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Arquinsiel posted:The gun on the Cruisers was the Ordnance QF 2 pdr, which was the same gun on the Matilda II and the Valentine until the Ordnance QF 6 pdr was mounted on them. Coincidentally at the same time they mounted it on the Crusader Mk III. There was literally no difference in Cruiser and Infantry tank armament post Matilda I. The 2 pdr actually had a HE shell designed for it but it was never manufactured for some reason. The 6 pdr did have one and eventually they were simply bored out to match the 75 mm Gun M3 making the Ordnance QF 75mm and simplifying logistics. This was again mounted on both the Cromwell and the Churchill. Also it's kind of beside the point but the "CS" variants of the Cruiser designs usually had a short wide-barrelled gun, but in a moment of pure Did the British seriously forget to have HE shells for all their tanks? Like I said, the Sherman was designed around the same time as the Crusader. The most modern British tank was a cruiser, and it had engine problems, no armour, and no HE shells. Who on Earth looks at that and takes inspiration? quote:As for the actual idea of using Cruiser tanks like cavalry squadrons, it was achieved a few times in Africa but modern defence in depth second line deployments resulted in them running up on AT gun emplacements sharpish and getting blown up pretty quick or just breaking down due to poor reliability. The M3 Stuart was early on regarded as what the Cruisers should have been by some of the tank crews in the desert, but at that point they were just using them for any task that required a tank due to their reliability and armament. Not just like cavalry, moving fast and taking up good positions. Expressly, pouring through a breakthrough and zipping around like hussars. The British did this against the Italians once, and never again. Good riddance.
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Aug 12, 2016 03:48
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they were only issued with smoke shells early on.
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Koesj posted:German designers came out of MBT-70 thinking "we need to make Leopard II", with the biggest bestest gun+ammo in the west. Slim Jim Pickens posted:Did the British seriously forget to have HE shells for all their tanks? Slim Jim Pickens posted:Like I said, the Sherman was designed around the same time as the Crusader. The most modern British tank was a cruiser, and it had engine problems, no armour, and no HE shells. Who on Earth looks at that and takes inspiration? Slim Jim Pickens posted:Not just like cavalry, moving fast and taking up good positions. Expressly, pouring through a breakthrough and zipping around like hussars. The British did this against the Italians once, and never again. Good riddance.
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Aug 12, 2016 04:21
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spectralent posted:Yeah, I knew about use of armour in Africa, I just wasn't aware that the high rate of tank losses in France was because of fuckups, I thought it had more to do with the terrain and role they were forced into. The British and American sectors each ran into their own problems in France. The US for the most part was stuck in hedgerow country, which was a defender's delight and an attacker's nightmare. They spent the first part of the summer trying to figure out how to quickly move through the hedges while also figuring out how to better coordinate combined armor/infantry tactics. This led to some pretty impressive field innovations like telephones hooked up to tanks and special plows fitted to Shermans that cut particularly well through the dense, high hedgerows. Then Omar Bradley took a map of Normandy, drew a bunch of planes flying over it, made explosion noises with his mouth, and drew a bunch of arrows pointing east and the breakthrough got underway. The British had more open ground to deal with in their sectors, and due to high attrition rates, didn't always have the optimal amount of infantry to deal in coordinated combined warfare. The open ground also led to them suffering a lot of casualties to AT guns firing from long distances. This was all exacerbated by incorrect intelligence on the Panther. Despite some captured German officers insisting the Panther was to replace the Panzers III and IV, intel believed it was going to be more like the Tigers, rare beasts that weren't worth scurrying over. Their guess turned out wrong, and approximately half of all tanks in France were Panthers. Coupled with the limits of hedgerows to out-maneuver, and this was a large headache. And then the mud of fall forced all the tanks back onto roads where they took a marked increase in casualties due to land mines. That's the end. No moral. Plan Z fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Aug 12, 2016 |
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Aug 12, 2016 04:22
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Panzeh posted:The IFV sits at an uncomfortable medium between transporting infantry and actually fighting because the two roles tend to be mutually exclusive, and the heavy armament these vehicles carry tends to compromise crew/passenger safety with the ammunition they carry. Imagine I posted the Pentagon Wars video here.
