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Arrath posted:It does sound like a sensible method for crossing rivers, at the least it seems like checking the waterproofing and attaching the hose would take less time than fitting the flotation screens that a DD tank requires. Reading the dieppe article they did get some tanks on shore so it works in ocean conditions but drat, it gives me the heebie jeebies. E: Okay so maybe the Dieppe tanks didn't crawl along the bottom. The article surely didn't mention how they were delivered. Like so 
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Feb 4, 2015 16:11
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Ha, I've read about the snorkel tanks, but never seen pics of them. Really funny looking things 
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Feb 4, 2015 16:11
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Tanks being lost to mud was enough of a problem without adding several meters of ocean above it.
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Feb 4, 2015 16:15
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bewbies posted:
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Feb 4, 2015 16:17
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Is it bad that the first thing I looked for was the front glacis to see which version of the IS2 it was? 
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Feb 4, 2015 16:22
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Snorkels work well for crossing rivers but somehow I think they would work less well with a) 1940s technology and b) in the ocean on a prepared beach.
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Feb 4, 2015 16:23
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Among many things the guy missed (intentionally or otherwise) is that the vast majority of those ~900 T-34s arrived to their destinations in June. This means that crews had less that a month to train with their new tanks (many did not have time to train at all) and there was no time for combined arms exercises. For instance, the T-34 in first gear was a little tiring to keep up with on foot. If this sort of thing is discovered in exercises, it can be compensated for, but when you're thrown into battle on a brand new tank with green infantry, it's going to be lost in the general chaos, your infantry will fall behind, and all commanders will mill about blaming each other instead of solving the problem.
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Feb 4, 2015 16:25
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Xerxes17 posted:Is it bad that the first thing I looked for was the front glacis to see which version of the IS2 it was? No, not really.
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Feb 4, 2015 16:27
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Nenonen posted:The main difference is that Tauchpanzer could wade at a depth of 15 meters. I think you could still swim out of water that deep if something went wrong. On the plus side, when protected by so much water the worst that could happen is that your snorkel gets damaged, which is a lot smaller target for coastal artillery than a DD. I don't think swimming out is the issue so much as trying to muscle open a hatch with that much water pressure holding them closed, unless you've got power assist or an inward opening escape hatch on that bottom (that may well open into the mud you're mired in)
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Feb 4, 2015 16:28
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JcDent posted:Which is understandable, since the only people who like claim victory by throwing people in the meatgrinder are HFY assholes (though they also try to claim human ingenuity, too, because gently caress aliens, I guess). Man, I love some Humanity, gently caress Yeah stories, but there are so many idiots who write them. A lot of them sound like "Humans can defeat any foe because we have élan", which is the exact stupid mistake made by any overconfident military planner ever. I love the stories that take something actually unusual about humans and use that; we evolved from persistence hunters, so write a story about how our ability to walk long distances gives us an advantage in guerilla warfare. We have good depth perception and arms that can throw rocks, so write a story about our natural aptitude for ballistics. But don't write a science fiction story where humans are better in every way than aliens, or where we win because of better ingenuity and bravery.
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Feb 4, 2015 16:28
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Chamale posted:Man, I love some Humanity, gently caress Yeah stories, but there are so many idiots who write them. A lot of them sound like "Humans can defeat any foe because we have élan", which is the exact stupid mistake made by any overconfident military planner ever. I love the stories that take something actually unusual about humans and use that; we evolved from persistence hunters, so write a story about how our ability to walk long distances gives us an advantage in guerilla warfare. We have good depth perception and arms that can throw rocks, so write a story about our natural aptitude for ballistics. But don't write a science fiction story where humans are better in every way than aliens, or where we win because of better ingenuity and bravery. We win because our unique and bizarre biochemistry allows us to not only survive the toxic gas "oxygen" but indeed THRIVE on it. How can we fight such monsters??
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Feb 4, 2015 16:47
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:The tanks for Dieppe were delivered by LCT, and almost all other amphibious tank designs were either external flotation (larger tanks with conversions) or internal flotation for purpose-built amphibious tanks (T-37 etc). Of course they were delivered by LCT. And the ones with the fording equipment were dropped off the LCTs farther out and then forded their way up to the beach. What did you think they'd do, drive the whole way from England along the channel bottom? And yeah, pretty much everyone got snorkels working for river crossings - hell, at some point the yanks actually produced snorkeling sets for trucks and jeeps to give them limited fording capability.
