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Try the spergs in TFRs cold war / aviation thread. It's become a catch all modern military and policy thread.
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Feb 12, 2017 17:04
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Wikipedia, Janes, or any type of professional journal for the Navy or US military
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Feb 12, 2017 17:07
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Hogge Wild posted:
When on a state visit to Poland in 1972, Fidel fell ill at some point and rumours spread he died. To counteract those, he played a basketball showmatch against Polish team Wisla Krakow. 
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Feb 12, 2017 21:50
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Tevery Best posted:When on a state visit to Poland in 1972, Fidel fell ill at some point and rumours spread he died. To counteract those, he played a basketball showmatch against Polish team Wisla Krakow. L A T E R S
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Feb 12, 2017 22:24
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Tevery Best posted:When on a state visit to Poland in 1972, Fidel fell ill at some point and rumours spread he died. To counteract those, he played a basketball showmatch against Polish team Wisla Krakow. Look at how much that Chuck is bending under his juke.
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Feb 13, 2017 01:03
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Tevery Best posted:When on a state visit to Poland in 1972, Fidel fell ill at some point and rumours spread he died. To counteract those, he played a basketball showmatch against Polish team Wisla Krakow. that "fidel" in your photo is clearly the third one from the right from my photo
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Feb 13, 2017 13:46
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Some dude on Bolt Action facebook has posted Chinese research article claiming that spaced armor/skirts actually help HEAT charges penetrate better. Anyone has anything on that?
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Feb 13, 2017 14:02
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WW2 Data We finish up British aircraft pyrotechnics today with entries on smoke floats and aluminum markers. How are each used? What color smoke do they give off? What is the purpose of the Smoke Generator No.6? All that and more at the blog!
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Feb 13, 2017 14:06
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I was cleaning my booksmarks and found this post by Slim Jim Pickens: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=3585027&perpage=40&pagenumber=948#post457771564quote:65 million years ago, the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs smashes into the Earth, precisely 6 hours earlier than in our timeline. It lands in what we now call Central Russia.
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Feb 13, 2017 14:11
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JcDent posted:Some dude on Bolt Action facebook has posted Chinese research article claiming that spaced armor/skirts actually help HEAT charges penetrate better. Anyone has anything on that? Depending on the charge, giving it a little extra standoff will increase penetration, until a certain point, after which it will start dropping off again.
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Feb 13, 2017 14:30
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So that's nothing new, eh? Was there any research done on shurzen affecting that? That guy seem to think they actually helped the heat round more often than not.
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Feb 13, 2017 15:54
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I remember reading in this thread about the Schurzen in WW2 helping british HEAT rounds because their fuses were less than ideal and having them tripped by the shirt resulted in them detonating at a more ideal distance, but i dont recall the details.
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Feb 13, 2017 16:02
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I don't know if you can generalize like that, shaped charges vary greatly. Besides the schurzen was against anti-tank rifles, not shaped charges.
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Feb 13, 2017 16:02
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Nenonen posted:I don't know if you can generalize like that, shaped charges vary greatly. Besides the schurzen was against anti-tank rifles, not shaped charges. They were useful against some anti-tank weapons in general, the schurzen because of the stand-off armor stuff, and the wire mesh because it caused the round to deviate from its regular path reducing its effectiveness.
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Feb 13, 2017 16:10
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Nenonen posted:I don't know if you can generalize like that, shaped charges vary greatly. Besides the schurzen was against anti-tank rifles, not shaped charges. How prevailent were at-rifles in late war?
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Feb 13, 2017 17:34
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JcDent posted:How prevailent were at-rifles in late war? Pretty sure no one dropped AT rifles completely from their inventory as they were still useful against Armoured Cars and soft-skin vehicles. Russians still made use of them and the Brits still had their Boys AT rifles.
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Feb 13, 2017 17:47
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I know the Soviets had them in numbers, but the Brits had started whacking them on armoured cars and UCs and things. EDIT: ^  Speaking of, how useful was "bedspring armour" that you see on late soviet tanks? I've been told it didn't work, but that was by people who also say everything soviet was inherently worse.
