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So why didn't they buy some old/surplus G3s or FALs or something?
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May 5, 2017 07:49
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The Lone Badger posted:So why didn't they buy some old/surplus G3s or FALs or something? hell why we're at it let's ask why they didn't buildthe Bradley as an APC platform instead of the, uh, Bradley.
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May 5, 2017 08:08
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The Lone Badger posted:So why didn't they buy some old/surplus G3s or FALs or something? Does either gun have a reputation for being particularly accurate for sniping purposes?
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May 5, 2017 08:32
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Arquinsiel posted:Does either gun have a reputation for being particularly accurate for sniping purposes? much like their tanks, German guns sometimes get a weird rep for being innately accurate off the rack. the belgian one eh I guess there were plenty floating around but the M14s were already in the possession of the pentagon so.... That isn't to say domestic weapons are always the best:  Note the lack of bowcasters. FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 08:50 on May 5, 2017 |
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May 5, 2017 08:35
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Disinterested posted:If you need examples of what happens when you send tanks places and don't screen with infantry look no further than practically any place Russian export tanks have been used against their own people in the middle east ever. Those people have LAWs, though. This is covering things like "a lot of grenades strapped together" or "this mine is destined for that tank's tracks".
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May 5, 2017 08:58
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spectralent posted:Okay, so, I've had it claimed that heavy tanks in close-quarters with infantry, before the bazooka, didn't care and would be able to drive off without incident. This seems like complete bullshit to me, given that incidents of infantry who're been unable to maintain a defensive line against tanks and are forced to try and gently caress them up with mines, grenades, or molotovs show up all over the place on the eastern front. I mean, gently caress, even wikipedia seems to think close assault is a valid way of destroying tanks if you're SOL on anything else. Do I have this completely wrong? Tanks aren't as robust as they're made out to be. Burn dung and hay or drop smoke bombs, fell trees, rub mud in the vision slits, taunt them with runners, and eventually you got them in a place where you can kill the crew or mobility. If the question is whether the infantry assault are valid if you don't have anything else: Definitely! Already by the time of WW2 you see extensive field guides in assaulting tanks - That said, it took some time between the invention of the medium/heavy tank and effective infantry tactics against them, same as with any other development. E: beaten, sorry Tias fucked around with this message at 10:00 on May 5, 2017 |
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May 5, 2017 09:47
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Arquinsiel posted:Does either gun have a reputation for being particularly accurate for sniping purposes? Someone was saying that the M14 was particularly hard the accurise and keep accurate, so my thought was that there isn't exactly a shortage of battle rifles in 7.62x51mm that they could have used instead.
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May 5, 2017 09:48
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Tias posted:Tanks aren't as robust as they're made out to be. Burn dung and hay or drop smoke bombs, fell trees, rub mud in the vision slits, taunt them with runners, and eventually you got them in a place where you can kill the crew or mobility. Success depends on circumstances and era, and in WW2 wildly varies year to year. The Germans learned in 1939 Warsaw not to take tanks into an urban area unprotected. In 1941 the Soviets would drive a KV-1 up to German positions on a daily basis and shell infantry with impunity until HEAT shells arrived. In Tunisia 1943 US infantry were overrun and crushed in their foxholes by tanks. Sure if a tank rolls up to your hidey hole and you happen to have an AT weapon on you, you can go for it, but if he doesn't then the option of running at a big bulletproof box full of machineguns isn't exactly the most appealing, even if you happen to be one of the guys who has an AT weapon on him (you probably aren't). But yeah, tanks can take ground but they can't hold it.
