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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Thanks for this Neal Stephenson quote. Read his comment again. He's calling it the best first World War machinegun. 
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Mar 10, 2015 15:25
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Magni posted:Read his comment again. He's calling it the best first World War machinegun. That wasn't the part I was taking issue with. 
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Mar 10, 2015 15:28
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HEY GAL posted:Hey, I finally found the mass grave photo I've been looking for! This is from Luetzen: I love war this much!
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Mar 10, 2015 15:53
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Ensign Expendable posted:They did. Daimler-Benz submitted what was basically a T-34 clone for the Panther project. MAN said "gently caress that", built their entry, and started a smear campaign against DB claiming that their design wasn't German looking enough. What were the reasons for making the engine from aluminum? To make the tank's mass smaller? If so, how much did it save?
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Mar 10, 2015 15:58
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Arquinsiel posted:Yes, but even with that you're looking at that one surviving one lasting under heavy use for 8 months when it was supposed to only be in use for three before they could switch to the recaptured French channel ports. Discounting the entire concept because one of them was damaged in a storm is kind of like discounting the entire concept of "tanks" because they can't drive forever before the ground breaks them. I read some tonnage figures somewhere between the Mulberries and beach-offloading via LST and they were not very favorable to the Mulberry concept. I'll try to dig them up. Hogge Wild posted:What were the reasons for making the engine from aluminum? To make the tank's mass smaller? If so, how much did it save? Tough to tell, but the 5.3L Gen III V8 block and head weigh about 110lbs, versus 253lbs for the same thing. A very imperfect scale up for the 38.8 liter displacement of the V-2 leads to about a half ton in weight savings.
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Mar 10, 2015 16:26
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:I question claims that any machine gun could fire for 24 hours straight. Didn't the Vickers do this?
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Mar 10, 2015 16:28
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I also strongly question the actual battlefield utility of firing a machinegun for 24 hours straight. The sheer effort involved in supplying ammunition would be a pretty good argument as to why this is Silly.
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Mar 10, 2015 16:38
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:I also strongly question the actual battlefield utility of firing a machinegun for 24 hours straight. The sheer effort involved in supplying ammunition would be a pretty good argument as to why this is Silly. The boon of being able to fire a machinegun for 24hrs straight isn't the actual ability to fire it for 24hours straight. Its that the barrel wouldn't overheat and/or the gun is reliable enough to do so.
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Mar 10, 2015 16:52
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Chamale posted:The MG42 lasts a whole 7.5 seconds before you're supposed to change the barrel. (Although of course you'd never fire one continuous burst for that long) That seems shockingly low? Like even if you were squeezing off 5 to 10 rounds a pop it seems like you'd hit a total of 7.5 seconds super loving quickly.
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Mar 10, 2015 17:05
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Frostwerks posted:That seems shockingly low? Like even if you were squeezing off 5 to 10 rounds a pop it seems like you'd hit a total of 7.5 seconds super loving quickly. If you hammer out bullets at 1200 RPM, the barrel doesn't have time to cool. Giving it some time between bursts extends life significantly.
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Mar 10, 2015 17:10
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Yeah, if you shoot one round every hour or something, pretty much any gun should last a few weeks. After 700 rounds of near-continuous shooting, the AK47 is basically on fire. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lND51FkLuFU Fangz fucked around with this message at 17:23 on Mar 10, 2015 |
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Mar 10, 2015 17:19
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Yeah if I have the specs right, that's something like 100 rounds in the time it took you to read this. OK not really; I needed to make the post a little bit longer.
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Mar 10, 2015 17:41
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Fangz posted:Yeah, if you shoot one round every hour or something, pretty much any gun should last a few weeks. 10 minutes of pulling the trigger, Jesus  Ensign Expendable posted:They did. Daimler-Benz submitted what was basically a T-34 clone for the Panther project. MAN said "gently caress that", built their entry, and started a smear campaign against DB claiming that their design wasn't German looking enough. Sooo, having a heavier engine would lead to more redesigns to support it? What about the hardened steel part? Wouldn't having sloping armor already be an improvement over Panzer IV?
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Mar 10, 2015 17:44
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Saint Celestine posted:Didn't the Vickers do this? A unit of 10 of them did. And it wasn't for 24 hours, it was 12. Ian Hogg: quote:Perhaps the most incredible was the action by the 100th Company of the Machine Gun Corps at High Wood on 24 August 1916. This company had ten Vickers guns, and it was ordered to give sustained covering fire for 12 hours onto a selected area 2,000 yards away in order to prevent German troops forming up there for a counter-attack while a British attack was in progress. Two whole companies of infantrymen were allocated as carriers of ammunition, rations and water for the machine-gunners. Two men worked a belt-filling machine non-stop for 12 hours keeping up a supply of 250-round belts. One hundred new barrels were used up, and every drop of water in the neighbourhood, including the men’s drinking water and contents of the latrine buckets, went up in steam to keep the guns cool. And in that 12-hour period the ten guns fired a million rounds between them. One team fired 120,000 from one gun to win a five-franc prize offered to the highest-scoring gun. And at the end of that 12 hours, every gun was working perfectly and not one gun had broken down during the whole period. So it's not like 1 gun fired continuously for 12 hours, it's that the unit as a whole was able to fire for 12 hours using 10 guns. When Browning demonstrated the M1917 for the Ordnance Department he fired one gun continuously for 48 minutes putting over 20,000 rounds through it without stoppage. An air-cooled gun could never do that, the barrel would disintegrate.
