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atomicthumbs posted:so what the gently caress was with the Sheridan? who thought that missilegun was a good idea? That shillelagh missile thing is the only reason they're worth using in wargame :P The Wargame franchise actually provides some excellent insights into why military procurement fuckups happen. On paper, all these capabilities look great! Practicalities are below your pay grade 
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May 24, 2016 09:25
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atomicthumbs posted:so what the gently caress was with the Sheridan? who thought that missilegun was a good idea? The Sheridan was originally designated to use a 76mm gun, but eventually the order got passed down that the tank had to be able to penetrate 150mm of armor. There were other considerations like mounting a 105mm/90mm/76mm with a separate ENTAC, TOW, or Polecat launcher, but the latter two still had development time left, and XM551 was being held up enough as it was. They decided that the 152mm launcher being developed for the Shillelagh would do. The Sheridan was just full of messed up stories. The Shillelagh's guidance system could suffer interference from sunlight and its own smoke plume. The latter was solved with an improved propellant, and I'm not sure how they overcame the former. I'm sure they did though, as having sunlight behind the infrared command link probably lent to its abysmal early performances. At one point, the Army was so scared of the thing that they wouldn't let more than one round of ammunition be inside the fighting compartment at a time during testing. The Sheridan is my favorite tank as there are just loads of stories about it that exemplify all of the worst parts of the MIC at the time, but also because it performed surprisingly adequately in its Vietnam missions.
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May 24, 2016 11:49
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Plan Z posted:The Sheridan is my favorite tank as there are just loads of stories about it that exemplify all of the worst parts of the MIC at the time, but also because it performed surprisingly adequately in its Vietnam missions. Notably, without even attempting to field the missiles  (Not that it had many tanks to shoot at, of course)
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May 24, 2016 13:01
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HEY GAL posted:Please Cav Responsibly You ask too much. I could honestly read a book of great Cavalry fuckups/successes throughout history - don't tell me which one I'm getting before reading the whole thing, give me a little background info on the battle and it's participants, then give me a play by play and a post-battle breakdown.
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May 24, 2016 13:08
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feedmegin posted:Notably, without even attempting to field the missiles Not that it could also shoot its normal ammo easily. The "caseless" ammo that it used had a nitrocellulose wall instead of metal that would absorb moisture and fail to chamber. This was preferable to the other situation where damp cases could not properly extract after firing, risking a catastrophe the next time a round would be fired. It of course caused problems that halted other portions of the tank's development while even more new technological horse poo poo had to be developed for it. It was around this time I think they were actually again considering using a different gun. Plan Z fucked around with this message at 13:31 on May 24, 2016 |
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May 24, 2016 13:28
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 These Bangladeshi police uniforms are probably what a Landsknecht would have come up with if he was to design a camo pattern. Actually I wonder if they'd work a bit like dazzle camo, for I get a little ill just looking at those colours.
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May 24, 2016 13:49
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Plan Z posted:Not that it could also shoot its normal ammo easily. The "caseless" ammo that it used had a nitrocellulose wall instead of metal that would absorb moisture and fail to chamber. This was preferable to the other situation where damp cases could not properly extract after firing, risking a catastrophe the next time a round would be fired. It of course caused problems that halted other portions of the tank's development while even more new technological horse poo poo had to be developed for it. It was around this time I think they were actually again considering using a different gun. Just the thing for the jungles of Southeast Asia!
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May 24, 2016 14:02
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HEY GAL posted:was he sickly sickly, or did he just have a bad heart, which is not that bad for his age? He had some manner of congestive heart disease and was rheumatic, plus that week in particular he probably had a pretty bad case of the runs and might've even had a heart attack. Don't think for a second there hasn't been academic work on this subject.