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Feb 13, 2017 17:50
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spectralent posted:I know the Soviets had them in numbers, but the Brits had started whacking them on armoured cars and UCs and things. AFAIK, they performed similarly to the German mesh stuff, except that they came about specifically as a reaction to Panzerfaust use in urban areas.
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Feb 13, 2017 17:56
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Polyakov posted:I remember reading in this thread about the Schurzen in WW2 helping british HEAT rounds because their fuses were less than ideal and having them tripped by the shirt resulted in them detonating at a more ideal distance, but i dont recall the details. I know you probably meant "skirt", but I'm imagining the Schurzen just being a giant Nazi graphic tee put over a Panzer.
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Feb 13, 2017 19:09
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chitoryu12 posted:I know you probably meant "skirt", but I'm imagining the Schurzen just being a giant Nazi graphic tee put over a Panzer. And thus, Girls und Panzer was born
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Feb 13, 2017 19:13
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spectralent posted:I know the Soviets had them in numbers, but the Brits had started whacking them on armoured cars and UCs and things. I have a document with trials of it and apparently it worked fine. The mesh was destroyed in impact, but the main armour was not penetrated.
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Feb 13, 2017 19:36
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Pretty sure no one dropped AT rifles completely from their inventory as they were still useful against Armoured Cars and soft-skin vehicles. Russians still made use of them and the Brits still had their Boys AT rifles. I mean they're still around today, they're now just called anti-materiel rifles - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett_M82 and similar.
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Feb 13, 2017 19:44
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feedmegin posted:I mean they're still around today, they're now just called anti-materiel rifles - Yeah but I was speaking specifically about WW2. Going through some Wing Leader (Board Game) stuff and I noticed they had a pdf on some of the aces they used in the game. One of them is a dude named Sadaaki Akamatsu  Probably drunk right now quote:Sadaaki Akamatsu was well known, with a reputation as a trouble-maker and also a trickster. Many of his air-victories were obtained while drunk and his supervisors stood behind him, as did his fellow pilots who frequently defended and covered for him. Henry Sakaida confirmed that Akamatsu flew more than 8,000 flight hours. At the end of the war time in Pacific, Akamatsu flew the Mitsubishi J2M Raiden fighter
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Feb 13, 2017 20:09
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Lately slate armor has been in vogue, it's quite effective against RPGs and works by crushing the detonator: I think I would poo poo myself if I found that sticking from the side of my vehicle after returning from a patrol... The downside of slat armor is that it weighs so loving much and about 50% of hits will still detonate. Also I think it's ineffective against some types of ATGMs where the main detonator is not right at the front. To reduce weigh so it could be fitted on lighter vehicles and easier to replace after being damaged, there's also net versions like the below Tarian. I wonder how effective these are and if they actually work then why were they introduced only now and not during cold war? 