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Aug 12, 2016 04:24
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xthetenth posted:Better as in more power to weight does in a vacuum mean a better tank. It means that for a given speed you can put less weight into the engine and therefore more into gun and armor. The American M4A4 medium tank is, overall, worse than the M4A2 medium tank. The 30-cylinder Chrysler gasoline engine is large and unwieldy, has many parts and assemblies, decreases the reliability of the tank, and increases difficulty of service. The engine provides good speed, but drastically lowers the tank's fuel efficiency, and increases cost. The fuel is more expensive than fuel for GMC engines in the M4A2 tank. Nenonen posted:To be fair, Soviets had also believed that their Bistro Tanks could run through the entire strategic depth of the enemy front and crush or run circles around everything stepping in their way. But they were smart enough to drop the concept much sooner than Brits did - but this can be attributed to them actually having their equivalent of Cromwell already in mass production (it also helped that most of the ~4000 Betkas were lost in 1941). The idea was that BT tanks would be sent into a breach and never encounter and AT guns, so they were only built to resist rifle fire. Of course, "hope that no one will be shooting at us" turned out to be not the greatest idea, but the BTs were pretty beefy for their time. Slim Jim Pickens posted:Did the British seriously forget to have HE shells for all their tanks? They didn't forget, it was intentional. Machineguns ought to be enough against infantry 
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Aug 12, 2016 04:43
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zzuupp posted:It's kinda sorta done that way with diesel-electric trains. Those fans one the top have another purpose to cool down the resistors when braking. That's not the same thing. Diesel-electrics have a throttle that controls fuel input to the diesel and a load regulator that changes excitation to the generator field windings. That regulator is basically a potentiometer, but it's not really handling a lot of current. The bit with the braking is that to brake, you basically turn the traction motors into generators, like dynamic braking in an electric car, but since there's nothing to do with the current they produce you dissipate it via a resistor grid; it's not like they brake by taking the current that would have gone to the motors and sending it to resistors instead. The description of the Elefant made it sound like the generator output was limited via rheostat to control the amount of current being delivered to the traction motors. If that is the case, that's *nuts*.
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Aug 12, 2016 05:00
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HE shells are a dangerous extravagance and risk damage to local property. Now the Crocodile is a fine scalpel of a weapon.
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Aug 12, 2016 06:22
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NLJP posted:Btw well done new thread. Best tank chat in a real long time! I love these threads but the refresh has done a lot of good. Thanks all How old is it? And ofc, post pics!
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Aug 12, 2016 08:16
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On milhist notes, I'm currently living in a small hamlet on a small island in southern sweden based on what used to be the residence of the official soldier of the commune.
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Nenonen posted:To be fair, Soviets had also believed that their Bistro Tanks could run through the entire strategic depth of the enemy front and crush or run circles around everything stepping in their way. But they were smart enough to drop the concept much sooner than Brits did - but this can be attributed to them actually having their equivalent of Cromwell already in mass production (it also helped that most of the ~4000 Betkas were lost in 1941). BTs are one of my favourite armoured vehicles in bideo james because they are so drat fast. M18 Hellcats too. What was the fastest armoured ground vehicle of the war?  M18 Hellcat  BT-7 Hogge Wild fucked around with this message at 08:29 on Aug 12, 2016 |
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Aug 12, 2016 08:22
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spectralent posted:That reminds me: Does the concept of pure infantry exist anymore? I'm aware infantry do still train to march and actually do marches (especially in asymmetric war where stuff like "the people we need you to attack are up this mountain, which is impassable to vehicles" happens), but if WW3 ever kicked off and there was peer-state tier conflicts going on, do we have any militaries that still envisage a significant role to walking, or is a BMP or M113 or whatever basically assumed to be standard for modern infantry? Eg. Finland has many reservist local defense units equipped with jack poo poo vehicles.
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Aug 12, 2016 08:34
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PittTheElder posted:
The nyt had a piece on the injuries from ied's a month ago. While the blast might not penetrate the interior, it causes typical injuries to the heels and the padding that the bones rest on that will not heal. The result is amputation.
