total. That's like saying you could raid a 1930s era Ford tractor for spare parts for a Sherman. Sometimes a chain is just a chain and a belt is a belt. I don't mean pistons and valve seals and poo poo you'd be tearing down an engine to get at in the field. That said, early in the GPW the Russians used uparmored farm tractors as a psyops tactic to scare Nazi formations into retreating.
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2014 22:51
|
|
|
MA-Horus posted:Some NCO's you do call sir, at least in the CAF. Master Warrant Officer and Chief Warrant Officer, namely. PittTheElder posted:In that 1970 Waterloo movie, all the British guys are addressing almost everyone as 'sir', including Wellington speaking to others. Might just be a British class thing, although for all I know those people might actually have been Knights of various orders, and 'sir' might be the correct word. SeanBeansShako posted:Has any NCO in real life ever objected to being called sir now? As far as I can tell they're just regular guys without a significant class difference, and the corporal's just a normal corporal. I have no military background myself, but had a look at the ARRSE forums (unofficial messageboard for serving and ex-squaddies) and they all commented on it as being weird so I guess it was just a screwup on the part of the scriptwriters.
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2014 23:09
|
|
|
FAUXTON posted:Sometimes a chain is just a chain and a belt is a belt. I don't mean pistons and valve seals and poo poo you'd be tearing down an engine to get at in the field. By that logic then the Germans could raid that same barn for a fan belt for their PzIII or whatever and your whole point about there being some kind of Russian advantage is still wrong. You're absolutely correct that the Germans were operating at the end of a really long logistical chain and that this made getting spares, ammo, etc to the front a pain in the rear end. Any mechanical object - even the most reliable ones - has a breakdown rate and access to spares and the general ability to put broken down equipment back into service quickly is vital in any kind of modern warfare. The Germans had problems with this and it bit them in the rear end pretty hard. Still, there's no need to try to portray Russian equipment as so standard or so simple that they just use whatever the gently caress to push something back into service. If it was a part so simple, so basic that you could fabricate it or modify it from some locally available thing then the same "advantage" applies to anything the Germans are using. Example: The fact that you can use a length of rope you found on a farm to replace the broken sling on your Mosin doesn't say anything about the rifle, it just means that rifle slings are pretty loving simple objects. Meanwhile a StG44 is a much more complex firearm, but you can still use that same length of rope as a make-do sling.
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2014 23:13
|
|
|
FAUXTON posted:Sometimes a chain is just a chain and a belt is a belt. I don't mean pistons and valve seals and poo poo you'd be tearing down an engine to get at in the field. That said, early in the GPW the Russians used uparmored farm tractors as a psyops tactic to scare Nazi formations into retreating. "Second echelon tanks", effectively armoured or semi-armoured tractors with guns on top, have been kicking around Soviet military circles since the early 1930s.
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2014 23:17
|
|
|
MA-Horus posted:Some NCO's you do call sir, at least in the CAF. Master Warrant Officer and Chief Warrant Officer, namely. Well, but the clue here is that they hold a warrant from the Queen; it's not a commission, but in some ways they're more officer than NCO, including being called "sir". Still too much common sense to be commissioned, but good enough at their jobs to be given the real responsibility of Getting poo poo Done and, ahem, anticipating the officers' orders. A sapper who called his corporal "sir" in 1914 would probably be lucky if he only escaped with a clip round the earhole, it's a gigantic and classic schoolboy error along the lines of referring to sergeants as "Sarge". Something that's very easy to overlook and downplay about the BEF is how brutal a lot of the discipline was even by the standards of 1941. On active service there were IIRC about a dozen purely military offences for which the punishment was death*. A battalion's colonel had the summary power to sentence any man under his command to up to 28 days of hard labour or Field Punishment Number One, which had been introduced to replace flogging and wasn't much more humane. And then it was widely accepted that NCOs could use their judgement (and boots, and fists) to deal with all kinds of minor misdemeanours that weren't worth wasting the Old Man's time with. And this is without starting to consider the role and activities of the battle police, a surprisingly little-known concept where the provosts and RMP would patrol the old front line and set up stragglers' posts as a unit advanced; their job was to (among many other things) ensure that units ordered over the top actually went, and it's often said that they held the unoffical and unchallenged power to summarily execute any stragglers or funkers who refused to obey (whether they actually did or not is a Matter of Some Debate). The beatings will continue until morale improves! *No, there weren't nearly as many official judicial executions as is often supposed; no, the vast majority of them were not for cowardice; yes, quite a lot of the soldiers were probably guilty and many of them had been previously sentenced to death and subsequently commuted; yes, despite all those caveats there were plenty of miscarriages of military justice (although considerably less than in the French army, which was far too fond of the Paths of Glory scheme of punishing recalcitrant units by drawing lots and having a man or two executed, pour encourager les autres). Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Aug 8, 2014 |
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2014 23:30
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:The same thing could be said of the Sherman. Production started a few months before Pearl Harbor and it served with the US through Korea, where it did pretty well against T34/85s. If you bring in foreign service you've got all the upgrades the British did to it during the war, and the things the Israelis did with their Shermans is nothing short of amazing. The M4 had absolutely fantastic growth potential, but when you have a turret ring that big (and you don't have rather badly designed and clunky gun mounts) you can do a lot with the platform. Of course the suspension switch of the later models and wider tracks helped as well.