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Mar 10, 2015 17:47
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Fangz posted:Yeah, if you shoot one round every hour or something, pretty much any gun should last a few weeks. Single fire? Gloves? No visible flames? THIS IS HOW YOU DO IT  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNAohtjG14c and this is how watercooling works  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzwdCCNwn4M
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Mar 10, 2015 17:54
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JcDent posted:10 minutes of pulling the trigger, Jesus Angling poorly hardened armour doesn't help, instead of penetrating it "fairly" the shell will just ricochet and knock out a huge chunk of the armour anyway.
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Mar 10, 2015 18:37
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MassivelyBuckNegro posted:The boon of being able to fire a machinegun for 24hrs straight isn't the actual ability to fire it for 24hours straight. Its that the barrel wouldn't overheat and/or the gun is reliable enough to do so. But in order to do that you have to have a water cooled MG which is also not the most useful thing in the world. It's a tradeoff between heat dissipation/reliability and utility.
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Mar 10, 2015 18:50
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:I read some tonnage figures somewhere between the Mulberries and beach-offloading via LST and they were not very favorable to the Mulberry concept. I'll try to dig them up.
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Mar 10, 2015 18:54
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:But in order to do that you have to have a water cooled MG which is also not the most useful thing in the world. It's a tradeoff between heat dissipation/reliability and utility. I'm not debating that. Modern air cooled guns are heavy, as is the ammo. I'm simply pointing out the actual utility in theoretically being able to fire for 24hours at a sustained rate and it isn't the ability to fire for 24hrs straight.
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Mar 10, 2015 19:00
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Arquinsiel posted:Maybe the LST was a more efficient method of doing things, but given the relative scarcity of them compared to the uses for which they were required and the different industry that resulted in having a Mulberry to use to unload regular cargo vessels it's hard to make a case for them being in any way wasteful given the realities of the shipping needs of the Normandy campaign. I gotta find the data - it wasn't just LST obviously, just poo poo-comes-in-over-beach vs poo poo-comes-in-via-Mulberry. Plus you have to figure the amount of resources sunk in to the Mulberry concept could have built quite a few LSTs or like a second PLUTO.
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Mar 10, 2015 19:06
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So we've determined that a well supplied MG company would have been able to survive a zombie horde. MG round oilers still seem like a bad idea, tho. By the way, how did MG companies operate? Flames of War would suggest that the British had it in WWII, too.
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Mar 10, 2015 19:13
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Burberry harbours would have come cheaper but Churchill was afraid they'd attract chavs.
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Mar 10, 2015 19:17
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:I gotta find the data - it wasn't just LST obviously, just poo poo-comes-in-over-beach vs poo poo-comes-in-via-Mulberry. Most of the Mulberry components were made in the UK and constructed from concrete. It's highly unlikely that not building them would have made that many more LSTs.
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Mar 10, 2015 19:20
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:I gotta find the data - it wasn't just LST obviously, just poo poo-comes-in-over-beach vs poo poo-comes-in-via-Mulberry.
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Mar 10, 2015 19:22
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So there's a distinction between 'highly specialised piece of equipment that plays a role in an overarching military strategy' and 'highly specialised piece of equipment being built because it's super cool' that marks the difference between things like Mulberry harbours and the V2 program.
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Mar 10, 2015 19:28
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Arquinsiel posted:PLUTO is probably closer to realistic than more LSTs would be, but there's no way that the concrete used for the Mulberries magically becomes steel or lead regardless of how much money is thrown at it. True, and it's getting off topic - even if the Mulberry was a terrible idea, the Allies had the resources to execute on it without hindering their ability to do other poo poo.
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Mar 10, 2015 19:33
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100 Years Ago The lessons of the Battle of Neuve Chapelle will ripple through the rest of the war like a giant boulder dropped into a lake; and it will set a pattern that will crop up again, and again, and again, as the Entente tries with increasing desperation to break the deadlock. It's been a long, hard winter; and a longer, harder war. The BEF has been on the defensive almost continuously since last August. Now they're going to take the initiative. Grasp the nettle firmly with both hands. (Contains three of the world's worst maps!)
