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OwlFancier posted:I seem to remember early WW1 tanks were not actually bulletproof and could be stopped by machinegun fire.
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Aug 9, 2016 19:20
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Plus it took a few engagements with them as well before they started rolling out the tungsten(?) tipped ammunition and monster/AT Rifles made for early tank busting.
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Aug 9, 2016 19:23
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bewbies posted:I've also never really understood why people think they want realistic war movies. If a war movie was realistic it would be really really really really boring for the first two and half hours and then the last 15 minutes would be really loud and confusing Das Boot does a good job of portraying war as endless hours of mind-numbing boredom interspersed with moments of trouser filling terror.
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Aug 9, 2016 19:37
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lenoon posted:War movies seem to achieve good levels of accuracy in segments. Like the tense waiting followed by insane carnage of the beginning of saving private Ryan or the hour and a half of cock jokes in Hitler my part in his downfall, or when the barbed wire comes alive in deathwatch. Deathwatch is another great movie that everybody should watch. Trench horror is underutilized.
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Aug 9, 2016 19:41
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bewbies posted:Why is it that war movies always feature actors that are way, way, way too drat old to be in the army? Hey, I'm 40 year old lieutenant clint eastwood and I'm taking orders from 42 year old tom hanks who must be the oldest infantry captain in the ETO, except then he meets 51 year old airborne captain ted danson and everybody is surprised until 46 year old lieutenant brad pitt walks up only to be outdone by 51 year old staff sergeant brad pitt In Fury at least it was sort of part of the backstory of the character that Pitt's War Daddy was a WW1 vet.
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Aug 9, 2016 19:46
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Sorry, was tanks trying to maneuver around to shoot each other in the rear end not a real thing? I'm not being a wiseass here. My WWII knowledge is concentrated mainly in fighter planes, and USMC campaigns in the Pacific. The extent of my tank knowledge comes from a 1970s Marvel comics series about a Sherman that was accompanied by the ghost of General Jeb Stuart, for some odd reason.
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Aug 9, 2016 19:48
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MrMojok posted:Sorry, was tanks trying to maneuver around to shoot each other in the rear end not a real thing? They'd do it if they could but that meant spotting the other guy first and moving out of sight to where you could open up from the side whenever possible. Just trying to rush headlong to the enemy's side would make you exceedingly vulnerable on your sides.
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Aug 9, 2016 19:51
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xthetenth posted:They'd do it if they could but that meant spotting the other guy first and moving out of sight to where you could open up from the side whenever possible. Just trying to rush headlong to the enemy's side would make you exceedingly vulnerable on your sides. Also you don't necessarily know what else is on the battlefield. Maneuvering to hit a Tiger in the side or rear could put you in position to be shot by a guy with a Panzerfaust in the bushes, or another tank you didn't notice now has a shot on your side.
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Aug 9, 2016 20:02
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MrMojok posted:Sorry, was tanks trying to maneuver around to shoot each other in the rear end not a real thing? The main thing is that the 76mm Sherman could go through a tiger I's armour from the front. It can go through the side of the king tiger as well as the rear, as well, because they're both pretty much the same thickness. In short, either fury could've opened up from where they were sat (if it was a tiger I), or would've been fine with a side shot (if it's a II). Of course, there's plenty of reasons why they wouldn't; not wanting to sit still, for instance, or they could just have panicked and forgotten, which sounds entirely plausible. I'm not really trying to  about the physics of it, just nitpicking about tank numbers in the milhist thread.
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Aug 9, 2016 20:05
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MrMojok posted:Sorry, was tanks trying to maneuver around to shoot each other in the rear end not a real thing? Yes, but not in the ways one may immediately think. Average tank engagement was hundreds of meters, so that means in the average engagement, you'd have move hundreds of meters in circumference to do so, taking forever and exposing yourself to fire in the meantime. Scoring even a bouncing hit is also going to be like firing a gun at a soldier. If they have their wits, they're not going to stick around. So it's basically in your best interest to just fire and avoid being hit by either relocating or staying ahead of their aim. This is how a lot of successful maneuvers were done: Fire, re-locate, fire. If you play your cards right and the terrain and battle are in your favor, you can score killing hits more easily by hitting sides/rear, best demonstrated in battles like Arracourt or many Tank Destroyer engagements since it was specifically part of their training. Realistically, the average tank engagement of the war involved two tanks that could score a combat kill frontally, with certain obvious exceptions like with the panics of the B1, T-34, KV, etc. Also, tank formations as any other are ordered to form into a way that makes out-maneuvering by the enemy difficult to impossible. This is also where I make the disclaimer that tank-on-tank combat was relatively rare, and the average tank was usually knocked out by towed guns, mines, or handheld weapons so while yes the Sherman had to flank a Tiger or Panther, the situation where it needed to happen didn't come up terribly often.
