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Pharmaskittle posted:Some of those pictures of barbed wire look pretty loving ridiculous. Would some amount of wire be capable of stopping even a tank from plowing through? Triple strand concertina will stop just about anything short of a bulldozer, with the caveat it might not stop it right away...it has to wind itself around tracks and wheels and axles before it'll stop things. I've had to untangle the stuff from under heavy trucks and that is an absolute nightmare.
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Feb 21, 2017 04:19
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To be fair, WWI-era tanks can often be stopped by anything more oppositional than a stiff breeze.
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Feb 21, 2017 05:14
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bewbies posted:
This sounds like one of the worst jobs on the planet outside of a sweatshop or a meat packing plant.
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Feb 21, 2017 05:31
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Oh boy! As a Combat Engineer it is always fun to read about my least favorite part of the job, defensive wire obstacles. The Bangalore is very much still used in the U.S Army as it is our primary means of breaching wire obstacles, and then even started making them cut down into smaller pieces so they are a lot easier to carry dismounted. Concertina wire is a pain and you get caught up in it just putting up the obstacle and I couldn't imagine stumbling upon it at night or in an actual attack.
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Feb 21, 2017 05:33
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Wire obstacles were a standard part of Soviet tank trials, at least before the war. The Vickers 6-ton tank was capable of making a 3.5-5 meter wide opening in five rows of double stranded wire. The T-34 straight up plows through wire obstacles in third gear without slowing down (unfortunately there weren't any specifics on the type of wire used).
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Feb 21, 2017 06:24
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The real way to get past barbed wire is to dig up to the enemy trenches and use this guy But seriously tunnels explosives and tanks are the only real ways.
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Feb 21, 2017 07:27
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:The real way to get past barbed wire is to dig up to the enemy trenches and use this guy 
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Feb 21, 2017 07:48
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Ensign Expendable posted:Wire obstacles were a standard part of Soviet tank trials, at least before the war. The Vickers 6-ton tank was capable of making a 3.5-5 meter wide opening in five rows of double stranded wire. The T-34 straight up plows through wire obstacles in third gear without slowing down (unfortunately there weren't any specifics on the type of wire used). Glad that I'm not the one who needs to clean the poo poo out afterwards
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Feb 21, 2017 08:45
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Bad things to happen to you in WW1: be in a tank that's broken down in the middle of a wire belt.
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Feb 21, 2017 08:52
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I'll have you know that I'm not some uncultured swine who isn't aware of the existance of armored recovery vehicles! I played Company of Heroes!  Besides, I only found out about the M39 only a few days ago and I'm smitten by it.
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Feb 21, 2017 08:55
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so I mostly lurk but I work on science and math with some high school kids, and I was getting ready to finish working with a student today I asked the dad (a huge burly guy) So, I hope you don't mind my asking, but you're Iranian? -Yes, it is bad right now. Yeah man I'm really sorry, I hope we don't get into another war. -I fought in a war for three years. The Iran-Iraq war? -Yes. I lost my brother, he was 16. War is bad, there is nothing good. Ten, twenty years later you look back and nothing was good. 
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Feb 21, 2017 09:28
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The 1917 Sears Roebuck Military Equipment catalog is now on Project Gutenberg.
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Feb 21, 2017 09:50
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Pellisworth posted:so I mostly lurk but I work on science and math with some high school kids, and I was getting ready to finish working with a student today I asked the dad (a huge burly guy) A workmate of mine went through his conscript period in Iraq in their engineering corps. He was sick during the time that his basic cohort went through the range and it's pretty much for this reason that he surveyed airbases far from the front lines while all his mates died clearing mines.
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Feb 21, 2017 09:53
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Pharmaskittle posted:Some of those pictures of barbed wire look pretty loving ridiculous. Would some amount of wire be capable of stopping even a tank from plowing through? 
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Feb 21, 2017 09:54
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Dibs on not being the one to braid 16 strands of barbed wire together.
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Feb 21, 2017 10:39
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Do you really need that much to stop a T-26? By the way, people like to talk about tankettes and lovely tanks having armor that could not resist rifle-calibre AP ammo, but how common was it in WWII and prior? Did grunts get issued two stripper clips of AP rounds? Did machinegun crews have a belt labeled "in the case of ugly and stupid interwar tank..."?
