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JcDent posted:Well, maybe that's the case. I think in the 1960s there was a African AF - Zimbabwe I think - that was equipped with lots of fairly modern Soviet equipment that had serious problems thanks to mercenary flyers in basic trainers
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Sep 7, 2017 15:42
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JcDent posted:Yeah, but when you start reading about conflicts, I seems that everything that Soviets produced gets clowned, from missiles to tanks and planes. InRangeTV tested a wide variety of guns in a mud test. The only ones to pass with a 100% were the Luger, several AR-15s, and the CETME-L. The key with mud is tight tolerances that keep mud from entering in the first place, because as soon as mud enters the chamber you're done. The AK's advantages are ease of disassembly, cleaning, and manufacturing.
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Sep 7, 2017 15:48
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I looked up the late CW NATO OOB sometime and an absolutely shocking share of the formations in Western Germany was rocking poo poo like Leo1s.
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Sep 7, 2017 15:49
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Quinntan posted:Compared to its peers, the T-55 was a hell of a lot better than the M48 Patton and Centurion. This is not true. There have been 20 some odd conflicts over the years where M48s have fought T55s. The M48 equipped side is ahead. They are worst equivalent and in some respects the M48 is superior.
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Sep 7, 2017 15:58
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Nebakenezzer posted:I think in the 1960s there was a African AF - Zimbabwe I think - that was equipped with lots of fairly modern Soviet equipment that had serious problems thanks to mercenary flyers in basic trainers It was Nigeria during the war against Biafra.
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Sep 7, 2017 16:00
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JcDent posted:I just get this feeling that Soviet hardware is presented as underperforming whenever its performance mentioned online and and I can't wrap my head around the idea that Soviet union continuously produced inferior stuff, yet somehow Cold war lasted for 50 years. To add to this, when Soviet gear's users had their act together, it worked out perfectly well against Western gear and skilled operators thereof - e.g. the opening stages of the Yom Kippur war - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Badr_(1973)
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Sep 7, 2017 16:05
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chitoryu12 posted:InRangeTV tested a wide variety of guns in a mud test. The only ones to pass with a 100% were the Luger, several AR-15s, and the CETME-L.
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Sep 7, 2017 16:07
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chitoryu12 posted:InRangeTV tested a wide variety of guns in a mud test. The only ones to pass with a 100% were the Luger, several AR-15s, and the CETME-L. Also, it's worth noting that immersion in mud is only one potential issue, and what a gun in good condition dropped in mud gains from tight tolerances gains, a gun in poor condition with worn components or just a gun that hasn't been cleaned recently loses when trying to fire, since things don't have to go as wrong to cause issues. Basically a gun's reliability isn't a linear meter, but the interlocking likelihoods of multiple failure modes. Sometimes it's an active tradeoff where forestalling one makes another more likely. xthetenth fucked around with this message at 16:17 on Sep 7, 2017 |
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Sep 7, 2017 16:14
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Murgos posted:This is not true. There have been 20 some odd conflicts over the years where M48s have fought T55s. The M48 equipped side is ahead. They are worst equivalent and in some respects the M48 is superior. That isn't true. The M48 as a tank doesn't afford the same level of protection as the T-55, and the 90mm gun that they carried comes straight from the M26 Pershing. As mentioned above though, the qualities of the individual tanks don't particularly matter, what's more important are the crew's training, the C4I supporting them and the other support assets. Give the Iraqis Abrams tanks and give the Yanks T-55s and Desert Storm doesn't change much.
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Sep 7, 2017 16:18
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Why did the US produce a lot of M47 Dragons and kept using it into the late 90 until it got replaced by the Javelin?
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Sep 7, 2017 16:35
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Well, unless you take Desert Storm era modification T-55s, I don't think the 100mm gun on a T-55A would do much against Abrams.
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Sep 7, 2017 16:36
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:It was Nigeria during the war against Biafra. That's who it was, thanks. Iraq vs. American tanks in the first gulf war is pretty interesting, as on paper the tanks (say the T-72s of the Republican Guard) and the Abrams don't look all that different. Also the tactical assumption the Iraqis made - that it was impossible to have an effective operation in the open desert - was derived from the Iraqi experience in the Iran-Iraq war. What screwed the Iraqis over was several technological/and tactical changes they didn't keep up with:
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Sep 7, 2017 16:38
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JcDent posted:Well, maybe that's the case. Combat Mission this, we have the technology!
