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Rent-A-Cop posted:The M3 Lee was by most accounts a colossal shitbox. It was an obsolete design built with substandard methods, but it was only ever intended to be a quick and dirty stopgap. The US cranked out more than 6,000 of the things in 17 months. It was also quite well armed and armored for its time and place, funnily enough, and it was covering for a known shortcoming in turret development.
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Jan 3, 2015 08:24
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The 75mm gun and it's car-like reliability were loved by the Brits in North Africa after some of the armored jokes they'd been using.
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Jan 3, 2015 08:44
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Retarded Pimp posted:The 75mm gun and it's car-like reliability were loved by the Brits in North Africa after some of the armored jokes they'd been using. Well, the Crusader looked cool and had a kickass name, at least  Someone in Wolfenstein mentioned KV-IV as the worst tank of the war, as the prototype shot itself and exploded or something.
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Jan 3, 2015 09:03
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:By 1944 the Western Allies have air superiority without jets, so it's hard to imagine it making a difference. The impetus for the P-80 was more of a design exercise than frontline necessity. Not to mention the Western Allies had jets historically anyway. How does adding a few American ones change things?
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Jan 3, 2015 09:55
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nevermind
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Jan 3, 2015 10:18
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As fun as it is to make fun of Italians' incompetence in warfare, that just made me curious: What would you guys say was Italy's biggest success in WW2? Was there anything they actually managed to do well and not gently caress up?
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Jan 3, 2015 11:29
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Guildencrantz posted:As fun as it is to make fun of Italians' incompetence in warfare, that just made me curious: What would you guys say was Italy's biggest success in WW2? Was there anything they actually managed to do well and not gently caress up? http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%204803.pdf (Although the customary view of Italy as completely free of anti Semitic prejudice is wrong: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/05/nyregion/05italians.html ) Comedy option: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/25_Luglio
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Jan 3, 2015 11:35
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Guildencrantz posted:As fun as it is to make fun of Italians' incompetence in warfare, that just made me curious: What would you guys say was Italy's biggest success in WW2? Was there anything they actually managed to do well and not gently caress up? Weren't the Italian frogmen quite effective?
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Jan 3, 2015 11:53
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JcDent posted:Hey guys, a Wolfenstein LP thread inspired question: what was the worst tank of WWII to see service? The Maus was so heavy that it couldn't cross most bridges.The Elefant was also a useless piece of poo poo in anything other than its exact intended use case. It had no machine gun. It was heavy. You had no peripheral vision.
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Jan 3, 2015 12:00
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Guildencrantz posted:As fun as it is to make fun of Italians' incompetence in warfare, that just made me curious: What would you guys say was Italy's biggest success in WW2? Was there anything they actually managed to do well and not gently caress up? The planes they designed but never actually got around to building were very pretty.
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Jan 3, 2015 12:04
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Macchi M.C.72 is still the world's fastest seaplane, and also the the best looking plane.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macchi_M.C.72 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scX1erFyxeE Hogge Wild fucked around with this message at 12:24 on Jan 3, 2015 |
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Jan 3, 2015 12:20
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Retarded Pimp posted:The 75mm gun and it's car-like reliability were loved by the Brits in North Africa after some of the armored jokes they'd been using. Steady on. The Matilda was only a minor joke at least.
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Jan 3, 2015 13:38
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Guildencrantz posted:As fun as it is to make fun of Italians' incompetence in warfare, that just made me curious: What would you guys say was Italy's biggest success in WW2? Was there anything they actually managed to do well and not gently caress up? GhostofJohnMuir posted:The planes they designed but never actually got around to building were very pretty. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macchi_C.205 They made some pretty sick planes in limited numbers. Italian aircraft design is bizarre. They started the war with a god-damned biplane, the Falco. It was one of the best biplanes ever designed, of course, but it was introduced in 1939!
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Jan 3, 2015 14:05
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USA had the worst tanks of WW2. Eg. one that had an open turret, so anyone could just lob a grenade in; it didn't have a coax or bow MG which were standards at the time; instead for close defense there was a rear facing MG and you had to climb to the engine deck to fire it toward the front of the turret. What a POS.
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Jan 3, 2015 14:11
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Rear tank turret machine guns to me always seem awkward, unless I'm wrong but aren't they operated by the commander who already has his hand full with several other duties? This is where I learn that the loader uses them, isn it?