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Aug 9, 2016 20:10
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Thanks all. Makes perfect sense, Best Thread wins again!
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Aug 9, 2016 20:14
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If you're on the Western front as the allies, you also get on the radio to some artillery or ideally jabos to come blast the poo poo out of the position. You don't need to engage in a tank duel, so why bother?
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Aug 9, 2016 20:32
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Most combat of the last 100 years is not about shooting people with rifles, or tanks, or machine guns, or sniper rifles, or anything that is usually debated about or remembered or dramatized. It's about getting people to a spot where the artillery can obliterate them, or making it easier for the artillery to obliterate people, or trying not to be obliterated by artillery.
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Aug 9, 2016 20:49
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really its about getting your guys to good spots with adequate food, weapons, ammunition and paying them on time
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Aug 9, 2016 21:11
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I'm pretty sure Fury was initially written with a 75mm Sherman in mind, since they talk about the tank and crew being together since North Africa (which itself is impossible) and they switched to an Easy 8 at some point without totally rewriting the script.
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Aug 9, 2016 21:14
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spectralent posted:Of course, there's plenty of reasons why they wouldn't; not wanting to sit still, for instance, or they could just have panicked and forgotten, which sounds entirely plausible. Likely, even. How likely is it that a tanker at the time would remember the minutiae of Tiger I versus Tiger II side armour in a situation like that, even if they realised it was a Tiger II and not a I, as opposed to thinking 'we've got one shot at this we've gotta make it a rear shot or we might be toast'. Not to mention this isn't binary, it's not like it's 100% certain a side shot would work on a I, just more likely, so even then hitting it on the rear is more of a sure thing.
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Aug 9, 2016 21:16
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:really its about getting your guys to good spots with adequate food, weapons, ammunition and paying them on time
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Aug 9, 2016 21:16
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feedmegin posted:Likely, even. How likely is it that a tanker at the time would remember the minutiae of Tiger I versus Tiger II side armour in a situation like that, even if they realised it was a Tiger II and not a I, as opposed to thinking 'we've got one shot at this we've gotta make it a rear shot or we might be toast'. Not to mention this isn't binary, it's not like it's 100% certain a side shot would work on a I, just more likely, so even then hitting it on the rear is more of a sure thing. Again, not to be terrible and nitpick, but the tiger I and II looked really dissimilar, to the point where soviet intelligence assumed the Tiger II was an improved Panther. The boxy look of the Tiger I is completely gone. More importantly, the tiger I and II have almost identical side and rear armour (82mm vs 80mm respectively), and they're both the same thickness all the way around; in fact on both the I and II the rear plate is more angled than the side plates, so the rear armour is effectively thicker (though in the Tiger I's case, by very little. Tiger II gets something like 20mm out of it, though). This is all and not really relevant to the film, of course.
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Aug 9, 2016 21:34
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MrMojok posted:Sorry, was tanks trying to maneuver around to shoot each other in the rear end not a real thing? DC, actually. The Haunted Tank Wikipedia posted:As the Haunted Tank fights from Africa to the European Theater of Operations, the crew goes through several M3 tanks. When their latest M3 is destroyed, the crew scavenge spare parts and wreckage from a "tank graveyard" to build themselves a new tank, known as the "Jigsaw Tank",[2] which serves them from that point. This tank has a modified Russian T-34 Hull, a Christie Suspension System and a Russian Y2 12-Cylinder diesel engine of 500 H.P. the nearly 15 foot track gives this rolling jigsaw puzzle excellent traction and it is capable of speeds up to 21 m.p.h. Also mentioned is how, after being equipped with an M4, General Sherman's ghost was assigned to the crew.  If you want more factually-correct WWII-era cartooning, find stuff by Bill Mauldin, who voluntarily transferred from quartermasters back to the infantry, so he could keep his accuracy (of art and humor) up.
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Aug 9, 2016 21:36
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bewbies posted:
From Slaughterhouse-five: quote:Then she turned to me, let me see how angry she was, and that the anger was for me. She had been talking to herself, so what she said was a fragment of a much larger conversation. "You were just babies then!' she said.
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Aug 9, 2016 21:54
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And for WWI cartooning, there’s Abian Wallgren who drew for Stars and Stripes.