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Sep 7, 2017 16:39
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xthetenth posted:Also, it's worth noting that immersion in mud is only one potential issue, and what a gun in good condition dropped in mud gains from tight tolerances gains, a gun in poor condition with worn components or just a gun that hasn't been cleaned recently loses when trying to fire, since things don't have to go as wrong to cause issues. With mud and dust immersion, the biggest thing you want is a sealed environment. As soon as mud or rocks get into the gun, you're done. Doesn't matter how tough it is. The AR-15, Luger, and CETME-L all do spectacularly (and to a lesser degree, the M1911) because they have tight tolerances on the exterior part fitting, leaving incredibly tiny gaps for mud to get in. Even the cycling of the bolt or toggle lock isn't enough time and space for mud to get in, usually. They fired a whole magazine flawlessly even after being completed soaked in thick mud on both sides. In terms of how various guns actually did in practice: * The AK can fire one or two shots before seizing up bad enough that it needs to be disassembled and cleaned out. The loose tolerances don't do anything to stop mud from affecting functioning, and just make it easier to clean and return to functionality. * The IWI X95 suffered a bizarre problem unique to its design where mud entered the large hollow space inside the gun's body and jammed up the trigger linkage rod and one of the two magazine releases, requiring total disassembly to clean out. * The M1 Garand's first try saw it fail to fire even the first shot, as it has a gap at the rear of the receiver where mud immediately blocked the hammer from striking the firing pin. The second attempt only saw one shot before failure. The M14 proved that the design hadn't been appreciably improved in terms of this flaw, as both mud tests and a dust storm test (using an air hose to blow dust at the rifle while firing) saw it jam within 2 shots or less every single time. * The Mosin-Nagant became impossible to cycle, as little pebbles entered a gap between the bolt and receiver and locked it up. * The Glock could only fire 2 or 3 shots at best before requiring a full field strip and thorough cleaning to return to functionality. * The Hi-Point C9 actually did better than the Glock and could be returned to functionality by removing the slide and quickly pouring some water over the gun. Impromptu tests often bear unexpected results.
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Sep 7, 2017 16:48
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Arquinsiel posted:The various Arab-Israeli wars? Jordan had basically the same Western kit as the Israelis in the first one at least and they kind of still got clowned. The Israelis outnumbered them though, since the Arab nations attacked one after the other, giving the Israelis numerical superiority in each fight.
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Sep 7, 2017 17:47
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https://twitter.com/_youhadonejob1/status/905424652595494912
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Sep 7, 2017 17:48
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Pilots are dirty buggers, despite the class thing.
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Sep 7, 2017 17:53
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I think I've heard this as a joke about Polish accents
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Sep 7, 2017 17:55
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Yeah, the G3 had an interesting thing where it'd jam up and need manual cycling, but as it started to dry up the blowback started cleaning the gun out. The main thing I'm getting at is that while a single test can show that a gun has a serious flaw, but it can't show that a gun that handles it somewhat better is superior in all cases.