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Feb 4, 2015 16:47
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How long does it take to assemble the snorkels and make the tank ready for a river crossing?
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Feb 4, 2015 16:49
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Depends. Modern ones work pretty fast afaik because being built with NBC protection in mind means they're already capable of being sealed up instantly under normal combat conditions. Installing the snorkels works pretty fast if you have them on hand, though it's obviously not something you'd do under fire. With WWII tanks you'd probably have to spend a couple hours taking extra precautions towards sealing off viewing slits and similar details on top of putting on the snorkels.
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Feb 4, 2015 17:01
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Arrath posted:I don't think swimming out is the issue so much as trying to muscle open a hatch with that much water pressure holding them closed, unless you've got power assist or an inward opening escape hatch on that bottom (that may well open into the mud you're mired in) Pretty much. 15m is certainly swimmable (in SCUBA a CESA [controlled emergency swimming ascent] is considered effective up to a limit of 15m) but the idea of beginning it from a confined space, much less one with a heavy metal door with 1.5 atms of pressure on it, sounds loving awful. When you think about how cramped a tank interior is, I'd think that the likelihood of a crewman successfully swimming out of a flooded and submerged tank would be pretty low.
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Feb 4, 2015 17:05
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Chamale posted:But don't write a science fiction story where humans are better in every way than aliens, or where we win because of better ingenuity and bravery. Imagine you're an alien invader coming to Earth. You destroy all the planet's militaries with, I don't know, orbital bombardment or something, and begin occupation. Would YOU want to die thousands of light years away from home guarding a shithole base because your bosses want to mine unobtanium and get re-elected?
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Feb 4, 2015 17:06
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Is this before or after you crack the planet into tiny bits to simplify getting to the juicy parts.
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Feb 4, 2015 17:24
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Kaal posted:Pretty much. 15m is certainly swimmable (in SCUBA a CESA [controlled emergency swimming ascent] is considered effective up to a limit of 15m) but the idea of beginning it from a confined space, much less one with a heavy metal door with 1.5 atms of pressure on it, sounds loving awful. When you think about how cramped a tank interior is, I'd think that the likelihood of a crewman successfully swimming out of a flooded and submerged tank would be pretty low. You're supposed to let the tank flood to equalize the pressure before bailing out. Magni posted:Depends. Modern ones work pretty fast afaik because being built with NBC protection in mind means they're already capable of being sealed up instantly under normal combat conditions. Installing the snorkels works pretty fast if you have them on hand, though it's obviously not something you'd do under fire. With WWII tanks you'd probably have to spend a couple hours taking extra precautions towards sealing off viewing slits and similar details on top of putting on the snorkels. It takes 1-1.5 hours to prepare any old T-34 for crossing a river underwater, I should hope that a specially designed tank would be able to do so faster.
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Feb 4, 2015 17:45
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Ensign Expendable posted:You're supposed to let the tank flood to equalize the pressure before bailing out. lol more like "it's impossible to escape this tank unless you flood it first, best of luck!"
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Feb 4, 2015 17:49
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Chamale posted:Man, I love some Humanity, gently caress Yeah stories, but there are so many idiots who write them. A lot of them sound like "Humans can defeat any foe because we have élan", which is the exact stupid mistake made by any overconfident military planner ever. I love the stories that take something actually unusual about humans and use that; we evolved from persistence hunters, so write a story about how our ability to walk long distances gives us an advantage in guerilla warfare. We have good depth perception and arms that can throw rocks, so write a story about our natural aptitude for ballistics. But don't write a science fiction story where humans are better in every way than aliens, or where we win because of better ingenuity and bravery. Good stories serve either to provide some sort of social commentary or are inherently speculative about some New Thing or concept. Sometimes though just being a deconstruction of a saturated trope can also be novel. I think a lot of the Humanity, gently caress Yeah stories came about because of a deluge of HUMANS ARE DOOMED that were released before that time. Halo I think ends up being interesting as it is entertaining as a whole because of just how close we were to kicking it, we were that outmatched. Then you have I dunno, stories like Andromeda where Earth is an unimportant backwater conquered by some superior alien empire and I'm just meh. Though the Seven Hour War from Half Life is pretty scary and more out there in your face. I'd be interested in a story where Humans *do* have some sort of crazy advantage and use it to forcefully establish order over a chaotic sector and then the story is the struggle to maintain it. Conquest is easy, holding it is another. I think what you're actually trying to say is don't write a boring story; there needs to be tension and conflict; or at least if your going to have invincible protagonists who always win, at least make it showy.