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May 5, 2017 10:21
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See the KV thing would be directly relevant. I found a 1942 field guide, which presumably post-dates knowledge of serious heavy tanks, which suggests that if the AT guns have failed and you're being overrun, and the tanks are isolated, you can* attack them close-in. It suggests blinding them (even by using MGs at sights and vision blocks) and attacking from concealment, noting the dead-zone near the turret, and suggests, in addition to magnetic grenades, using satchel charges, mines on tracks, and "a bunch of grenades strapped together on a stick", which sounds a lot like "Ballsy infantry can gently caress up isolated tanks if they get a bit cheeky". I would presume if this was just totally suicidal it wouldn't appear in so many guides. *there is a lot of emphasis on "keep calm! don't run away!" throughout, which does handily back up the idea that it's bloody terrifying, too.
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May 5, 2017 10:35
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loving Luftwaffe. I knew they had a Panzer Division but now it also dawned on me that they also had a naval squadron. And as you might guess, Hermann Göring had low quality seamen.
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May 5, 2017 10:40
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spectralent posted:See the KV thing would be directly relevant. I found a 1942 field guide, which presumably post-dates knowledge of serious heavy tanks, which suggests that if the AT guns have failed and you're being overrun, and the tanks are isolated, you can* attack them close-in. It suggests blinding them (even by using MGs at sights and vision blocks) and attacking from concealment, noting the dead-zone near the turret, and suggests, in addition to magnetic grenades, using satchel charges, mines on tracks, and "a bunch of grenades strapped together on a stick", which sounds a lot like "Ballsy infantry can gently caress up isolated tanks if they get a bit cheeky". I would presume if this was just totally suicidal it wouldn't appear in so many guides. Easy words to write in a textbook, less easy if you are the guy being told to scoop up a handful of mud and run up to a 45 tonne monster and rub it in the vision slits. e: but a key point of German combined arms training was getting Panzer-grenadiers to sit inside a tank and going 'look, you can't see a loving thing from in here once you are buttoned up' to get them to appreciate just how vulnerable tanks are if they don't have infantry support. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 10:44 on May 5, 2017 |
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May 5, 2017 10:40
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Tankers are soft vulnerable terrified sacks of blood trapped inside a metal cage.
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May 5, 2017 10:44
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Alchenar posted:Easy words to write in a textbook, less easy if you are the guy being told to scoop up a handful of mud and run up to a 45 tonne monster and rub it in the vision slits. Yeah, I'm not suggesting it was easy, I'm suggesting it was possible and assuming it happened at some points enough that "infantry accompany tanks" was generally seen as a good idea from mid-late WW2 on to the present day. Surely it must have happened at some stage? Finland at the very least was loving up T-28s and T-35s with molotovs and satchels, right?
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May 5, 2017 10:55
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spectralent posted:See the KV thing would be directly relevant. I found a 1942 field guide, which presumably post-dates knowledge of serious heavy tanks, which suggests that if the AT guns have failed and you're being overrun, and the tanks are isolated, you can* attack them close-in. It suggests blinding them (even by using MGs at sights and vision blocks) and attacking from concealment, noting the dead-zone near the turret, and suggests, in addition to magnetic grenades, using satchel charges, mines on tracks, and "a bunch of grenades strapped together on a stick", which sounds a lot like "Ballsy infantry can gently caress up isolated tanks if they get a bit cheeky". I would presume if this was just totally suicidal it wouldn't appear in so many guides. Just send a dog under there.
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May 5, 2017 11:12
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Wonder if anyone has ever thrown their own poo poo at an enemy tank and if yes if he's still around so I can shake his nondominant hand.
aphid_licker fucked around with this message at 11:25 on May 5, 2017 |
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May 5, 2017 11:22
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aphid_licker posted:Wonder if anyone has ever thrown their own poo poo at an enemy tank buddy they probably throw their own poo poo at friendly tanks.
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May 5, 2017 11:25
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Hogge Wild posted:You could also just link your earlier posts. I would like to! But that was years ago in one of the older outdated-technology-threads. I have no idea how to find that stuff ever again.  Tomorrow will I try finding my sources again for a re-do.
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May 5, 2017 11:30
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The Lone Badger posted:So why didn't they buy some old/surplus G3s or FALs or something? The FAL actually competed against the M14 to become the US service rifle. There's evidence that the board selecting it intentionally tilted the odds in the American gun's favor so they could keep using American guns.