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Sep 7, 2017 18:02
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JcDent posted:Yeah, but when you start reading about conflicts, I seems that everything that Soviets produced gets clowned, from missiles to tanks and planes. This generally has more to do with training and supply; read stuff like the US reports on the Korean war warning that fights against NK's T-34s weren't remotely representative because of training deficiencies and meagre supply of rounds. Nebakenezzer posted:
I think I remember reading about this actually not being the case because of an Iraqi focus on using the tank like an SPG to support other formations rather than as a manoeuvre element in it's own right; the focus on defence in depth and bypassing enemy defences and such that you'd see in deep battle weren't there. It's not like the gulf war's a big area for me though, I'm happy to be correct. spectralent fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Sep 7, 2017 |
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Sep 7, 2017 18:17
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Keep in mind, during the Cold War analysts constantly overestimated Soviet capabilities, to the point that the CIA's Team B started using the logic of "Well if there's no evidence they have a new super-submarine, this must mean they have a new super-submarine and they're hiding it" to argue for additional defense budget increases. I quite like that in 1940, Soviet scientists saw that Western scientists had suddenly stopped publishing about the freshly discovered phenomenon of nuclear fission, and immediately and correctly concluded that there must have been some war-related research going on. SeanBeansShako posted:Pilots are dirty buggers, despite the class thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OFXL0jIMR4 Unrelated cross-post:
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Sep 7, 2017 18:33
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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i don't like that dog
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Sep 7, 2017 18:53
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Quinntan posted:That isn't true. The M48 as a tank doesn't afford the same level of protection as the T-55, and the 90mm gun that they carried comes straight from the M26 Pershing. As mentioned above though, the qualities of the individual tanks don't particularly matter, what's more important are the crew's training, the C4I supporting them and the other support assets. Give the Iraqis Abrams tanks and give the Yanks T-55s and Desert Storm doesn't change much. The M48 has demonstrated that it is perfectly capable of destroying T-55s for close to 50 years. "Same level of protection" "90mm vs 100mm" are all dumb spreadsheet arguments that have little bearing on the battlefield. Making statements like, 'The T-55 was a hell of a lot better than the M48" is just not true unless all you do is compare muzzle diameter and LOS thickness of steel at a specific vector. Neither of which actually tells you anything about the effectiveness of the weapon or the quality of the armor protection. The Panther proved you can have thick armor that is poo poo when missing key alloys and there are any number of guns larger than 100mm that have crap for armor penetration. I am not saying that either of these is the case with the T-55, what I am saying though is that trotting out tired old numbers like 90mm vs 100mm and X vs Y LOS thickness at 30 deg doesn't actually tell you which tank is better.
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Sep 7, 2017 19:13
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I agree with you, but the whole initial discussion was around why warpac hardware performed worse than western hardware, which isn't really related to the hardware itself.
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Sep 7, 2017 19:42
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Murgos posted:The M48 has demonstrated that it is perfectly capable of destroying T-55s for close to 50 years. "Same level of protection" "90mm vs 100mm" are all dumb spreadsheet arguments that have little bearing on the battlefield. Didn't the early M48 VS T55 battles occur in the Leopard I era, AKA the time when the W. Germans removed almost all the armor from their tank since nothing could withstand a HEAT round from a proper tank gun of the time. Later on, both tanks get enough gun and ammo upgrades to easily overcome their counterpart's armor upgrades. So having a better gun and armor doesn't matter when both tanks will one-shot the other perfectly fine.
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Sep 7, 2017 19:47
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Actually, I also asked that. Did USSR design clearly inferior crap for the whole war? Re: M48 vs. T-55: wasn't it the capture of a T-55 during the Hungarian uprising that prompted the design of M60?
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Sep 7, 2017 19:50
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Crossposting from the D&D pics thread, this guy's been claiming that the Jasenovac death camp was a hospital for typhoid patients, and has recently had a news conference in which he stated that he's not a fascist: So now a Croatian friend of mine can't stop finding ways to insert "Hrtler" into the conversation and I can't stop laughing.  I thought we won the ohgodwhywouldyoudothis contest when we rehabilitated motherfucking Kalabić, but Croatia entered the final quarter with a Trump card, and I'm suddenly worried that not even the finest idiocy we can produce can stand up to it.
my dad fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Sep 7, 2017 |
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Sep 7, 2017 19:58
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The prussian stache and aviators combo is deeply unsettling. He looks like hitler's dad if hitler was like, 27 right now.
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Sep 7, 2017 20:04
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my dad posted:Crossposting from the D&D pics thread, this guy's been claiming that the Jasenovac death camp was a hospital for typhoid patients, and has recently had a news conference in which he stated that he's not a fascist:
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Sep 7, 2017 20:08
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JcDent posted:Actually, I also asked that. Did USSR design clearly inferior crap for the whole war? That and it killed off the 20pdr (the L7 was already under development, but it confirmed the 20pdr was largely obsolete).
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Sep 7, 2017 20:44
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my dad posted:Crossposting from the D&D pics thread, this guy's been claiming that the Jasenovac death camp was a hospital for typhoid patients, and has recently had a news conference in which he stated that he's not a fascist: Can you provide any context for what the t-shirt is supposed to mean? Judging the fact that it references Stalingrad I assume it is something about the heroic Germans fighting of wave after wave of evil Communist.