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Feb 4, 2015 17:51
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Kaal posted:lol more like "it's impossible to escape this tank unless you flood it first, best of luck!" "Try not to panic and use up all the oxygen while you wait for the tank to flood."
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Feb 4, 2015 17:52
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Tevery Best posted:Imagine you're an alien invader coming to Earth. You destroy all the planet's militaries with, I don't know, orbital bombardment or something, and begin occupation. Invading Earth to kill all humans is not terribly difficult. If you have a ship that travels near the speed of light, all you need for an apocalypse is to fly an empty one into the planet at top speed.
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Feb 4, 2015 17:53
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The galactic building committee would throw a fit though. Best to just fill out the paperwork and send a demolition fleet instead!
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Feb 4, 2015 17:57
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wdarkk posted:"Try not to panic and use up all the oxygen while you wait for the tank to flood." "When the cold shock response hits you and you are fighting to regain control of your respiratory system, try not to brain yourself on the equipment that you are enclosed within."
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Feb 4, 2015 17:57
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Magni posted:What did you think they'd do, drive the whole way from England along the channel bottom? Almost undoubtedly, someone on each side seriously considered this.
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Feb 4, 2015 18:02
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JcDent posted:That's what happens when you look at war from heroic perspective, I think. Winning it because you can make more tanks that might not be biggest killers, but are easy to replace, repair and maintain doesn't sound very cool, since logistics and supply trains aren't heroic, and it's an industrial scale human wave attack where tanks crews are viewed as more expendable than say Knight Commander Siegfried Of The Epischeheldenmordkamfwagen XII 'Blut Krieg'.  Fangz posted:What you really want to do is simplify. Decide on the core interactions that matter to you (say, in early barbarossa a nazi unit should be able to easily brush aside an equivalently sized but unprepared soviet unit) and make sure it works out. Not gently caress around assigning points values to individual machine guns. Chamale posted:Man, I love some Humanity, gently caress Yeah stories, but there are so many idiots who write them. A lot of them sound like "Humans can defeat any foe because we have élan",
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Feb 4, 2015 18:04
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Arquinsiel posted:Most of those are operating on the conceit that the aliens are perfectly logical and don't fight because the outcomes are predictable and fixed, so humans not giving a gently caress and trying anyway is an OCP to them.
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Feb 4, 2015 18:26
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Ensign Expendable posted:Among many things the guy missed (intentionally or otherwise) is that the vast majority of those ~900 T-34s arrived to their destinations in June. This means that crews had less that a month to train with their new tanks (many did not have time to train at all) and there was no time for combined arms exercises. For instance, the T-34 in first gear was a little tiring to keep up with on foot. If this sort of thing is discovered in exercises, it can be compensated for, but when you're thrown into battle on a brand new tank with green infantry, it's going to be lost in the general chaos, your infantry will fall behind, and all commanders will mill about blaming each other instead of solving the problem. Weren't a lot of them issued with useless or insufficient ammunition too, like there weren't enough anti-tank rounds for the 76mm guns or some poo poo? I remember reading that somewhere but I can't remember the specifics and it may be one of those "Soviet human wave attacks of prisoners chained together" bullshit myths.
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Feb 4, 2015 18:26
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Almost undoubtedly, someone on each side seriously considered this. If Churchill didn't come up with it himself at some point I'm sure he'd be all over that poo poo if somebody suggested it to him.
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Feb 4, 2015 18:27
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Raenir Salazar posted:I'd be interested in a story where Humans *do* have some sort of crazy advantage and use it to forcefully establish order over a chaotic sector and then the story is the struggle to maintain it. Conquest is easy, holding it is another. Old man's war by John Scalzi is as close to this as you'll likely get.
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Feb 4, 2015 18:38
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Pornographic Memory posted:If Churchill didn't come up with it himself at some point I'm sure he'd be all over that poo poo if somebody suggested it to him. He could have used sailors for that.