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Aug 12, 2016 08:36
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Panzeh posted:It performed well mostly because it had an actual anti-tank gun as its main armament. My point is that by mid-30s standards it was also decently armoured, reasonably fast and reasonably reliable. It was, in fact, a balanced tank for its time period, not just a glass cannon.
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Aug 12, 2016 09:50
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JaucheCharly posted:The nyt had a piece on the injuries from ied's a month ago. While the blast might not penetrate the interior, it causes typical injuries to the heels and the padding that the bones rest on that will not heal. The result is amputation. drat  Here's hoping they get through the VA maze in somewhat good spirits.
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Aug 12, 2016 10:00
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The article is worth reading. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/31/science/mary-roach-grunt-excerpt-ieds-bombs-stryker.html
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Aug 12, 2016 10:27
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Nebakenezzer posted:I know, if WW2 America can employ black women in shipbuilding, you'd think some sort of British office could sort this out. I mention it just because I've come across little remarks like this for years now. Pretty sure it also didn't help that Britain didn't have the facilities to fabricate entire cast hulls.
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Aug 12, 2016 11:36
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:The big deal with cruiser tanks is that the Brits legitimately believed that they could force a breakthrough with infantry tanks, then pour cruiser tanks into the gap like horsemen and then go gallivanting around the rear lines without any infantry riding along. In practice, that never even happened once. The Germans never believed in that, the Panzer divisions always brought a ton of motorised infantry along with them. Leopards were not fast to exploit breakthroughs, they were fast to contain breakthroughs. But infantry tanks were essentially just "Breakthrough" tanks ala Tiger I, KV-1 under a new, exciting coat of paint The idea isn't dumb, because that's what the Germans were doing for quite some time! And the Brits had plenty of Bren carrier lying around to transport infantry, so the problem isn't with infantry not being there with them. The problem is that the train of thought that led to Cruiser Tanks came to the conclusion that they had to sacrifice firepower and defense to achieve speed.
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Aug 12, 2016 11:54
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Jobbo_Fett posted:The problem is that the train of thought that led to Cruiser Tanks came to the conclusion that they had to sacrifice firepower and defense to achieve speed. Im glad to know that Jackie Fisher still found work after his retirement from the RN.
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Aug 12, 2016 12:02
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Polyakov posted:Im glad to know that Jackie Fisher still found work after his retirement from the RN. Never forget that the first tanks came about because of a project by the Navy to build a land-based weapon for the Army that the Army didn't want
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Aug 12, 2016 12:22
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Trin Tragula posted:Never forget that the first tanks came about because of a project by the Navy to build a land-based weapon for the Army that the Army didn't want It's like an inverse of the F-35.
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Aug 12, 2016 12:28
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Trin Tragula posted:Never forget that the first tanks came about because of a project by the Navy to build a land-based weapon for the Army that the Army didn't want Is this before or after Jutland? Because I imagine after that the Royal Navy was extremely bored.
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Aug 12, 2016 12:30
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Jobbo_Fett posted:But infantry tanks were essentially just "Breakthrough" tanks ala Tiger I, KV-1 under a new, exciting coat of paint The idea isn't dumb, because that's what the Germans were doing for quite some time! And the Brits had plenty of Bren carrier lying around to transport infantry, so the problem isn't with infantry not being there with them. Mmmm, not really... infantry tank comes from a philosophy that may result in something that resembles a heavy tank, but it's not the same thing. T-26 and H35 were infantry tanks. So was Matilda, even if it was heavier armoured. Matilda II's 2 pounder with no HE shell at all made it ineffective against fortified positions and it wasn't particularly hot against tanks either. But KV was specifically chosen due to experiences of fighting against fortified positions in Winter War where the thinly armoured T-28 medium hadn't quite cut the mustard. With its higher velocity 76.2mm gun it could perform roles that its predecessors couldn't: T-35 had carried high velocity 45mm guns for dealing with tanks and a low velocity 76.2mm gun to lob HE. At the same time KV had better mobility than Matilda, Valentine or Churchill. Tiger OTOH was never intended to be an infantry tank, a role which was filled by StuGs. It was always destined to be a solution to Heer's pressing T-34/KV problem: a tank protected from the Russian 76.2mm gun at most ranges and capable of killing T-34/KV at most ranges. Incidentally the 88mm gun was also effective against soft targets and bunkers and the heavy weight slowed the vehicle down quite a bit, but this doesn't mean that it was designed from the same perspective as Valentines or Churchills were. Essentially classifications are artificial and a matter of doctrinal taste, eg. Germans considered Panther a medium tank because it filled the boots formerly worn by Pz-III/IV, while Soviets classified it as a heavy tank because of its battle weight. Both are justified. But calling it a cavalry tank just because it could go as fast as a Crusader would miss the point by a wide margin.