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Sep 7, 2017 21:02
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my dad posted:Crossposting from the D&D pics thread, this guy's been claiming that the Jasenovac death camp was a hospital for typhoid patients, and has recently had a news conference in which he stated that he's not a fascist: I feel that if you have to hold a news conference to state you are not a fascist, you are probably a fascist.
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Sep 7, 2017 21:04
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feedmegin posted:I feel that if you have to hold a news conference to state you are not a fascist, you are probably a fascist. there, i said it. questions to follow.
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Sep 7, 2017 21:19
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Hunt11 posted:Can you provide any context for what the t-shirt is supposed to mean? Judging the fact that it references Stalingrad I assume it is something about the heroic Germans fighting of wave after wave of evil Communist. He is a big fan of both enemy at the gates and also lil' jon.
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Sep 7, 2017 21:41
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feedmegin posted:I feel that if you have to hold a news conference to state you are not a fascist, you are probably a fascist. If you have to hold a news conference to state you are not a fascist, and you're dressed like that dude, you're definitely a fascist.
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Sep 7, 2017 22:14
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Hunt11 posted:Can you provide any context for what the t-shirt is supposed to mean? Judging the fact that it references Stalingrad I assume it is something about the heroic Germans fighting of wave after wave of evil Communist. Specifically the 369th Reinforced Infantry Regiment, a Wehrmacht regiment raised from Croatian volunteers, I would think.
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Sep 7, 2017 22:25
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Hunt11 posted:Can you provide any context for what the t-shirt is supposed to mean? Judging the fact that it references Stalingrad I assume it is something about the heroic Germans fighting of wave after wave of evil Communist. I figured it was more some Ustase stuff, but I'm sure My Dad can provide more insight.
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Sep 7, 2017 22:28
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Hunt11 posted:Can you provide any context for what the t-shirt is supposed to mean? Judging the fact that it references Stalingrad I assume it is something about the heroic Germans fighting of wave after wave of evil Communist. Heroic Croatians, more like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/369th_Croatian_Reinforced_Infantry_Regiment_(Wehrmacht)
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Sep 7, 2017 22:33
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JcDent posted:Actually, I also asked that. Did USSR design clearly inferior crap for the whole war? An M60 delivered to Russia by a disgruntled Iranian officer prompted the awful T-62 to be slammed into production so I think the west is ahead there. The T-55 driven into the British embassy in 56 absolutely influenced the rapid adoption of the L7. The US Army had been working on replacing the M48 for a couple of years by then though so I wouldn't say that the T-55 led directly to the M-60 in that way.
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Sep 7, 2017 22:58
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Stuff like glorification of the Ustaše has always been strange to me, tbh, but not quite for the reasons you might think. Like, I've talked a bit about WW2 here and the utterly horrifying campaign of slaughter that the Ustaše did, and the desperate fight against them my family participated in. I never got around to talking about the Srb (name of the village it started in, not the ethnicity) uprising in which the small, poor, badly underarmed Serbian community that lived in the villages nearby managed to completely wipe out all Nazi presence in the surrounding area in just a few days, at a time the Wehrmacht was stomping all over the Soviets and all hope seemed lost, but I also never got around to talking about Croatian rebels and partizans who put up an equally desperate fight against a fascist government that was trying to present itself as their own, who sabotaged and informed and fought and died disrupting the Nazis and the Ustaše and giving the Serbian communities the time they needed to organize and fight back, and without whom the extermination campaign may well had succeeded before sufficiently strong resistance could form. When the Ustaše began the massacres, they were "merely" mostly exterminating all vaguely adult looking Serbian (and Jewish and Romani and... you get the point) men and boys. When news of that spread, the communities in endangered villages often made the horrifyingly pragmatic decision to send all able men away to hide and hope the Ustaše don't do too many horrible things to the people left behind. But when the Ustaše caught wind of this, they just shrugged and stopped discriminating about whom they murder. Try to imagine for a moment, being a father, fighting your screaming conscience as you leave your family behind hoping that you'll be able to return to them