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Feb 21, 2017 10:44
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The Lone Badger posted:Dibs on not being the one to braid 16 strands of barbed wire together. They used to have the most creative forms of punishment, now it's called 'bullying' and is forbidden. 
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Feb 21, 2017 11:00
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Ataxerxes posted:The Finnish military issued, at least back when I was there, thick leather gloves called "kissantappohanska" (or cat-killing glove) for the double purpose of handling wire and acting as a winter glove when fitted with a wool liner or, ostensibly, to stop cats from scrathsing you while you killed them. Nato wire is drat nasty stuff. I can't just leave that hanging out there. Is there a reason the Finnish military wanted you killing cats?
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Feb 21, 2017 12:32
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forkboy84 posted:I can't just leave that hanging out there. Is there a reason the Finnish military wanted you killing cats? I'm split between hoping it's a metaphor for removing barbed wire and feral cat control.
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Feb 21, 2017 12:38
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 No mosquito net is good enough for our troops unless they can smoke a pipe at the same time.  A shirt. No underwear required. AKA a "onesie".  I think S&R have misunderstood the nature of the conflict.  Not only can you buy a machinegun but you can also buy pistols and kids rifles. Note the text at the end : Machine guns are used largely by police organizations, home guards, and municipalities in case of riots.
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Feb 21, 2017 13:11
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Boiled Water posted:I'm split between hoping it's a metaphor for removing barbed wire and feral cat control. General Winter does all the feral cat control up here, I'm afraid.
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Feb 21, 2017 13:15
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SgtMaj needs his swagger stick
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Feb 21, 2017 13:18
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JcDent posted:Do you really need that much to stop a T-26? I think just after tanks became a thing, rifles to penetrate tanks became a thing. Starting with that ogre rifle the previous thread had a picture of.
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Feb 21, 2017 13:33
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Yeah, but the way I understand it, the talk is about regular Kar98s firing AP, and not German engineers literally upscaling a rifle (and its ammo) for a tank.
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Feb 21, 2017 13:39
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_bullet I love the concept of Spitzgeschoss mit Kern Übungsmunition mit Zerleger self-destructing practise round  FastestGunAlive posted:SgtMaj needs his swagger stick No Parisian pimp is gonna respect you if you don't have a pimp cane, Patton knew this  It's possible to overdo, though, and you'll end up looking like you need to overcompensate 
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Feb 21, 2017 13:53
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KombatKoch posted:Oh boy! As a Combat Engineer it is always fun to read about my least favorite part of the job, defensive wire obstacles. The Bangalore is very much still used in the U.S Army as it is our primary means of breaching wire obstacles, and then even started making them cut down into smaller pieces so they are a lot easier to carry dismounted. Concertina wire is a pain and you get caught up in it just putting up the obstacle and I couldn't imagine stumbling upon it at night or in an actual attack. poo poo, color me corrected. I remember reading that we were phasing it out just before 9/11 happened. That just furthers my point: blowing up barbed wire is still the really only good combat expedient way to clear a hole if you don't have a tank handy. JcDent posted:Yeah, but the way I understand it, the talk is about regular Kar98s firing AP, and not German engineers literally upscaling a rifle (and its ammo) for a tank. It really depends on the use the bullet is being put to and the military. During WW2 MG crews were issued it as part of the ammo mix precisely because it meant they could do work against lightly armored vehicles. Having some AP in a belt is the difference between a half track being a nuisance and a really loving big problem, after all. The US really jacked up the production of AP in 1943. There was an ordinance department report that stated AP should replace ball for general purpose use and there is a LOT of anecdotal evidence that the US had a goddamned mountain of it sitting around into the 50s (mostly old guys who went through basic in the '50s-60s talking about never seeing anything at training ranges but black tip). That's drat near the definition of fighting a war like a rich country, though. The long and the short of it is that it's something that was floating around just about any combat zone as something infantrymen could get their hands on pretty routinely - either through issue or making friends with an MG crew - in WW2.
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Feb 21, 2017 14:29
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Nebakenezzer posted:I think just after tanks became a thing, rifles to penetrate tanks became a thing. Starting with that ogre rifle the previous thread had a picture of. The T-Gewehr? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mWeNNiG9YU&t=1248s
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Feb 21, 2017 14:41
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Cyrano4747 posted:poo poo, color me corrected. I remember reading that we were phasing it out just before 9/11 happened. That just furthers my point: blowing up barbed wire is still the really only good combat expedient way to clear a hole if you don't have a tank handy. Even with a tank handy you might still want to blow it so you don't have to fish concertina wire out of the tracks.