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Aug 9, 2016 21:54
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OwlFancier posted:I seem to remember early WW1 tanks were not actually bulletproof and could be stopped by machinegun fire. The Mark I wasn't proof against anything stronger than colourful language; you probably wouldn't get shot while inside one, but you could get hosed up real bad by spalling from even ordinary rifle shots in the wrong place. Which of course assumes that you haven't already been gassed to death by carbon monoxide off the engine, or boiled by the heat; once they got over their initial pants-filling terror, some enterprising Germans noticed that one tank had stopped to open the doors and get some fresh/cool air in, so lobbed in a few grenades, and the tank ceased to be a problem.
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Aug 9, 2016 22:18
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The anti-spall face masks are terrifying.
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Aug 9, 2016 22:24
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:The anti-spall face masks are terrifying. ??? they look fine, and also useful, plus i'm always glad to see mail in a modern context are you feeling ok
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Aug 9, 2016 22:29
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bewbies posted:I've also never really understood why people think they want realistic war movies. If a war movie was realistic it would be really really really really boring for the first two and half hours and then the last 15 minutes would be really loud and confusing You just described Jarhead, including the fact that people hated it because it was too "boring". Jarhead did the double troll move of having really exciting trailers to mislead people, in the same way that the Marines in the story were mislead by their recruiters about how they were all going to kill people and come back as Real Men.
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Aug 9, 2016 23:13
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I was just flipping around in Netflix the other day and noticed there is a Jarhead 2 and Jarhead 3, both of which, judging by the poster art, hilariously seem to be the exact type of macho shoot-'em-up movie the first one isn't.
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Aug 9, 2016 23:14
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Jarhead was good.
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Aug 9, 2016 23:14
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pthighs posted:I was just flipping around in Netflix the other day and noticed there is a Jarhead 2 and Jarhead 3, both of which, judging by the poster art, hilariously seem to be the exact type of macho shoot-'em-up movie the first one isn't. It's hardly suprising, since in the book/film Swofford talks about how the Marines would put on films like Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket to get the Marines hyped before going into combat.
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Aug 9, 2016 23:21
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pthighs posted:I was just flipping around in Netflix the other day and noticed there is a Jarhead 2 and Jarhead 3, both of which, judging by the poster art, hilariously seem to be the exact type of macho shoot-'em-up movie the first one isn't. http://terminallance.com/2016/06/03/terminal-lance-jarhead/ Yes they are.
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Aug 9, 2016 23:25
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spectralent posted:Again, not to be terrible and nitpick, but the tiger I and II looked really dissimilar, to the point where soviet intelligence assumed the Tiger II was an improved Panther. The boxy look of the Tiger I is completely gone. What were the differences between heavy tanks between the axis & allies? I know the Tiger has a different reputation depending on who you ask, but what separated it from the IS-2 for example? What made one more successful than the other? Different design purposes based on each sides experience in using tanks and how to best apply them? I know bits of this answer but not enough to get a completed picture. Plus this thread has an amazing way of writing replies that I enjoy reading.
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Aug 10, 2016 00:18
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:The anti-spall face masks are terrifying. always post pics!  
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Aug 10, 2016 00:31
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Trin Tragula posted:you haven't already been gassed to death by carbon monoxide off the engine, What prevented the designers from using a device known to the modern world as an exhaust pipe?
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Aug 10, 2016 00:31
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ArchangeI posted:What prevented the designers from using a device known to the modern world as an exhaust pipe? Its more the lack of a seperate apartment for the engine than the lack of exhaust pipes.
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Aug 10, 2016 00:34
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Aug 10, 2016 00:37
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Yeah that smiley-face skull is even more terrifying than the anti-spall mask. (By the way, there's a new Hardcore History out for people who care and it seems better than usual from the half hour I've listened to so far ; I agree with most of the usual criticisms but it amuses me while I clean my bathroom or whatever and it makes me look up other stuff later.)
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Aug 10, 2016 00:55
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yo XD! Confoyren-to escort a convoy or be part of a convoy. Probably related to the english "convey" and "convoy." https://www.google.de/search?q=convoy+etymology&oq=convoy+etymology&aqs=chrome..69i57.4646j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 Obstinat-Obstinate. This is interesting only because modern German doesn't use this at all, they say eigensinnig or starrkoepfig. There's a bunch of places where 17th century German is more congenial to an English speaker.