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Feb 13, 2017 20:14
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JcDent posted:Some dude on Bolt Action facebook has posted Chinese research article claiming that spaced armor/skirts actually help HEAT charges penetrate better. Anyone has anything on that? It's basically true for modern warheads, but more complicated than that. Basically, it has to do with how carefully the HEAT round is put together, most importantly the liner. The liner is a metal, usually copper since it's heavy yet ductile, cone that defines the shape of the hollow cavity in the explosive charge that defines a HEAT shell. WWII era shells were often hemispherical, or had no liner at all, relying on just the direct action of the Monroe effect on the armor. Non-ideal shapes meant the liner would not form into a coherent jet, but would instead fragment into chunks, all headed for a single point but then continuing on in a conical shower of shrapnel. This meant early warheads either had to be in direct contact with the armor (if linerless) or be at a very specific distance to be worth anything. This meant stand off plates worked well, as they kept the warhead from detonating at it's preferred distance and would sharply reduce it's effectiveness. After the war everyone worked out the kinks into the 50s, standardized on more or less the same designs, and that led to dramatic improvements in HEAT performance, and the death knell of the heavy tank, as it was thought no practical amount of armor could save you from a good hit. In this era spaced armor is marginal, it can still be useful but the warheads of the period could hold a jet together long enough that the space required to meaningfully degrade them was starting to be prohibitive. Then came the 80s and the realization that HEAT round liners needed to be manufactured with a level of precision uncommon in normal ordnance to perform optimally. Those precision-shaped liners and careful molding of the explosive to be highly symmetrical enabled the jet to hold together for long distances, and put an end to the usefulness of spaced armor alone as a HEAT deterrent. In a lot of cases modern HEAT rounds need more standoff than they have built in to perform optimally, simply because you don't really want to have to cart around ordnance with a 2m long, mostly empty conical nose just to gain 20mm in theoretical penetration. Do note that spaced armor is still relevant, but only in conjunction with other means to first disrupt the projectile. Nenonen posted:I wonder how effective these are and if they actually work then why were they introduced only now and not during cold war? Well, technically it was :  Slat armor really is not spaced armor, as you said it's main goal is to disrupt the fusing, most importantly it was designed specifically versus the RPG-7 fuses. It has a secondary effect of crushing/bending the liner and causing the HEAT jet to be malformed, but that only works versus relatively slow, crude fuses. The reason you don't see it in the cold war is that the main threat was ATGMs and tank rounds from an equal opponent, and slat armor simply doesn't work when faced with those. Hell if you look at any modern tank urban warfare kit, they have slat only over the engine compartment, it's not reliable enough to be used over the crew spaces. Kafouille fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Feb 13, 2017 |
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Feb 13, 2017 20:37
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How the US Army was running itself in 1970, via Life Magazine
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Feb 14, 2017 00:16
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Wow this sounds like a complete disaster. Their captain was more afraid of getting fragged than he was about the Vietnamese. It seems like there was no plan at all other than to walk around the jungle on patrol hoping you don't make contact with the enemy.
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Feb 14, 2017 01:11
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Nenonen posted:Lately slate armor has been in vogue, it's quite effective against RPGs and works by crushing the detonator: That's not quite how it works. The particular warhead that can work on has a piezoelectic fuse at the nose and a detonator at the base. The RPG has an inner and outer metal shell that form an electric circuit between the activator and the detonator. One end of the fuse is connected to the outer shell, the other end is connected to the inner shell. When the rocket strikes a target, the fuse is crushed, and since it's piezoelectric that generates a charge, which creates a voltage across the two shells, so current flows through the detonator and that's what makes it go off. The slat armor operates on the idea that if the side of the rocket strikes one of the slats before the nose fuse hits the target, this will crush the inner and outer shells together, creating a short circuit that will prevent current from flowing through the detonator when the fuse gets crushed. There are plenty of RPGs that that won't work on, however, because they use a more modern design that places a detonator at the nose as well.
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Feb 14, 2017 01:28
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Ensign Expendable posted:I have a document with trials of it and apparently it worked fine. The mesh was destroyed in impact, but the main armour was not penetrated. "Soviets would say anything in trials to make themselves look good/impress their boss!" I don't think I'm going to win any arguments but it's good to know.
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Feb 14, 2017 02:40
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OctaviusBeaver posted:Wow this sounds like a complete disaster. Their captain was more afraid of getting fragged than he was about the Vietnamese. It seems like there was no plan at all other than to walk around the jungle on patrol hoping you don't make contact with the enemy. tbh if i was some poor gently caress who got drafted to fight in vietnam I would be doing pretty much the same thing as them.
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Feb 14, 2017 08:21
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OctaviusBeaver posted:Wow this sounds like a complete disaster. Their captain was more afraid of getting fragged than he was about the Vietnamese. It seems like there was no plan at all other than to walk around the jungle on patrol hoping you don't make contact with the enemy. Army leadership in general during Vietnam was a disaster. It was a war where the top-level leadership continually attempted to apply tactical solutions to strategic problems, and junior officers were simply focused on trying to survive their 6-month tour. To an extent the Army still suffers from the first issue, but it's hard to overstate just how poorly Army leadership performed during the war from Westmoreland on down.