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May 24, 2016 14:03
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Communist Zombie posted:So assuming the Luftwaffe won the Battle of Britain what would be the real effects of it? Like Britain moves closer to a peace deal, shipping avoids the channel, etc? Im also talking about allied reactions to what they think Germany can do; it doesnt matter if Sealion is a farce if the generals think its a possibility and react accordingly. hogmartin posted:Same question but with U-boats. Churchill is quoted as saying "The only thing that really scared me during the War was the U-Boat menace". Was it actually an existential "lose another convoy and we have to start negotiating with Germany" threat? What does that look like? It's hard to say. On the one hand, Britain was highly dependent on imports even for just basic needs, their vast industrial prowess was useless without raw materials to fuel it, and civilian trade generally isn't too willing to risk destruction for their paycheck, so any disruption to shipping was a Huge Deal even if it didn't completely cut Britain off. Being a relatively strong democracy meant that Britain's position was somewhat more prone to change than other countries, and since they were in the war to defend British interests and allies rather than Britain itself, it was possible popular opinion might decide to bow out if things looked bad rather than putting their own homes and families on the line for the sake of continental Europe. There's a reason German admirals in the First World War thought unrestricted U-boat warfare was worth risking America joining the war. On top of that, the British knew very well that their army wasn't that great by the standards of mainland Europe even before Dunkirk left them in quite a poor situation, and the Wehrmacht looked pretty drat scary after curbstomping the French so much more easily and quickly than anyone had expected. If the Royal Navy, the mightiest fleet in the world and a particular point of British military pride, could be contained or defanged to the point where German surface ships could freely sail the seas, it would be an incredible blow to national morale. If the Germans could have seized air superiority and used it to press the attack against the Royal Navy or British shipping, it's possible that political support for war in Britain would dry up and lead to a negotiated peace recognizing German dominance on the continent. On the other hand, the estimates of German admirals in WWI of their ability to attack shipping turned out to be overly optimistic, and I think estimates of how quickly Britain would have fallen under blockade tend to be exaggerated. In addition, we know now that Germany didn't have nearly as much ability to threaten the British Isles as either side thought at the time; if Germany managed to botch up a big operation and reveal their shortcomings, it'd boost British morale rather than hurt it. And the biggest question mark of all was Winston Churchill, who was practically made of confidence and morale despite his many faults. As long as he can hold on to meaningful political power, even talking about a negotiated peace would go pretty far into Gay Black Churchill territory, since there was absolutely no way he was going to sign an unfavorable peace with Hitler. Could the opposition have mustered the political support and leverage needed to force him out at a time like that? If not, then it's all pointless, because he would certainly have insisted on Britain fighting to the death no matter how bad things looked.
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May 24, 2016 14:55
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Main Paineframe posted:It's hard to say. On the one hand, Britain was highly dependent on imports even for just basic needs, their vast industrial prowess was useless without raw materials to fuel it, and civilian trade generally isn't too willing to risk destruction for their paycheck Not quite sure what you're getting at here? I mean, a whole lot of civilian merchant seamen died on the Atlantic convoys. Or if you meant from a business point of view, businessmen were as patriotic as anyone else (and could also see a victorious Germany dominating Europe would be the dominant commercial/industrial power in pretty short order, in any case).
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May 24, 2016 15:04
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HEY GAL posted:Please Cav Responsibly Friends don't let friends canter merrily into musket fire.
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May 24, 2016 15:44
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bewbies posted:He had some manner of congestive heart disease and was rheumatic, plus that week in particular he probably had a pretty bad case of the runs and might've even had a heart attack. Don't think for a second there hasn't been academic work on this subject. not that i'm bitter or anything ed: It's still not that bad for a stout-ish guy who was pushing 60. Comparatively. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 16:19 on May 24, 2016 |
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May 24, 2016 16:15
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Friends don't let friends send in the cavalry an hour too early.
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May 24, 2016 16:17
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xthetenth posted:Friends don't let friends send in the cavalry an hour too early.