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Jan 3, 2015 14:13
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Which one are you talking about?
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Jan 3, 2015 14:14
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Tias posted:Which one are you talking about? Well I'm thinking mostly about the Japanese ones, the Soviet ones kind of make sense due to crew size. But for smaller earlier war tanks they must have been awkward and very easy to forget about in the heat of things as a commander.
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Jan 3, 2015 14:15
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Rear-firing main guns though, those were cool:
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Jan 3, 2015 14:19
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Nenonen posted:USA had the worst tanks of WW2. Eg. one that had an open turret, so anyone could just lob a grenade in; it didn't have a coax or bow MG which were standards at the time; instead for close defense there was a rear facing MG and you had to climb to the engine deck to fire it toward the front of the turret. What a POS. Is this the reason why the Americans have the stupid Tiger myth while the Russians were completely meh about it?
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Jan 3, 2015 14:25
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Nenonen posted:USA had the worst tanks of WW2. Eg. one that had an open turret, so anyone could just lob a grenade in; it didn't have a coax or bow MG which were standards at the time; instead for close defense there was a rear facing MG and you had to climb to the engine deck to fire it toward the front of the turret. What a POS. I see this and raise you any of the lovely "tanks" that Japanese built.
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Jan 3, 2015 14:29
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Tias posted:Which one are you talking about? In case you were wondering, most if not all actual tanks in American service did come fitted with turrets that had both a roof and a reasonably installed machine gun. Because they were designed to tussle with infantry, unlike tank destroyers.
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Jan 3, 2015 14:32
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SeanBeansShako posted:Well I'm thinking mostly about the Japanese ones, the Soviet ones kind of make sense due to crew size. But for smaller earlier war tanks they must have been awkward and very easy to forget about in the heat of things as a commander. Forgetting to check your six would have been a fatal mistake. Many of these tanks didn't even have radios, so there was no other way of knowing what everyone else was doing and communicating with them relied on visual signals. Rear facing MGs made some sense if they were intended to discourage the usual infantry anti-tank tactic of sneaking to the back with a molotov or grenade bundle. As turrets didn't swing around all that quickly (180º traverse took 4 seconds on BT-7 and 12 seconds on IS-2), it was kind of helpful. Pistol/hand grenade/Nahverteidigungswaffe ports were another and in the end far more cost effective way of achieving the same.
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Jan 3, 2015 14:41
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The reason why many American tanks had a rear-facing Machine-gun was because this MG was intended for defense against aircraft, not infantry. Of course in the absence of any German aircraft it was often used very effectively against German infantry instead, as noted by at least one individual. Edit: I admit I'm taking the first part from a wargame rulebook, so take it with a grain of salt until I can get an actual source. Edit edit: regardless of its intended use and placement, it was still regarded by tankers as an exceptionally potent weapon, and Patton encouraged all gods tankers to fight unbuttoned so they could use it all the time. Acebuckeye13 fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Jan 3, 2015 |
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Jan 3, 2015 14:46
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Acebuckeye13 posted:The reason why many American tanks had a rear-facing Machine-gun was because this MG was intended for defense against aircraft, not infantry. Of course in the absence of any German aircraft it was often used very effectively against German infantry instead, as noted by at least one individual. Which gun was normally used for this purpose? .50 cal?
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Jan 3, 2015 15:11
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Tias posted:Which gun was normally used for this purpose? .50 cal? Yeah, the top-mounted .50. Tankers loved it since it could be freely aimed, had a long range, and the .50 round would go through anything that wasn't steel plate. Often, it would be used to "check" spots of vegitation or other likely ambush sites by sending a few bursts through them, a task at which it was noted as being exceedingly effective.