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Feb 21, 2017 14:44
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Boiled Water posted:Even with a tank handy you might still want to blow it so you don't have to fish concertina wire out of the tracks. I suspect that's much more of a concern for the engineers and tank crews than it is for the infantryman who wants a clear path.
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Feb 21, 2017 15:21
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If you twist 16 of the Swagger Sticks together it's tough enough to support even the fattest Sgt Maj.
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Feb 21, 2017 15:27
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Nenonen posted:Finnish army found in its interwar tests that 16 barbed wires woven together and spun across trees was enough to stop a tank or at least a lovely interwar tank. It's not too practical as the trees would still be the weakest link, but armies tested all kinds of tricks and then printed them in field manuals. Just because it was in a manual didn't mean it was all that useful in practice. quote:Toivo Ahtimo who fought in the Winter War recalls: "The techniques of fighting tanks that we were taught during peacetime were not very useful. The manuals said that you could stop a tank by shoving a log or crowbar in the suspension!"
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Feb 21, 2017 15:43
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Love it how now tankers nor Russians were around to stop Finnish Willy the Coyote antics.
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Feb 21, 2017 15:56
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It's a popular enough story that a war museum over here displays a birch log among the other AT weapons of the war.
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Feb 21, 2017 16:27
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It sounds a bit like a legend but there are videos of Syrians running up to MBTs and blowing them up by rolling grenades down the gun barrel, so I don't actually doubt that the log trick was tried a few times at all. Tanks are super vulnerable without screening infantry and not travelling at 40km/h across open terrain.
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Feb 21, 2017 16:31
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Alchenar posted:It sounds a bit like a legend but there are videos of Syrians running up to MBTs and blowing them up by rolling grenades down the gun barrel, so I don't actually doubt that the log trick was tried a few times at all. If that's the video i'm thinking of, the tank was already hosed at that point - I think it had a misfire or had left the breech open for some reason, leaving it vulnerable to the ol' grenade down the gun barrel trick. Not to say that the Syrian army ever was good at using tanks in an urban environment. Reference: every single video of a T-72 getting sniped by a ATGM with not an infantryman in sight
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Feb 21, 2017 16:39
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Infantry-tank cooperation is harder these days. You really don't want to be too close to a MBT when it fires its main gun in an alley because the muzzle blast (made worse by nearby buildings) can maim or kill you and the crew won't notice you, and there's nothing that escorting infantry can do anyway to ATGMs as evidenced by the thousands of videos in which infantry is getting sniped by them.
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Feb 21, 2017 17:20
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Infantry sniping with ATGMs is a tried and true tactics in the power plant level in Batllefield play4free. Take that, you sniper piece of poo poo
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Feb 21, 2017 17:25
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JcDent posted:Infantry sniping with ATGMs is a tried and true tactics in the power plant level in Batllefield play4free. SRAW Sniping is one of my favorite bf4 pastimes.
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Feb 21, 2017 17:28
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This is a video showing a tank in Syria being taken out by rebels with an RPG-29, mixed in with footage taken by the rebels themselves. The rebels are to the right of the tank column, in the buildings across the field at 1:21. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbHcA6mXX7o At 7:05 it splices in film from the rebels running in. You can see exactly what the battlefield looks like from both sides. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Feb 21, 2017 |
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Feb 21, 2017 17:33
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JcDent posted:Love it how now tankers nor Russians were around to stop Finnish Willy the Coyote antics. It's a pretty common story for the Winter War and early GPW. Tanks are thrown into battle without recon or any time for the tank commander to get concrete objectives from the infantry commander, infantry doesn't follow tanks, tanks root around the front lines taking losses from AT fire and tank destroyers, eventually drive back to base without achieving anything. Rinse and repeat until 1942-ish. For bonus points, that tank was probably picked out of a tank platoon for a pointless solo mission by an infantry commander whose superior picked the platoon out of a company for a pointless solo mission and so on and so forth until the entire tank brigade just kind of dissolved into nothing.
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Feb 21, 2017 17:43
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