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May 24, 2016 16:19
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feedmegin posted:Not quite sure what you're getting at here? I mean, a whole lot of civilian merchant seamen died on the Atlantic convoys. In the convoys, yes, because they felt protected. Prior to the debut of the modern convoy system in late WWI, U-boats didn't just sink ships, they kept more ships off the seas for fear of U-boat attack. It never fully stopped trade, even during the hottest days of unrestricted U-boat warfare, but it did have an additional impact Britain could ill afford. By cutting the heavy pre-convoy losses down to a much more reasonable number and granting a feeling of safety to sailors, the British were able to keep the trade coming. If something were to turn the situation against merchant shipping in WWII and reduce the Royal Navy's ability to protect and escort trade, it'd start putting off shipping pretty quickly. Even if German planes weren't that effective at sinking ships, civilian crews aren't very happy about sitting there and getting bombed.
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May 24, 2016 16:50
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Main Paineframe posted:In the convoys, yes, because they felt protected. Prior to the debut of the modern convoy system in late WWI, U-boats didn't just sink ships, they kept more ships off the seas for fear of U-boat attack. It never fully stopped trade, even during the hottest days of unrestricted U-boat warfare, but it did have an additional impact Britain could ill afford. By cutting the heavy pre-convoy losses down to a much more reasonable number and granting a feeling of safety to sailors, the British were able to keep the trade coming. If something were to turn the situation against merchant shipping in WWII and reduce the Royal Navy's ability to protect and escort trade, it'd start putting off shipping pretty quickly. Even if German planes weren't that effective at sinking ships, civilian crews aren't very happy about sitting there and getting bombed. If German air superiority is such that the Royal Navy can't escort ships then those ships aren't going to be sailing regardless, given that naval ships are a whole lot harder to sink than cargo ships. That doesn't seem terribly likely, though, even in the rather alien-space-bats case that the Luftwaffe has total command of the skies permanently, given the short range of German fighters. They couldn't even reach Liverpool so interdicting the middle of the Atlantic? Not so much.
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May 24, 2016 16:59
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feedmegin posted:If German air superiority is such that the Royal Navy can't escort ships then those ships aren't going to be sailing regardless, given that naval ships are a whole lot harder to sink than cargo ships. That doesn't seem terribly likely, though, even in the rather alien-space-bats case that the Luftwaffe has total command of the skies permanently, given the short range of German fighters. They couldn't even reach Liverpool so interdicting the middle of the Atlantic? Not so much. The idea isn't so much that the Luftwaffe is actively sinking merchant shipping, it is that they're allowing the U-boats to do their thing much more efficiently by bottling up both surface and airborne ASW assets.
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May 24, 2016 17:05
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I've a question: how effective was allied intelligence regarding Japan during World War 2? I know certain Japanese naval ciphers had been broken in the runup to Midway, but I'm guessing that the Allies didn't have a open book via sigint with the Japanese - and if they didn;t have that, they didn't have much, at least in Japan itself. I ask because I was thinking about the strategic bombing raids against Japan. If the Allies had known "yeah, the Japanese still have planes - no pilots or fuel though" would they have bothered?
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May 24, 2016 17:49
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IIRC, they had a very effective SIGINT on the Japanese. They assassinated Yamamoto from a radio intercept, as an example.
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May 24, 2016 17:58
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Nebakenezzer posted:I've a question: how effective was allied intelligence regarding Japan during World War 2? I know certain Japanese naval ciphers had been broken in the runup to Midway, but I'm guessing that the Allies didn't have a open book via sigint with the Japanese - and if they didn;t have that, they didn't have much, at least in Japan itself. I ask because I was thinking about the strategic bombing raids against Japan. If the Allies had known "yeah, the Japanese still have planes - no pilots or fuel though" would they have bothered? I remember a story to the effect that their intelligence was so good that when they used a lack of water at an island as cover as part of an operation to establish where attacks would be focused, not only did they not get caught at the time but the subsequent invasion force was found to be carrying water purifiers with them after they were defeated. I think that might've been this thread, even.