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Aug 12, 2016 12:41
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Endman posted:Is this before or after Jutland? Because I imagine after that the Royal Navy was extremely bored. It was a classic Winston Churchill Good Idea in the winter of 1914-15; someone who'd been driving RN armoured cars (don't ask) at First Ypres suggested that a big trench-smashing steamroller might be a thing worth having, they tried to take it to the War Office and got nowhere, Churchill was going "you idiots, this is going to revolutionise warfare" and everyone else was "there goes Winston talking over-dramatic bollocks again  ". So then he set up the Landships Committee on his own authority as First Lord of the Admiralty, using the First Lord's equivalent of petty cash, in an office that was officially registered as being occupied by someone else, to pursue the project in secret. (Because if the War Office had found out, they'd have gone to the Prime Minster and the Chancellor of the Exchequer and told them that Winston was wasting money on another of his crackpot ideas and had it stopped.)And they still managed to beat the French, who had a three months' head start on an officially-sanctioned project with proper access to all the big munitions manufacturers, and who'd immediately figured out that they were trying to build a tracked fighting vehicle to troll around the battlefield shooting baddies with a big gun, by seven months. You really couldn't make it up if you tried.
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Aug 12, 2016 13:04
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Nenonen posted:Mmmm, not really... infantry tank comes from a philosophy that may result in something that resembles a heavy tank, but it's not the same thing. T-26 and H35 were infantry tanks. So was Matilda, even if it was heavier armoured. Matilda II's 2 pounder with no HE shell at all made it ineffective against fortified positions and it wasn't particularly hot against tanks either. But KV was specifically chosen due to experiences of fighting against fortified positions in Winter War where the thinly armoured T-28 medium hadn't quite cut the mustard. With its higher velocity 76.2mm gun it could perform roles that its predecessors couldn't: T-35 had carried high velocity 45mm guns for dealing with tanks and a low velocity 76.2mm gun to lob HE. At the same time KV had better mobility than Matilda, Valentine or Churchill. That doesn't change the fact that the Matildas and other Infantry tanks were designed to support infantry in order to break through lines of defense, which is the whole point of "Breakthrough" tanks. Whether or not they were suitably capable is not the matter at hand. Their doctrines seem to have the same general concept of Blitzkrieg, but they failed when it came to using it because of inadequate equipment while trying to use the same tactic on those who pioneered it, and against Rommel who 'mastered' it. (Since you're not doing much Blitzkrieging in 1944 Europe.) And I'm not calling anything a Cavalry tank, and certainly not just because I looked at the max speed it could achieve. You're telling me that the Panther can be a Medium tank and a Heavy tank, while telling me that the Matilda II can be an Infantry tank but NOT a Breakthrough tank, even thought the Matilda II followed the infantry and helped clear defensive positions in order to break through them and allow other, faster units to advance.
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Aug 12, 2016 13:33
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the assessment that there wasn't much blitzkrieging going on in 1944 is only correct if you think the word can't apply to the Allies.
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Aug 12, 2016 13:59
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:the assessment that there wasn't much blitzkrieging going on in 1944 is only correct if you think the word can't apply to the Allies. Sorry. Point is still that Infantry tanks are essentially Breakthrough tanks.
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Aug 12, 2016 14:08
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Another France WWII question- how significant was the surrender militarily? Would it have taken a major effort from the Germans to destroy the remainder of the French army if France had kept fighting, or were they already in casual mop up mode by that point?