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May 5, 2017 11:58
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spectralent posted:See the KV thing would be directly relevant. I found a 1942 field guide, which presumably post-dates knowledge of serious heavy tanks, which suggests that if the AT guns have failed and you're being overrun, and the tanks are isolated, you can* attack them close-in. It suggests blinding them (even by using MGs at sights and vision blocks) and attacking from concealment, noting the dead-zone near the turret, and suggests, in addition to magnetic grenades, using satchel charges, mines on tracks, and "a bunch of grenades strapped together on a stick", which sounds a lot like "Ballsy infantry can gently caress up isolated tanks if they get a bit cheeky". I would presume if this was just totally suicidal it wouldn't appear in so many guides. The 'geballte ladung' (I think it could translate to 'bundled charge?') was just this, a handful of stick grenade charges taped around one stick grenade, and bob's your uncle, fanny's your aunt, you got an anti-tank weapon. German manuals also go into a great bit of detail around improvising satchel charges for anti-tank warfare, such as placing them on a wooden board attached to a rope, then pulling and sliding the satchel, ski-style, underneath the tank - or throwing a cloth sack with two charges over the gun barrel, demolishing it and stunning the crew.
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May 5, 2017 11:59
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Tias posted:The 'geballte ladung' (I think it could translate to 'bundled charge?') was just this, a handful of stick grenade charges taped around one stick grenade, and bob's your uncle, fanny's your aunt, you got an anti-tank weapon. Germans, inventors of the spike strip
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May 5, 2017 12:33
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I'm sure China generated a lot of stories about how to fight tanks with precisely gently caress all in terms of dedicated AT weaponry. I know at Taierzhuang they did it with suicide vests.
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May 5, 2017 12:50
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spectralent posted:Yeah, I'm not suggesting it was easy, I'm suggesting it was possible and assuming it happened at some points enough that "infantry accompany tanks" was generally seen as a good idea from mid-late WW2 on to the present day. Surely it must have happened at some stage? Finland at the very least was loving up T-28s and T-35s with molotovs and satchels, right? It happened plenty. I have no idea where anyone's getting the idea that it was some nigh impossible feat of ultimate badassery to kill a tank with an infantry assault. Dangerous? Yes. Chances are you're going to lose men. You might also not 100% kill it, but a tank that's been disabled behind your lines is as good as dead. The lack of effective AT weapons for dealing with things like the KV-1 lead to the Germans in particular getting really good at it. Note that this also requires trained soldiers who aren't going to freak out. There's a big difference between a bunch of multi-year Wehrmacht veterans in 1942 and fresh off the boat GIs at Kasserine Pass.
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May 5, 2017 13:00
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The Lone Badger posted:Someone was saying that the M14 was particularly hard the accurise and keep accurate, so my thought was that there isn't exactly a shortage of battle rifles in 7.62x51mm that they could have used instead. Those aren't American rifles and it would look bad to issue our boys guns made by foreigners. It would be admitting that we had designed an inferior weapon.
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May 5, 2017 13:01
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If you actually manage to reach and climb on a tank, how practical is it to force a hatch open and introduce a grenade? Are they easy to open so the crew can evacuate quickly, or are they very thoroughly locked?
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May 5, 2017 13:52
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Cyrano4747 posted:Those aren't American rifles and it would look bad to issue our boys guns made by foreigners. It would be admitting that we had designed an inferior weapon. Yeah, imagine sending the Kashyyk special forces into action without a bowcaster, it would just be wr  Well okay seeing as though we've been using the Beretta M9 and are looking at starting to issue Sig Sauer pistols (whose actual name escapes me but from what I've heard they are Very Good Anyway military procurement is always cool to talk about because you have so many bore diameter rabbit holes to go down and most of them have neato back stories like how they used 75 and 76mm guns on the Shermans in honor of ol' Cump sniping Leonidas Polk with 3" artillery. (They didn't actually use them in honor of that but you gotta admit it would be cool if they did)
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May 5, 2017 14:02
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I mean part of the reason we use dirty foreigner guns now is that the M14 was such a god drat fuckup.