tomorrow and that they'll be alright. Now imagine returning home only to see it burned to ashes, your whole family cut into so many different pieces that you have no way of even giving them a proper burial, knowing they probably died calling out for you, and a feeling that you basically abandoned them to their deaths. And here's the thing: The Ustaše, at least their early gangs, weren't actually all that numerous. They were just ruthless and well armed thanks a mixture of personal wealth (the average Ustaša was usually a part of what someone in the USA now would call "middle class" or wealthier) and gifts from their Nazi overlords, and relying on the fear of German retribution to keep people from fighting back. And all of a sudden, there was a lot of people who wanted them dead, dead, dead, and couldn't give less of a gently caress about dying in the process. Once the first Ustaše gang got overwhelmed and their weapons taken, the uprising spread like wildfire. Partizans joined up and helped organize the now already existing revolt, and helped guide it. (And so did Serbian soldiers and officers who refused to surrender acting on their own accord, some of them later joining the Partizans, like that guy I talked about before who ended up horribly tortured by Ustaše, and some joining the Četniks, with all the jolly fun random murdering that being part of the local Četniks involves) And I'll be honest here, there were atrocities committed by the rebels, even by units that worked with the Partizans. I've read about whole families that had a known Ustaše member being shot. I've read accounts of (Serbian) Partizan commanders delaying important attacks on Ustaše held Croatian villages to give the innocent people time to escape, and accounts of what they sometimes weren't able to prevent. Ultimately, the question reasonably asked by the desperate people fighting back against literal extermination wasn't "Why did you do it" - that wasn't a question you asked, that was just a bullet you fired. The question they asked and weren't given an acceptable reply to was "Why didn't you try to stop this?" Serbs and Croats weren't segregated communities. Sure, there were villages that were Serbian and villages that were Croatian, but there was plenty that weren't really either (and lets face it, the place was a poor shithole, and a lot of people there worked for a living in the cities, and those were quite thoroughly mixed), and ultimately it was a big bunch of people in the same general area living side by side, and even those annoying assholes in the village across the hill were also your neighbors in a way. And this is where the sense of betrayal hit - the horrifying feeling that your very neighbors, people you knew and worked with and lived next to betrayed you. Now add this to the horrors above, and you'll get the general idea of the mental state of the populace in those days. The atrocities done by the rebels (and I have to emphasize, absolutely nowhere near the scale of those done by the Ustaše) weren't committed out of some general animalistic urge lurking in every human being and barely being controlled by whatever moral/government system you fancy, they were done in highly specific circumstances that, yes, had the potential to spiral out of control as the circle of revenge starts to close, but weren't by any means a guarantee. Do you know what answered the question adequately, and went a long way towards keeping the violence under control (relatively speaking)? Croats who could honestly say "We did." and the Partizan units that gave weight to their words. One of the most potent morale boosts to the Serbian communities came in the form of Croatian fighters showing up to fight the Ustaše by their side. Hell, one of the most well known local commanders and a guy songs were made about was a Croatian veteran of the Spanish Civil War who went from community to community helping train and organize people and shoot the poo poo out of some fascist shitheads (he's the guy I mentioned before who was killed by random bandits because they liked his clothes and boots). Ultimately, people like these saved countless lives, not just Serbian through their actions, but also Croatian lives through reassuring the Serbs they fought by that the goddamn race war narrative was complete and utter bullshit, and that the real enemy were the fascists. And yet today, somehow there's still a bunch of assholes who love celebrating a pack of human-shaped monsters whose greatest achievements were butchering unarmed people and being repeatedly stomped on whenever they'd face someone capable of actually fighting back, and a state-level narrative trying to bury the achievements of some of the most hardcore antifascists in Europe as deep as possible (unless you have to defend you "I'm not a nazi" credentials in which case you grudgingly acknowledge their existence) because hey, if they're communist, or if the actions of their enemies are done in the name of the nation, gently caress em. KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:I figured it was more some Ustase stuff, but I'm sure My Dad can provide more insight. Glorious (not really) last stand at Stalingrad by some Ustaše unit. That's really all there is to it as far as I know. Alternatively, 3 Nazis trying to 69 one another simultaneously and lining themselves up like the Skaven symbol.
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Sep 7, 2017 22:59
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