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Jan 3, 2015 15:21
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Hogge Wild posted:Weren't the Italian frogmen quite effective? Quite a few of their elite infantry units were also well-regarded by both sides - the Folgore division were by all accounts just as hardass as anyone else's paratroops and the Bersagliere units famously earned this endorsement: Erwin Rommel posted:“The German soldier has impressed the world, however the Italian Bersagliere soldier has impressed the German soldier.” Their cavalry also did pretty well out on the Eastern Front and famously pulled off this bit of craziness. The Italians had seriously deficient gear in many categories and some of their units were of shoddy quality, but most of them fought actually pretty well with what they had to work with. Magni fucked around with this message at 16:06 on Jan 3, 2015 |
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Jan 3, 2015 16:03
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:On the note how is Hirohito: The Making of Modern Japan and is that a good overview of Japan during the war? I just read this and it's pretty good. (For some reason my local library had this 700 page book filed in the children's section. ) It is very much a biography and not a general history, but major events are at least summarized. Definitely portrays Hirohito as culpable for Japan's actions, but notes that the system was designed so that the emperor would never be directly responsible for a decision, as the emperor was supposed to be above mundane politics. Instead, he would express his opinions through informal channels, and a short time later ministers would submit a very similar official recommendation that Hirohito would approve. To an outside observer expecting a figurehead constitutional monarch, that's what he'd look like. The book also shows how much turnover there was in top leadership over the period, and it strains credulity to suggest that the one person continually in a position of power for the whole era somehow had nothing to do with any of it. The Imperial Household Agency recently released a huge official record of Hirohito's reign, but supposedly the years from 1930-1945 are surprisingly light. I know there are more knowledgable goons who can weigh in.
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Jan 3, 2015 16:15
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P-Mack posted:I just read this and it's pretty good. (For some reason my local library had this 700 page book filed in the children's section. ) It is very much a biography and not a general history, but major events are at least summarized. Definitely portrays Hirohito as culpable for Japan's actions, but notes that the system was designed so that the emperor would never be directly responsible for a decision, as the emperor was supposed to be above mundane politics. Instead, he would express his opinions through informal channels, and a short time later ministers would submit a very similar official recommendation that Hirohito would approve. To an outside observer expecting a figurehead constitutional monarch, that's what he'd look like. The book also shows how much turnover there was in top leadership over the period, and it strains credulity to suggest that the one person continually in a position of power for the whole era somehow had nothing to do with any of it. Most questions relating to Hirohito concern relate to the problem of whether, given his absolute theoretical authority and the total devotion with which he was viewed, if he had chosen to interfere in politics he could have prevented Japan's aggression. Some say Tojo would have obeyed any command.
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Jan 3, 2015 16:26
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:By 1944 the Western Allies have air superiority without jets, so it's hard to imagine it making a difference. The impetus for the P-80 was more of a design exercise than frontline necessity. Actually the P-80 was designed pretty much in direct response to intelligence about the Me-262 early in 1943; the Luftwaffe at that point was still beating the hell out of the USAAF and the RAF (Schweinfurt and Regensburg were still 4 months away for example). Point being, there were some pretty genuine operational concerns driving its development. I've always though the P-80 was a pretty interesting program. It was the most G-4 top classified secret program the US embarked on during the war and the end result was the best fighter in the world by a huge margin. The leap in performance between the 262 and the P-80 was more significant than the difference between the 262 and the prop fighters. All anyone really remembers about the P-80 now is "was badly outclassed by the MiG-15 in Korea" but it was a world beater for its time and had it been needed it'd probably be a lot more famous.
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Jan 3, 2015 16:33
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Disinterested posted:The Maus was so heavy that it couldn't cross most bridges. Well, so's the M1 Abrams, but that's a pretty successful tank. The Maus's problems went beyond just being heavy.
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Jan 3, 2015 16:42
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Yes, late cold war era tanks and WW2 tanks are strongly analogous. The thing was 40 tons heavier than a modern MBT like the Abrams. Almost 2 Stug III's heavier. Largeness is a corollary problem, just like powerplant etc. Disinterested fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Jan 3, 2015 |
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Jan 3, 2015 17:05
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JcDent posted:Hey guys, a Wolfenstein LP thread inspired question: what was the worst tank of WWII to see service? Retarded Pimp posted:The 75mm gun and it's car-like reliability were loved by the Brits in North Africa after some of the armored jokes they'd been using.
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Jan 3, 2015 17:08
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Telsa Cola posted:I see this and raise you any of the lovely "tanks" that Japanese built. IJA tanks were comparably decent for the era in which they were built. The reason why they quickly became obsolete was because the Japanese correctly assumed that tank development should be a low priority due to the theatres they were fighting in, and that the resources required to replace them were better spent on the navy and air-force. It's the same reason why the early British and American tanks still found use in the Pacific Theatre well after they became useless in Europe.