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May 5, 2017 14:30
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I saw a lot of M21s in Afghanistan, plus a few of some new space age wizard M-14 variant....were they actually bad? God knows I never wanted to go anywhere near anything that heavy but the DMs seemed ok enough with them.
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May 5, 2017 14:40
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Also the Beretta and SIG are both established in the United States with domestic manufacture, with means things like magazines and parts can be sourced without having to go overseas. I don't know of any domestic American production of FALs, either inch or metric pattern.
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May 5, 2017 15:02
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The Lone Badger posted:If you actually manage to reach and climb on a tank, how practical is it to force a hatch open and introduce a grenade? Are they easy to open so the crew can evacuate quickly, or are they very thoroughly locked? Actually climbing on a tank is going to pretty unlikely - unlike action movies it's pretty difficult to mount a tank, which usually involves stepping on the tracks or wheels to get up. Not exactly a good idea when they're moving. Plus tanks tend to have things like pistol ports and grenade launchers to attack people who get too close. From what I remember I don't think tank hatches were lockable for the most part, but its pretty unlikely you'd get the chance to force one open. Getting a grenade into an already open hatch was more common IIRC. Though that relied on the tankers not being buttoned up around enemy infantry which is probably not a good idea. The much more likely route was that you would do one of the aforementioned methods of attack, like molotov/satchel to the engine deck or some way of loving with the track and immobilising it.
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May 5, 2017 15:14
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FAUXTON posted:Well okay seeing as though we've been using the Beretta M9 and are looking at starting to issue Sig Sauer pistols (whose actual name escapes me but from what I've heard they are Very Good It's the military version of the Sig P320, which I think has been designated XM17 / XM18. It's a really cool gun. I bought my first firearm a little over a year ago and I just happened to get talked into this exact pistol. I've been sorta keeping track of the Army picking it as their service pistol since then. Glock actually sued the government or something over the contract being awarded to Sig, but somehow this isn't a big deal and it happens with government contracts all the time. Ugh. https://www.armytimes.com/articles/glock-protests-armys-choice-of-sig-sauer-for-new-handgun Anywyas, I read recently that the 101st airborne is going to be the first to get them.
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May 5, 2017 15:20
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Cyrano4747 posted:It happened plenty. I have no idea where anyone's getting the idea that it was some nigh impossible feat of ultimate badassery to kill a tank with an infantry assault. The specific claim is quote:[Being helpless without a bazooka] pretty much sounds like most troops' experience of dealing with Tigers, Matildas, Churchills, etc. until the invention of the Bazooka. Even then, in Korea the T-34/85 was easily able to over-run Bazooka-armed troops until the arrival of the M20 Super Bazooka. The bit that really made me  was the insinuation that bazookas weren't capable of knocking out T-34s in close quarters alone; I would have thought the bazooka had entirely sufficient power to go through side and rear armour and probably even the front hull, since IIRC even the late T-34s only had substantiative armour improvement on the turret front.
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May 5, 2017 15:45
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Cyrano4747 posted:Those aren't American rifles and it would look bad to issue our boys guns made by foreigners. It would be admitting that we had designed an inferior weapon. Do Rheinmetall and Saab Bofors have significant US manufacturing presence? They're pretty big names in US military arms, right?