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Aug 10, 2016 01:03
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Flipswitch posted:Bit of a side question to this topic because I was thinking about it the other day but wasn't sure how to ask the question. Heavy tanks were not really prevalent amongst the allies. The British interwar doctrine saw the development of two types of tanks. Infantry support and "cruiser" tanks which would operate in larger regiments instead of being parceled out among the infantry. If you look at the Allies and the Soviets, almost all heavy tanks were primarily for infantry support. They were all supposed to be big, heavily armored, and usually carried a low velocity gun meant more to fire HE rounds at strongpoints and other infantry obstacles. Meanwhile the Germans really didn't develop or even try to develop any heavy tanks preferring a more all in approach on maneuver pre war. It was really in summer 1940 that the Germans figured out that they need more than popguns on their armored vehicles. Ironically it was the British and French heavy infantry support tanks that caused the development of the Tiger when the majority of the Panzer IIs and IIIs had a hard time dealing with them. It wasn't only German tank armament that was less than satisfactory but anti-tank units equipped with 37mm guns were also insufficient. As a result, all German tanks got upgrades as soon as possible higher velocity and larger calibre main guns and the request for a prototype which would become the Tiger 1 tank were all ordered after the French campaign. Throughout the war, both sides kept upgunning their tanks and improving armor as it became required. Heavy tanks in general were expensive to produce and could only be built in limited numbers so the Soviets and Germans usually bundled them up in heavy tank battalions that were sent where they were needed most. The Germans created a series of independent Tiger battalions that were attached to various commands whenever the need sprung up, usually high leverage situations to either lead major attacks or to stop Soviet breakthroughs if they were available. The Soviet heavy tank battalions late war were setup similarly and committed whenever something special came up (like countering opposing German heavies, large fortress strongpoints). I am not sure who has a differing reputations about the Tiger. It has one reputation. It was an exceedingly deadly mid-war heavy tank that was clearly better at the heavy tank job than any other tank for a period of a year or so but it was also very prone to breakdowns. It required constant maintenance and I wager more Tigers were lost due to mechanical breakdown than enemy action. It could not be relied upon for long road marches so they were usually trained from location to location whenever possible. If you could get it in combat with a properly trained crew, it was a dominant player. I am sure some of the German Tiger Aces had inflated kill scores but its success is really well documented and not up for debate. Its main gun while not the best main tank gun in the war was good enough to beat all Allied tanks up to 1945 and all Soviet tanks outside the IS series of behemoths at ranges in excess of 1km. Its armor wasn't sloped but was thick enough that only late war upgunned T-34s and Shermans could actually deal with it at anything other than close range or by attacking the sides and rear.
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Aug 10, 2016 01:08
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Molentik posted:Its more the lack of a seperate apartment for the engine than the lack of exhaust pipes. Which in turn is because the crew needed to be constantly adjusting gears and fixing the engine. Things were, shall we say, primitive: quote:Steering was difficult, controlled by varying the speed of the two tracks. Four of the crew, two drivers (one of whom also acted as commander; he operated the brakes, the other the primary gearbox) and two "gearsmen" (one for the secondary gears of each track) were needed to control direction and speed, the latter never more than a walking pace. As the noise inside was deafening, the driver, after setting the primary gear box, communicated with the gearsmen with hand signals, first getting their attention by hitting the engine block with a heavy spanner. For slight turns, the driver could use the steering tail: an enormous contraption dragged behind the tank consisting of two large wheels, each of which could be blocked by pulling a steel cable causing the whole vehicle to slide in the same direction. If the engine stalled, the gearsmen would use the starting handle – a large crank between the engine and the gearbox. Many of these vehicles broke down in the heat of battle making them an easy target for German gunners. I love the idea of using carrier pigeons for tank communications, but I fear it really was done for the same reason that miners used canaries...
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Aug 10, 2016 01:23
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Grand Fromage posted:I don't think I've ever seen an Imperial Japanese tank that didn't look super dumb and like it'd explode if you threw a rock at it. The O-I wouldn't explode from a rock, but was still dumb as poo poo. quote:Colonel Murata noted Iwakuro’s words as described;
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Aug 10, 2016 01:35
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I'm just saddened that Germans never completed the Großkampfwagen. I'm sure it would have changed the course of the war had the army not been stabbed in the back!quote:The vehicle originally weighed 165 tons but this was reduced to a more practicable 120 tons by shortening the length. The huge size and mass of the K-Wagen made it impossible to transport, so it was decided that it would be split into sections for transport by rail, to be reassembled behind the front line near where it was to be used. quote:originally weighed 165 tons but this was reduced to a more practicable 120 tons quote:more practicable 120 tons  quote:The K-Wagen was to be armed with four 77 mm fortress guns and seven MG08 machine guns and had a crew of 27: a commander, two drivers, a signaler, an artillery officer, 12 artillery men, eight machine gunners and two mechanics. At the beginning of the project the incorporation of flamethrowers was considered but later rejected.
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Aug 10, 2016 01:41
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