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May 24, 2016 18:10
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spectralent posted:I remember a story to the effect that their intelligence was so good that when they used a lack of water at an island as cover as part of an operation to establish where attacks would be focused, not only did they not get caught at the time but the subsequent invasion force was found to be carrying water purifiers with them after they were defeated. I think that might've been this thread, even. I believe that was the setup for Midway. To confirm that they had cracked the code, they had Midway radio that they were low on water. Intercepts then included notes that Midway was low on water, which confirmed that they had the code name for Midway correct and that's where the Japanese were heading.
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May 24, 2016 18:17
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bewbies posted:The idea isn't so much that the Luftwaffe is actively sinking merchant shipping, it is that they're allowing the U-boats to do their thing much more efficiently by bottling up both surface and airborne ASW assets. But if they can in any meaningful way 'bottle up' the destroyers that escort convoys, they can also pretty much by definition bomb the convoys directly, is my point. If things get to that point things go all Germany 1918 and Britain pretty much starves, but that would take the sort of air dominance that I find unlikely even if Germany had had a much better time in the Battle of Britain, not to mention actually having decent anti-shipping gear which they didn't.
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May 24, 2016 18:38
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feedmegin posted:But if they can in any meaningful way 'bottle up' the destroyers that escort convoys, they can also pretty much by definition bomb the convoys directly, is my point. If things get to that point things go all Germany 1918 and Britain pretty much starves, but that would take the sort of air dominance that I find unlikely even if Germany had had a much better time in the Battle of Britain, not to mention actually having decent anti-shipping gear which they didn't. I'm not quite sure where the idea that the Luftwaffe so totally inept against naval came from - they almost certainly sank more ships than did any other air force or navy over the course of the war. Granted, a fair amount of that was due to their having more targets than anyone else, but reading this thread it seems like people are under the impression that they just sharted themselves and flew home to clean up whenever the time came to attack a ship. That being said, the bigger issue, in view of the Battle of the Atlantic at least, would've been their keeping Allied ASW aircraft out of the air. Without the assortment of fat dumb slow war winning Coastal Command planes:   flying about finding and killing U-boats, the Battle of the Atlantic gets really, really, really hairy. Couple that with the Luftwaffe being able to operate relatively unmolested in the Western Approaches, etc and so on.
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May 24, 2016 19:16
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bewbies posted:I'm not quite sure where the idea that the Luftwaffe so totally inept against naval came from - they almost certainly sank more ships than did any other air force or navy over the course of the war. ...Than the IJN, or the USN, or for that matter the German U-Boats? Citation needed, I think. I don't remember Nazi Pearl Harbor.
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May 24, 2016 19:41
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feedmegin posted:...Than the IJN, or the USN, or for that matter the German U-Boats? Citation needed, I think. I don't remember Nazi Pearl Harbor. I can believe it. If you count the Baltic, the med (Crete, etc), the Atlantic, north sea, the med round 2 (Sicily, the italians), the black sea. The opportunities are there.
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May 24, 2016 19:53
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feedmegin posted:...Than the IJN, or the USN, or for that matter the German U-Boats? Citation needed, I think. I don't remember Nazi Pearl Harbor. The IJN did not sink all that much shipping during the war, overall, in part due to a complete lack of focus on commerce warfare.
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May 24, 2016 20:18
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feedmegin posted:...Than the IJN, or the USN, or for that matter the German U-Boats? Citation needed, I think. I don't remember Nazi Pearl Harbor. I should have specified "by air" – the U-boats sank far more ships than did anyone else – but the Luftwaffe sank more ships from the air than anyone else did, and that by a fair margin ( I can give exact numbers when I get home later this week). The US is only other country anywhere close. remember, the vast, vast majority of ships sunk during the war were merchant steamers at sea, not battleships in harbor. In any case as I said earlier, clearly the biggest factor in the number of ships they sunk was simple opportunity. I'm not suggesting that the Germans were some kind of wizards at Airborne anti-shipping – but they also weren't completely inept. Also if you really want to see some poo poo look at how many ships Germany sank with all weapons during the war, then compare it to the total Allied merchant fleet, Particularly after American industry got ramped up. American shipbuilding was something loving else during that era.