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Feb 14, 2017 08:35
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OctaviusBeaver posted:Wow this sounds like a complete disaster. Their captain was more afraid of getting fragged than he was about the Vietnamese. It seems like there was no plan at all other than to walk around the jungle on patrol hoping you don't make contact with the enemy. My uncle was a LRRP during the war. Basically this was the SOP for a night ambush: Hike from the firebase to just past the treeline, wait all night, and come back in the morning reporting negative contact. When you're in a war that you know isn't going to be won, survival is the best strategy.
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Feb 14, 2017 15:53
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Acebuckeye13 posted:leadership continually attempted to apply tactical solutions to strategic problems Can anyone elaborate on this?
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Feb 14, 2017 17:18
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According to the article, this is also when a lot of the people in the war were draftees who didn't want to be there in the first place. It's bad enough when you volunteer for a lovely job that can't be completed and just have to stay alive long enough to go home, but now add in the "I didn't want this job and was threatened with imprisonment if I didn't take it" factor. Turns out that when you're not facing an existential threat or stopping bona fide evil dictators (like it was in WW2), it's really hard to make draftees give a poo poo about going the extra mile to win.
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Feb 14, 2017 17:25
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zoux posted:Can anyone elaborate on this? There was no plan for victory in Vietnam other than 'kill lots of North Vietnamese until hopefully they give up'. To that extent all the strategic thinking revolved around the question of 'how do we kill more VK/NVA?' rather than actual strategic issues like formulating a more tangible war goal and a plan to bring North Vietnam to the peace table. ie. exactly the same plan that they worked to in Korea and at best results in, well, North Korea. e: to rephrase the above, Strategic thinking is all about 'this is the end-state we want from the war and here are the steps we need to take to get us there'. Tactical thinking is 'how do I win this battle with the guys in front of me'. In Vietnam the problem was that for the most part the Strategic thinking failed and became stuck in the assumption that if you could just win all the battles then eventually you would just win the war. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Feb 14, 2017 |
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Feb 14, 2017 17:26
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Here's an amusing anecdote from Vietnam from my cousin's father. I never met him, so I cannot vouch for its authenticity. He was a captain in some sort of engineering company. One day, while they were camped out somewhere, a new recruit walked into his tent and said, "Captain, how do I get the pin back in the grenade?" And then the recruit handed him a grenade. He leapt out of the tent, tripped over the tent rope, rolled down a hill and broke his leg. The grenade, of course, was a dud, they were merely playing a prank on him.
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Feb 14, 2017 17:27
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You can get the pin back into the grenade just fine if the spoon hasn't come off yet.
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Feb 14, 2017 17:43
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Happy Valentines day everyone.
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Feb 14, 2017 17:47
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Can't find any of the guys from the LIFE article on The Wall so that's nice. Utermahlen went on to be a writer of what looks like really terrible historical novels, but they're getting good reviews so wtg Cap'n 
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Feb 14, 2017 17:58
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chitoryu12 posted:According to the article, this is also when a lot of the people in the war were draftees who didn't want to be there in the first place. It's bad enough when you volunteer for a lovely job that can't be completed and just have to stay alive long enough to go home, but now add in the "I didn't want this job and was threatened with imprisonment if I didn't take it" factor. The thing is, it wasn't just draftees who didn't want to be there (And IIRC, only 1/3 of US Forces in Vietnam were ever actually draftees). The terrible leadership environment under Westmoreland, the lack of measurable progress other than inflated body counts, and the rotation system (Where individual soldiers would be shipped home after a 12 month tour, and junior officers after 6) all served to utterly destroy morale and unit cohesion across the armed forces in Vietnam as a whole. Acebuckeye13 fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Feb 14, 2017 |
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Feb 14, 2017 18:06
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