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Feb 4, 2015 18:42
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Rent-A-Cop posted:I always liked the take that all the other sentient races that survived their first contact with nuclear fission and then FTL did it because they are naturally hyper-averse to intentionally harming other sentients. Alien wars are fought with cultural/diplomatic/economic tactics until humans show up and realize you can just punch these space-monsters in the face and take their stuff. Which completely buttfucks the entire galactic order.
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Feb 4, 2015 18:44
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Chamale posted:Invading Earth to kill all humans is not terribly difficult. If you have a ship that travels near the speed of light, all you need for an apocalypse is to fly an empty one into the planet at top speed. And then humans win because of either some insignificant minor detail or because aliens are stupid proud warrior race somethings... basically, it's imperialist chauvinism, with aliens replacing whatever natives you need to conquer. The closest HFY ever got to being good is Mass Effect, and that's because it wasn't too horribly overt about it.
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Feb 4, 2015 18:47
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Panzeh posted:The whole plan was really fanciful, probably an attempt to gain negotiating power. Was Sealion ever looked at with seriousness after they held their test landings in France and found that with their current equipment and training, any mass amphibious assault would be a hilarious farce of death and mishaps?
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Feb 4, 2015 19:10
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JcDent posted:The closest HFY ever got to being good is Mass Effect, and that's because it wasn't too horribly overt about it. I think you best start reading some more (or better) sci-fi. Not the 1950s juveniles either.
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Feb 4, 2015 19:11
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chitoryu12 posted:Was Sealion ever looked at with seriousness after they held their test landings in France and found that with their current equipment and training, any mass amphibious assault would be a hilarious farce of death and mishaps? I'm pretty sure it devolved into the Army and Navy making increasingly lunatic demands of each other to make the other admit they couldn't do it and it got quietly shelved somewhere past when the army was asking for a bigger beachhead than Overlord.
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Feb 4, 2015 19:13
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Koesj posted:I think you best start reading some more (or better) sci-fi. Not the 1950s juveniles either.
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Feb 4, 2015 19:15
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chitoryu12 posted:Was Sealion ever looked at with seriousness after they held their test landings in France and found that with their current equipment and training, any mass amphibious assault would be a hilarious farce of death and mishaps? It never really got much past the army and navy writing something like CONOPS and then Hitler's general order (I don't remember the number). Pretty much everything was put on hold pending the destruction of the RAF, which to me indicates that they never really had any serious intentions of carrying it out: had they been serious, it'd taken them years to develop the necessary equipment and procedures. They knew this, and they weren't in any great hurry.
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Feb 4, 2015 19:19
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Weren't a lot of them issued with useless or insufficient ammunition too, like there weren't enough anti-tank rounds for the 76mm guns or some poo poo? I remember reading that somewhere but I can't remember the specifics and it may be one of those "Soviet human wave attacks of prisoners chained together" bullshit myths. Nope, that's correct. Since the Red Army just got its first fancy high velocity 76 mm tank gun, they ordered fancy new high velocity 76 mm ammunition... that didn't have time to be made. Many tanks fought enemy tanks fired only HE or had to limit themselves to machine guns. Fuel was also a problem. Lots of fuel stores were property of whatever military district, but were physically positioned in Moscow, which made their value limited in actual battle. Basically, the Red Army in 1941 was a clusterfuck of epic proportions. Germany attacked at the best possible time and still managed to lose. There is a large "Germany should have attacked in 1942 with Tigers/1945 with Mauses" crowd in alternate history circles, but such an attack would have petered out around Kiev at best.
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Feb 4, 2015 19:37
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bewbies posted:It never really got much past the army and navy writing something like CONOPS and then Hitler's general order (I don't remember the number). Pretty much everything was put on hold pending the destruction of the RAF, which to me indicates that they never really had any serious intentions of carrying it out: had they been serious, it'd taken them years to develop the necessary equipment and procedures. They knew this, and they weren't in any great hurry. The plans that the Germans did have for a Channel crossing weren't predicated on anything like taking time to develop the necessary equipment and procedures. They were going to tow river barges stuffed with troops and horses and guns at a sea snail's pace under cover of night with what (utterly insufficient) naval escorts they could deploy and basically cross their fingers that the Royal Navy didn't notice in time to cut them to pieces with a few destroyers. Had they actually attempted it, Royal Air Force or no, the result probably would have made the Wilhelm Gustloff sinking look like a capsized canoe in three feet of water.
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Feb 4, 2015 19:38
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