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May 24, 2016 20:55
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Just to poke on some anecdotes I've read accounts if Stuka people lots wrecking poo poo in the Baltic and Black Sea. All the things people wrote about earlier re: bomb types etc is true when you're trying to kill armored warships. Against your average merchantman pretty much anything will do.
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May 24, 2016 21:02
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Cyrano4747 posted:Just to poke on some anecdotes I've read accounts if Stuka people lots wrecking poo poo in the Baltic and Black Sea. Which, if true, was exactly my earlier point about bottling up destroyers over simply bombing the merchant ships, though...if you can get to the point where the Stukas can bomb merchant ships unmolested, it's not so much people not wanting to be on merchant ships because it's risky, it's that things are so utterly bad that no convoys are going to be running at all and Britain is hosed. I just don't buy that being a thing because the Stukas don't have the range to get to where the ships are going to be (worst case, past Belfast and into Scotland and/or northwest England) and I don't see a situation where the RAF is totally unable to contest the skies. I mean the fallback plan for losing the Battle of Britain was precisely to move the RAF squadrons north to where the Germans couldn't reach them.
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May 24, 2016 21:10
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bewbies posted:In any case as I said earlier, clearly the biggest factor in the number of ships they sunk was simple opportunity. I'm not suggesting that the Germans were some kind of wizards at Airborne anti-shipping – but they also weren't completely inept. Considering how late the Luftwaffe was to the idea that they'd need to sink ships, yeah, they did pretty well.
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May 24, 2016 21:12
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Plan Z posted:Not that it could also shoot its normal ammo easily. The "caseless" ammo that it used had a nitrocellulose wall instead of metal that would absorb moisture and fail to chamber. This was preferable to the other situation where damp cases could not properly extract after firing, risking a catastrophe the next time a round would be fired. It of course caused problems that halted other portions of the tank's development while even more new technological horse poo poo had to be developed for it. It was around this time I think they were actually again considering using a different gun. It was also something like 9x slower than an M48 to fire because the gunner had to wait for the gun to automatically settle in and out of the loading position and the air vents to clear the breach so the caseless ammo wouldn't catch a spark on loading. AND the light aluminum armor combined with the caseless ammo scattered around to make the tank very prone to catastrophic explosions and fires when hit by RPGs or mines. It ended up being the tank from the Sherman "Ronson" myths. Funny enough, I went to the USAHEC in Pennsylvania and they had a recreated Vietnam artillery firebase on the trail. The base of the watchtower was lined with Sheridan ammo crates.
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May 24, 2016 21:19
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chitoryu12 posted:It was also something like 9x slower than an M48 to fire because the gunner had to wait for the gun to automatically settle in and out of the loading position and the air vents to clear the breach so the caseless ammo wouldn't catch a spark on loading. One thing I read, and again possibly from this thread, was that one factor that meant the crews liked it was that because it was so weakly armoured and prone exploding, whenever it was defeated it was defeated catastrophically and most of the crew died, so only the people for whom things had gone great returned to talk about it. Conversely, the M48 could take hits, meaning people would come back with some of the crew wounded or dead, and talk about how terrible it went.
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May 24, 2016 21:39
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spectralent posted:One thing I read, and again possibly from this thread, was that one factor that meant the crews liked it was that because it was so weakly armoured and prone exploding, whenever it was defeated it was defeated catastrophically and most of the crew died, so only the people for whom things had gone great returned to talk about it. Conversely, the M48 could take hits, meaning people would come back with some of the crew wounded or dead, and talk about how terrible it went. That sounds like the Death Traps problem: a guy who only works with tanks that are being repaired and salvaged only sees Shermans when they come back damaged or destroyed, so he concludes that they must be awful.