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Jan 3, 2015 17:25
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Disinterested posted:Yes, late cold war era tanks and WW2 tanks are strongly analogous. They are when the exact thing you're criticizing one tank over is handwaved away in the other, much more successful design. Your average random bridge isn't designed to hold 60+ tons of load. There is a very good reason why most later MBTs have limited river crossing abilities and why most mechanized units have integral bridging capabilities in the modern world. Also, calling out the Maus in a "war's worst tank" dick waving contest is pretty stupid, given that it was an experimental prototype that never even saw combat. You might as well harp on how the M2 Medium Tank had some silly features. gradenko_2000 posted:Rear-firing main guns though, those were cool: That's not a rear-firing main gun, it's a forward firing gun on a vehicle with the engine mounted in front of the crew compartment and the crew area located toward the rear of the chassis. That was a thing the Germans did on occasion. I'm sure some engineer had some reason for it, but I don't know it off the top of my head. gradenko_2000 posted:Someone else will have to chime in for a specific make and model, but Italian tanks were riveted together and so could be disabled/destroyed by British hand grenades, if they didn't rattle themselves apart from firing their main gun first. What? Italian tanks kinda sucked for all kinds of reasons, mostly having to do with just being way, way behind the curve in the armor/firepower race. Riveted designs are problematic because a direct hit to a rivet head from an AP shell that otherwise wouldn't penetrate could shear off the head and cause the rivet to squirt into the vehicle interior, itself becoming a fairly dangerous projectile. I've never heard of them shaking apart purely from firing their own gun, however. That's the sort of basic poo poo that common sense tells you would get picked up in any trials process. There are plenty of early-war British and Czech designs that used riveted to good effect even if the designers understood it wasn't optimal. Mainly it was used because of a lack of the ability to create large, high quality welds across gently caress-off thick pieces of rolled steel, or at least a temporary shortcoming in that manufacturing technique. Rivets suck, but lovely welds can be a lot more dangerous long-term. Rent-A-Cop posted:The M3 Lee was by most accounts a colossal shitbox. It was an obsolete design built with substandard methods, but it was only ever intended to be a quick and dirty stopgap. The US cranked out more than 6,000 of the things in 17 months. This has been partially addressed by others, but the Lee had most of the positive qualities that the Sherman was vaunted for. I forget what the specific slowdown was, but there was something about the Sherman that we had trouble getting right, so we made Lees instead for about half a year. I think it had to do with getting the casting process right for the turret - American tanks pre-Sherman used built-up armored boxes for turrets (similar to the Germans) rather than gently caress off huge single castings (similar to a lot of SOviet vehicles). Regardless, the Lee wasn't great, but it did well enough and developed a fairly positive reputation in the desert.
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Jan 3, 2015 17:31
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Rent-A-Cop posted:That's tough to answer. A lot of the inter-war tanks performed extremely poorly. Things like the T-28 and T-35 that were already obsolete by 1940 and built for a very different kind of war. The T-35 especially was huge, slow, unreliable, poorly protected, and undergunned by 1940. The Japanese built some pretty awful tanks, but they worked in their intended application of smashing Chinese forces who had no tanks at all and little anti-armor weaponry. The M3 Lee was by most accounts a colossal shitbox. It was an obsolete design built with substandard methods, but it was only ever intended to be a quick and dirty stopgap. The US cranked out more than 6,000 of the things in 17 months. A number of crazy Nazi supertank projects turned out to be huge white elephants as well. Massive world-beating designs that Germany didn't have the money, materials, tooling, or technical know-how to actually produce in quantity. The M3 Lee was actually very well received in Africa, and was wrecking the Japanese in Burma until the end of the war. It's true that the tank was a stopgap, but the gun was very powerful, and the armour was thick for a medium tank at the time. In Europe, where the Germans were cranking out all their best toys, it might have been suboptimal, but in Africa and Burma, it was great. Dinky old PzIVs and PzIIIs were no match for it. JcDent posted:Well, the Crusader looked cool and had a kickass name, at least The KV-VI is a plastic model that's basically three KV hulls and a whole whack of turrets glued together, that fall apart immediately if it ever made it into the world. Disinterested posted:The Maus was so heavy that it couldn't cross most bridges.The Elefant was also a useless piece of poo poo in anything other than its exact intended use case. It had no machine gun. It was heavy. You had no peripheral vision. The Elefant had a machinegun. The Ferdinand didn't. It was actually supposed to, there's even a place for one (which is why they were able to add them to the Elefants post-modernization), but the Ferdinand, meant to be used as a long range tank destroyer, didn't get one. Naturally the Germans proceeded to use it as an assault gun and not as a tank destroyer, ran them into some mines and infantry, and got wrecked. I'd give this thing my vote for the saddest AFV actually fielded during WWII. SeanBeansShako posted:Steady on. Don't you be dissin' the Queen of the Desert! Nenonen posted:USA had the worst tanks of WW2. Eg. one that had an open turret, so anyone could just lob a grenade in; it didn't have a coax or bow MG which were standards at the time; instead for close defense there was a rear facing MG and you had to climb to the engine deck to fire it toward the front of the turret. What a POS. Sounds familiar!  