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2014 23:35
|
|
|
I figure this is the best thread to ask this, cept maybe somewhere in GiP; does anyone know of a program to make NATO military symbols for you? I want to make symbols for some fantasy, and possibly 'real world', units without having to keep hunting through the huge list to find the right parts. Also with the sheer popularity of NATO symbols are there good (english) sources for other military symbols? I found a few for Soviet/Russians, but being in russian they arent of much use to me.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2014 02:29
|
|
|
MILSketch might be what you're looking for, or not. It's a versatile piece of software but it does require some getting used to.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2014 02:36
|
|
|
I've got one too. drat, MILSketch looks cool.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2014 03:41
|
|
|
Oh hey people, I didn't even know this thread existed. We've got a thread going on The Guns of August in Book Barn and it'd be great if some knowledgeable history folks chipped in to the discussion. Thanks!
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2014 03:43
|
|
|
Nenonen posted:MILSketch might be what you're looking for, or not. It's a versatile piece of software but it does require some getting used to. Baloogan posted:I've got one too. drat, MILSketch looks cool. Neither of these are what im looking for, they both assume you already know what all the symbols mean which is my main issue (and in retrospect should have said out right. Sorry, I just dont want to spend a lot of time preparing for this minor idle fancy). Ideally I want a program that I can give it unit parameters and have it spit out the right symbol, but something like the two above but told me what each symbol was would be fine as well.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2014 04:07
|
|
|
Communist Zombie posted:Neither of these are what im looking for, they both assume you already know what all the symbols mean which is my main issue (and in retrospect should have said out right. Sorry, I just dont want to spend a lot of time preparing for this minor idle fancy). Of course you can read the book. Its only 400 pages.  This is a pro-click for you cold war land combat nerds. Covers quite a few symbols.  Also you could ask us about specific map symbols you are interested in. Baloogan fucked around with this message at 04:25 on Aug 9, 2014 |
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2014 04:23
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:Oh hey people, I didn't even know this thread existed. We've got a thread going on The Guns of August in Book Barn and it'd be great if some knowledgeable history folks chipped in to the discussion. Thanks! I think the general flaw with The Guns of August is that it takes on a distinctly Western Allied viewpoint. Germany is painted as an almost cartoonish villain, and glosses over the rampant imperialism of Britain and France in the lead up to the war. It also completely ignores the fronts that Germany did not fight on, which is utterly ridiculous, because those fronts were the ones that started the war in the first place, and ultimately were just as important as the Western Front. I however have not actually read it. Perhaps I should.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2014 04:42
|
|
|
Baloogan posted:Of course you can read the book. Its only 400 pages. To be perfectly honest I just wanted to write up different types of preindustrial units NATO style. There were a few modern units that I wanted to do but they slip my mind right now.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2014 04:45
|
|
|
PittTheElder posted:I however have not actually read it. Perhaps I should. Then how can you tell how Germany is portrayed 
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2014 05:06
|
|
|
Ensign Expendable posted:"Second echelon tanks", effectively armoured or semi-armoured tractors with guns on top, have been kicking around Soviet military circles since the early 1930s. That was kind of their thing, back then - keep factories able to swing into war production with little downtime. I think the whole "7.62mm macaroni" legend is bunk but the industrial retooling of US manufacturers was nothing compared to the way they slammed it into gear in Russia. I wonder if munitions supply issues in WWI were part of the impetus behind that, and to what degree war production was considered when planning Soviet industrial infrastructure between the wars. Are there any books on that? Preferably looking at it on a :sperg: level rather than obsessing over Great Man Stalin's Great Soviet Industrial Revolution.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2014 05:44
|
|
|
Russia didn't really have munitions supply issues in WWI. At least, no more than what the rest of the world collectively experienced in 1915-1916 when there was a global shortage of artillery ammunition. The portrayal of Tsarist armies suffering defeats for want of supplies, arms, food is largely a myth - they were just lead really ineptly.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2014 05:58
|
|
|
^ Seems to be the way such things go when you assign leaders by societal title rather than military knowledgeArchangeI posted:Then how can you tell how Germany is portrayed It's almost as if book reviews and summaries never existed, isn't it?