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May 24, 2016 21:53
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bewbies posted:I'm not quite sure where the idea that the Luftwaffe so totally inept against naval came from Its many failures in the North Sea, Bay of Biscay, Atlantic, Arctic and Mediterranean?
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May 24, 2016 22:01
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chitoryu12 posted:That sounds like the Death Traps problem: a guy who only works with tanks that are being repaired and salvaged only sees Shermans when they come back damaged or destroyed, so he concludes that they must be awful. I can't remember if it was raised in this thread or elsewhere (or both, it's not a super-obscure story) but something along these lines was put to brilliant use by statistician Abraham Wald during the war. Problem: Where do we improve the armor on bombers? Easy answer: Look at the ones that came back. The places that are shot up are the places that took damage and need to be armored. Better answer: Look at the ones that came back. The places where they have no damage are the places where damage killed the ones that didn't come back. http://nowiknow.com/seeing-is-disbelieving/
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May 24, 2016 22:38
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AbleArcher posted:Its many failures in the North Sea, Bay of Biscay, Atlantic, Arctic and Mediterranean? You could make the same argument about Fleet Air Arm, too.
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May 24, 2016 23:09
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feedmegin posted:Which, if true, was exactly my earlier point about bottling up destroyers over simply bombing the merchant ships, though...if you can get to the point where the Stukas can bomb merchant ships unmolested, it's not so much people not wanting to be on merchant ships because it's risky, it's that things are so utterly bad that no convoys are going to be running at all and Britain is hosed. I just don't buy that being a thing because the Stukas don't have the range to get to where the ships are going to be (worst case, past Belfast and into Scotland and/or northwest England) and I don't see a situation where the RAF is totally unable to contest the skies. I mean the fallback plan for losing the Battle of Britain was precisely to move the RAF squadrons north to where the Germans couldn't reach them. My point wasn't that stukas are the solution, but that it doesn't take armor piercing bombs and naval torpedoes to kill merchantmen. History is a good guide here. Condors killed their fare share of surface shipping during the war, and in many of those cases they were attacking escorted convoys. poo poo got to the point that they were strapping hurricanes to catapults as one shot interceptors where the pilot would just try to ditch near a friendly boat. Having escorts nearby can be a problem, but it doesn't mean that no attack happens or that the convoy gets through intact. You don't have to make it impossible for warships to operate and your attacking aircraft don't have to be unmolested, they just have to be effective enough to cause enough damage. Does this require Germany to do some things differently? Of course. Building a lot more condors or maybe a naval bomber version of the Ju88 is probably a requirement if you're trying to cut off England from resupply by sea. The fact that you don't destroy the RN, however, doesn't mean that land based aircraft can't wreak havoc on your shipping.
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May 24, 2016 23:21
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:You could make the same argument about Fleet Air Arm, too. Not with a straight face or any consideration for preponderance. Claiming the Channel Dash was as consequential as PQ18, Pedestal or Black May would be laughable.
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May 24, 2016 23:54
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Cyrano4747 posted:[...] or maybe a naval bomber version of the Ju88 is probably a requirement [...] Not sure about you but, for those who don't know, there was a torpedo bomber version of the Ju-88, the A-17 variant. It, and other variants, filled in as a naval bomber where required/applicable.
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May 24, 2016 23:59
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Risking a can of worms in this thread but I'm curious, the loathing against Tank Destroyers in this thread, or TD chat, is that more the US doctrine of it or against the things themselves? Thinking that you hear people ragging on the idea of them, but less so individual models. Was curious as I was reading some stuff about the SU-85 and SU-100 and they don't get mentioned when it comes to TDs.
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May 25, 2016 00:00
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