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May 5, 2017 15:53
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The Lone Badger posted:If you actually manage to reach and climb on a tank, how practical is it to force a hatch open and introduce a grenade? Are they easy to open so the crew can evacuate quickly, or are they very thoroughly locked? If the hatch is closed, there is basically no way to open it from outside. You have to be inside to close it all the way so there is no need for exterior access, when you leave there is always a hatch open even if partially As for forcing it open, it's a big chunk of very tough steel and the hinge mechanisms are very beefy to deal with the weight so you are not crowbaring that open, ever. Now, a lot of tank commanders operate with the hatch open (Mostly Western, the Soviets close the hatch if they are fighting). But even then it's open it's often is a open protected position, where the hatch lifts up a bit but stays over the commander's head, so he can look out without sticking his whole head out for snipers to find. See the first model on this for reference  You are not throwing anything in that unless you are on top of the tank. spectralent posted:The bit that really made me The 2.76in WWII vintage Bazooka did have issues with T-34 in Korea, that's why they upgraded to the 3.5in Super Bazooka. The original zook only penetrated about 90mm, that means that a T-34-85 ends up having just enough armor to resist it from the front completely, and the side of the turret would also have been tough. Given that the rest of the hull is 45mm@45 degree, even a side shot would have to be really square on to be sure of penetration, that's not exactly a comfortable performance. Kafouille fucked around with this message at 15:57 on May 5, 2017 |
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May 5, 2017 15:55
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bewbies posted:I saw a lot of M21s in Afghanistan, plus a few of some new space age wizard M-14 variant....were they actually bad? God knows I never wanted to go anywhere near anything that heavy but the DMs seemed ok enough with them. Read the article I linked above he goes into detail about the space gun m14 variants.
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May 5, 2017 15:55
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Davin Valkri posted:Do Rheinmetall and Saab Bofors have significant US manufacturing presence? They're pretty big names in US military arms, right? Don't know off the top of my head but rifle procurement in the 60s was a clusterfuck of production nationalism. The tests of the FAL vs the m14 were rigged. Another interesting bit from that is that one of the major benefits touted was that the m14 would be cheap as they could use old garand tooling to make them. That was a lie.
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May 5, 2017 15:57
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The Lone Badger posted:If you actually manage to reach and climb on a tank, how practical is it to force a hatch open and introduce a grenade? Are they easy to open so the crew can evacuate quickly, or are they very thoroughly locked? I seem to recall an account of (a Russian? Eastern European?) pouring paint onto a tank to starve the engine of air or something because they'd read about it, and it actually working. I wish I remembered where I saw it. If memory serves they were several floors up and ill-equipped which is why they tried. If anyone has a link I'd appreciate it
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May 5, 2017 16:00
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Kafouille posted:The 2.76in WWII vintage Bazooka did have issues with T-34 in Korea, that's why they upgraded to the 3.5in Super Bazooka. The original zook only penetrated about 90mm, that means that a T-34-85 ends up having just enough armor to resist it from the front completely, and the side of the turret would also have been tough. Given that the rest of the hull is 45mm@45 degree, even a side shot would have to be really square on to be sure of penetration, that's not exactly a comfortable performance. Huh, yeah, I can see that then. I had it in my head bazookas were like 100mm and panzerfausts were about 2-3x that depending on the mark.
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May 5, 2017 16:07
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simplefish posted:I seem to recall an account of (a Russian? Eastern European?) pouring paint onto a tank to starve the engine of air or something because they'd read about it, and it actually working. I wish I remembered where I saw it. If memory serves they were several floors up and ill-equipped which is why they tried. If anyone has a link I'd appreciate it In general hilarious stories about loving up tanks would be great.
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May 5, 2017 16:16
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spectralent posted:Huh, yeah, I can see that then. I had it in my head bazookas were like 100mm and panzerfausts were about 2-3x that depending on the mark. I've seen both figures but given the experiences of Task Force Smith in Korea I'm pretty sure it's closer to the lower one. EDIT : This also demonstrates that without effective handheld antitank weapons it's perfectly possible for a tank force to overrun infantry, even on their own. Improvised antitank mesures are a last ditch thing, not something you can rely on. Kafouille fucked around with this message at 16:23 on May 5, 2017 |
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May 5, 2017 16:19
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spectralent posted:In general hilarious stories about loving up tanks would be great. Seconded!
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May 5, 2017 16:25
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