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2014 06:08
|
|
|
ArchangeI posted:Then how can you tell how Germany is portrayed SocketWrench posted:It's almost as if book reviews and summaries never existed, isn't it? I've also heard various more learned people talk about it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2014 06:10
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:Russia didn't really have munitions supply issues in WWI. At least, no more than what the rest of the world collectively experienced in 1915-1916 when there was a global shortage of artillery ammunition. The portrayal of Tsarist armies suffering defeats for want of supplies, arms, food is largely a myth - they were just lead really ineptly. Ahh, thanks for that clarification. I'd thought it was some mixture of the vast, unimproved wilderness and poorly distributed industrial production that silenced Russian artillery when they should have been firing. An issue totally separate from the jawdropping ineptitude of field command and likely eclipsed in importance by it, but I would have guessed the political climate would have lent itself to the image of the "poor Russian conscript hung out to dry by the bourgeoisie factory owners." He and his empty gun, then, becoming the popular cause for massive industrialization and soviet-administered labor direction so when Germany starts another war, Mother Russia can keep The Boys On The Front flush with bullets to administer to the fascists. Anyway, looks like it was mainly just a strategic/tactical asswhooping fair and square. PittTheElder posted:I think the general flaw with The Guns of August is that it takes on a distinctly Western Allied viewpoint. Germany is painted as an almost cartoonish villain, and glosses over the rampant imperialism of Britain and France in the lead up to the war. It also completely ignores the fronts that Germany did not fight on, which is utterly ridiculous, because those fronts were the ones that started the war in the first place, and ultimately were just as important as the Western Front. I took it as somewhat fair when it came to the heads of the various countries whipping out the knives and angling for each others' backs/necks before Edward's corpse was even in the dirt, but it's been a few years since I read it. I recall attention given to Germany as somewhat of a pariah among other states, though, but more from the stance that the perception of Germany as a continental bully was leveraged by other leaders looking for reasons to take Wilhelm down a peg, with Germany basically lashing out because they expected everyone else to attack them anyway and wanted to fight on their terms rather than get invaded. Basically, it seemed to have painted the whole lot of them, from George to Wilhelm to Nicholas to France's party bus of dignitaries and diplomats as mindblowing assholes who saw an opportunity to start redrawing the map once ol' Edward popped his clogs, and we're sorry Belgium but you're going to have to take a raw one right up the keister because the big kids have just figured out that they command armies and King Edward isn't going to rise from his grave to shame their warboners back into their pants this time. FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 07:00 on Aug 9, 2014 |
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2014 06:34
|
|
|
SocketWrench posted:It's almost as if book reviews and summaries never existed, isn't it? One would assume that this sort of thinking is what lead Keegan to his Clausewitz interpretation.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2014 07:15
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:Russia didn't really have munitions supply issues in WWI. At least, no more than what the rest of the world collectively experienced in 1915-1916 when there was a global shortage of artillery ammunition. The portrayal of Tsarist armies suffering defeats for want of supplies, arms, food is largely a myth - they were just lead really ineptly. And it should also be noted that the Russian army really only performed poorly against Germany; the Russians kicked the poo poo out of Austria-Hungary, who could barely even conquer Serbia on their own.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2014 07:39
|
|
|
Agreed. For however much the Russians are portrayed as a inferior army, the Austro-Hungarians were even worse
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2014 08:22
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 16, 2024 17:36 |
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:Agreed. For however much the Russians are portrayed as a inferior army, the Austro-Hungarians were even worse Had they been a better army and been able to handle Serbia, would WWI have been forestalled significantly or were things basically set to go off regardless of Ferdinand getting killed?
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2014 08:28
|
|