For some reason the US seems to have an obsession with beating on the Sherman, even during the war. I can't understand it, it was a perfectly reasonable medium tank that solved the tasks it was designed to solve, could be produced in huge amounts, and was versatile enough to see extensive post-war service. Arquinsiel posted:The Renault M26/27. A slightly modified FT-17. There were unmodified FT-17s used in the war, weren't there? Cyrano4747 posted:That's not a rear-firing main gun, it's a forward firing gun on a vehicle with the engine mounted in front of the crew compartment and the crew area located toward the rear of the chassis. That was a thing the Germans did on occasion. I'm sure some engineer had some reason for it, but I don't know it off the top of my head. That is a rear firing main gun. The Valentine chassis became unbalanced when the 17-pounder was added in the traditional manner, so it had to be pointed backwards to make the Archer.
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Jan 3, 2015 17:38
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Ensign Expendable posted:
I stand corrected. I thought from a fast glance that it was one of the engine-front German designs.
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Jan 3, 2015 17:48
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Cyrano4747 posted:That's not a rear-firing main gun, it's a forward firing gun on a vehicle with the engine mounted in front of the crew compartment and the crew area located toward the rear of the chassis. That was a thing the Germans did on occasion. I'm sure some engineer had some reason for it, but I don't know it off the top of my head. Or Israelis today for added crew protection? What's so bad about the Renault M26/27, besides possibly being a WWI tank in WWII?
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Jan 3, 2015 18:09
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Basically just that. It was made in an era where your average infantryman had no means of anti-tank combat, and had no choice but to flee when a slow armoured box showed up. By WWII, any conscript with an armour piercing bullet could knock that thing out at a few hundred meters, and it's not like the tank could see him doing it, either. Plus these tanks were designed to be driven to the battlefield in a truck, then advance a few kilometers, not perform hundred kilometers long marches. They just didn't have the strategic mobility to be effective in WWII.
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Jan 3, 2015 18:22
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Ensign Expendable posted:There were unmodified FT-17s used in the war, weren't there? Regarding the Archer, if you look at this picture you can see the open driver's hatch.
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Jan 3, 2015 18:46
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Ensign Expendable posted:There were unmodified FT-17s used in the war, weren't there? Yes and no (that I know of). The Poles still had a bunch of those left over from the Polish-Bolshevik War, but they were pretty much not used in their intended combat role. Out of 120 tanks (as many as were originally brought in with Haller's army from France in 1919, making Polish Army the fourth most armoured fighting force in the world for a moment) that were still in the OOB, 32 were converted into armoured draisines and used as recon and support for armoured trains. From the remaining 88, 45 were used to form 3 armoured companies and sent to defend the Brzesc (Brest') Fortress, but one of those companies had to retreat under its own power due to rail damage. This failed and the Germans seized the vehicles (possibly after a fight, I don't know). The two remaining platoons reached the stronghold, but they were deemed only useful as a way to block the gate. The fortress held out for three days initially, after which the main force withdrew in the night, with a single infantry battalion covering the retreat going rogue and secretly staying behind in one of the forts. For their trouble they got shelled by the Germans for another week, and in fact made it long enough to get shelled by the Soviets, too. Some ten days later, they escaped as well, and the Germans captured the remaining tanks. This means we're left with 43 FT-17s unaccounted for. They were probably left in their yards, although some sources claim they fought in the defence of Przemysl or were kept in Commander-in-Chief's reserve. An aside: in the 1920 war, the Bolsheviks managed to capture one of the FT-17s the Poles were operating, then carry it back home. It was one of the first tanks they'd ever seen, and was stored for a while in a museum, then handed over elsewhere as foreign aid in the 1970s. In 2012, we got it back. From Afghanistan.
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