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Aug 12, 2016 14:10
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Trin Tragula posted:It was a classic Winston Churchill Good Idea in the winter of 1914-15; someone who'd been driving RN armoured cars (don't ask) at First Ypres suggested that a big trench-smashing steamroller might be a thing worth having, they tried to take it to the War Office and got nowhere, Churchill was going "you idiots, this is going to revolutionise warfare" and everyone else was "there goes Winston talking over-dramatic bollocks again The First World War is like every comedy show I love (Yes Minister, Blackadder, etc) all rolled up into one tragic mess. 
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Aug 12, 2016 14:11
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Jobbo_Fett posted:That doesn't change the fact that the Matildas and other Infantry tanks were designed to support infantry in order to break through lines of defense, which is the whole point of "Breakthrough" tanks. Whether or not they were suitably capable is not the matter at hand. Their doctrines seem to have the same general concept of Blitzkrieg, but they failed when it came to using it because of inadequate equipment while trying to use the same tactic on those who pioneered it, and against Rommel who 'mastered' it. (Since you're not doing much Blitzkrieging in 1944 Europe.) In that case we may call any tank or tankette a breakthrough tank as long as it can follow infantry and carries any type of peashooter. Shouldn't there be some deeper similarities in design and purpose, such as a large caliber gun that can clear fortified positions? With its armament Matilda II was completely incapable of performing one of the primary tasks that you would expect from a heavy breakthrough tank.
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Aug 12, 2016 14:16
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Nenonen posted:In that case we may call any tank or tankette a breakthrough tank as long as it can follow infantry and carries any type of peashooter. Shouldn't there be some deeper similarities in design and purpose, such as a large caliber gun that can clear fortified positions? With its armament Matilda II was completely incapable of performing one of the primary tasks that you would expect from a heavy breakthrough tank. Aside from a larger caliber gun, what other differences exist between a Matilda II and a KV-1? "Design and purpose"
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Aug 12, 2016 14:22
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the KV is like twice as heavy and 50% faster the Matilda was weird and bad
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Aug 12, 2016 14:33
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Greatest blitzkrieg of all time happened in 1944.
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Aug 12, 2016 14:40
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:the assessment that there wasn't much blitzkrieging going on in 1944 is only correct if you think the word can't apply to the Allies. It's a really massive stretch to compare the Battle of France 1944 to the Battle of France 1940. The Allies didn't blitzkrieg out of Normandy. They spend two months fighting a grinding battle of attrition after which they finally achieved a breakthrough and engineered the collapse of the entire German front (aided in no small part by Hitler). But the bit at which they start moving at speed through the French countryside was enabled by the collapse of German resistance, it was not the cause of it.
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Aug 12, 2016 14:41
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Bagration Bagration Bagration
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Aug 12, 2016 15:03
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Can't we agree to disagree and just make fun of the Maus?
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Aug 12, 2016 15:08
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Koesj posted:Bagration Bagration Bagration Someone gets it.
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Aug 12, 2016 15:19
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Koesj posted:Bagration Bagration Bagration I remember watching the Soviet Storm ep on Bagration and even then the sheer scale of it is staggering.
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Aug 12, 2016 15:26
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Koesj posted:Bagration Bagration Bagration
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Aug 12, 2016 15:34
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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SeanBeansShako posted:Can't we agree to disagree and just make fun of the Maus? If the tank as a concept had been invented a bit earlier you loving know that we'd have had land dreadnoughts by 1914 and the first world war would have been essentially the plot of Mortal Engines with the British and German tank fleets driving all over France trying to find some small, 150 ton tanks to blow up without risking their 800 ton flagtanks.
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Aug 12, 2016 16:07
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Koesj posted:Bagration Bagration Bagration If you say that in a mirror does it summon the ghost of Zhukov?
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Aug 12, 2016 16:22
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Koesj posted:Bagration Bagration Bagration What's specifically the difference between blitzkrieg and deep battle? Blitzkrieg I usually see summarized as application of combined arms focused on a point in the other guy's front to break through it, and then dashing through that hole into the enemy's rear and hooking around to encircle the defenders. Deep battle I usually see summarized as repeated attacks across a wide area of the front until the enemy's line fails *somewhere*, and then you use mobile forces to rush into that gap deep into the enemy's rear and then eventually hook around to encircle and destroy the defenders you bypassed. So what distinguishes the two? Is it just a matter of scale?
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Aug 12, 2016 16:26
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