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Mar 10, 2015 20:14
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I think it was this thread that was talking about tasteless advertising around the war after that one British supermarket ad that aired recently, and I've been combing through some newspaper archives all morning and it's a goldmine.  Wrigley's has an impressive array of unique ads twice a week hammering home this theme, it's incredible.
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Mar 10, 2015 20:21
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Frostwerks posted:That seems shockingly low? Like even if you were squeezing off 5 to 10 rounds a pop it seems like you'd hit a total of 7.5 seconds super loving quickly. The barrel change is super fast. Like 3 seconds and it's good to go again. Ofc you can keep firing until the barrel is glowing red, but that will shorten it's lifespan. I've read that a burst of this thing can saw a man in two. True or not?
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Mar 10, 2015 20:22
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JaucheCharly posted:The barrel change is super fast. Like 3 seconds and it's good to go again. Ofc you can keep firing until the barrel is glowing red, but that will shorten it's lifespan. No, bullets don't work that way. Sure, if you kept firing like those carnival games with the fake Tommy gun you could do it, but your target would have to keep still and you'd have to have the gun on a slowly traversing Mount.
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Mar 10, 2015 20:26
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Can anyone suggest a good over book that covers the 19th century Crimean War?
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Mar 10, 2015 20:42
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SeanBeansShako posted:Can anyone suggest a good over book that covers the 19th century Crimean War? Figes has a good one, covers the the issues leading up to the war well as well as the battles. Doesn't really touch upon the post-war period iirc though
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Mar 10, 2015 20:43
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Figes has a good one, covers the the issues leading up to the war well as well as the battles. Doesn't really touch upon the post-war period iirc though Well drat, that seems odd. I guess that will have to do unless anyone else has other suggestions? I once half read one which contained the letters home from the men and officers who wrote back. Shame I never finished it. It was interesting.
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Mar 10, 2015 20:46
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Throatwarbler posted:Machine gun water jackets don't work by evaporation, it's a closed system isn't it? Seems kind of unrelated. The jackets do indeed work by evaporation, as the heat generated by firing transfers to the water (which boils and evaporates) rather than the much less efficient air. Eventually the water jacket will totally empty. You can mitigate this by connecting a hose from the jacket to a can that collects the vapor, where it condenses and can be poured back in. But you don't have 100% efficiency and some water will be lost.
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Mar 10, 2015 20:48
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Trin Tragula posted:100 Years Ago Am I correct in understanding that the Allies successfully broke the German line, but ended up being too disorganized by their own success and by German counter-actions to actually follow through? That's gotta sting. Also, question - from what I understand, aside from the early parts of the war the Germans were more focused on defending their positions and holding the line, while the Allies were more focused on trying to drive the dirty Hun out of France (on the Western Front anyways). Did this extra experience end up translating into improved offensive doctrines for the allies compared with the Germans? If not, why not?
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Mar 10, 2015 20:50
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Ensign Expendable posted:No, bullets don't work that way. Sure, if you kept firing like those carnival games with the fake Tommy gun you could do it, but your target would have to keep still and you'd have to have the gun on a slowly traversing Mount. Looking at how large a bullet like the 8x57 tears a wound channel into ballistic gel and shooting a burst at 1200rpm, it's not so unlikely?
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Mar 10, 2015 20:53
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JaucheCharly posted:Looking at how large a bullet like the 8x57 tears a wound channel into ballistic gel and shooting a burst at 1200rpm, it's not so unlikely? Look at the actual bullet hole that a full power rifle round like that would leave in the body. Ballistic gel is not 100% analogous to the human body. It merely acts as a "good enough" alternative that can be standardized to scientifically compare bullets.
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Mar 10, 2015 21:14
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Tomn posted:Am I correct in understanding that the Allies successfully broke the German line, but ended up being too disorganized by their own success and by German counter-actions to actually follow through? That's gotta sting. This is basically the story of 1915-7.
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Mar 10, 2015 21:17
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JaucheCharly posted:Looking at how large a bullet like the 8x57 tears a wound channel into ballistic gel and shooting a burst at 1200rpm, it's not so unlikely? Maybe if enough bullets hit in a close linear grouping, which however is unlikely. MG42's rof translates to ~20rps. After the first bullet hits the target unless it's a grazing hit he'll be down in a fraction of a second. Let's say you can fire 5 bullets (or even 3) in that time and if each shot hits the body in a straight line across the waist or chest then it's 'sawed through'. So you need a sub-second burst hit a moving target in a straight line while your gun is shaking as it's spewing lead at 1200 rpm. In theory perhaps it'd be feasible, but really it's just a saying that has been applied to just about any automatic weapon in history because it's a good line.
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Mar 10, 2015 21:18
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| # ? Jun 9, 2024 17:38 |
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 How did Finland lay down such complete destruction on the Soviet army during the Winter War despite having only a fraction of the manpower and tanks/planes?
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Mar 10, 2015 21:36
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