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Honestly you could’ve probably built the Ratte in WW2 if say The US wanted to throw B-29 money at it. It’s not really an insurmountable engineering problem, just a very dumb one.
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Jan 4, 2019 05:58
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Mazz posted:Honestly you could’ve probably built the Ratte in WW2 if say The US wanted to throw B-29 money at it. It’s not really an insurmountable engineering problem, just a very dumb one. 1) Take a destroyer 2) Dig a canal everywhere you want it to go Problem solved!
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Jan 4, 2019 06:09
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Alchenar posted:You know that any piece of military kit who's description includes the words 'as a stop gap solution' is going to be an absolute disaster. The Spitfire Mk. IX was a stopgap rushed into service to match the Fw-190 and it wasn't too bad.
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Jan 4, 2019 06:15
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The Lone Badger posted:1) Take a destroyer Actually 1) Take a destroyer 2) Put Legs on it #Cybranlyfe
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Jan 4, 2019 07:17
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Make a destroyer into a metal slug vehicle. Just slap big rear end treads on it, ditch the higgins boats and drive that fucker onto the beach
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Jan 4, 2019 08:27
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Milo and POTUS posted:Make a destroyer into a metal slug vehicle. Just slap big rear end treads on it, ditch the higgins boats and drive that fucker onto the beach 
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Jan 4, 2019 08:51
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Milo and POTUS posted:Make a destroyer into a metal slug vehicle. Just slap big rear end treads on it, ditch the higgins boats and drive that fucker onto the beach The ultimate tank destroyer.
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Jan 4, 2019 09:00
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Tunicate posted:The ultimate tank destroyer.  It's more of a battleship anyway.
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Jan 4, 2019 09:05
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The Lone Badger posted:1) Take a destroyer Put that coal mining thing on it and have it dig its own canal. You have to defend the canal so the enemy doesn't dam it behind you to ensure that you don't run out of water and get stranded, but you can drive an oiler up the canal to replenish you.
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Jan 4, 2019 09:06
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If you get stranded on dry land, call in this thing:
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Jan 4, 2019 09:09
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aphid_licker posted:Put that coal mining thing on it and have it dig its own canal. You have to defend the canal so the enemy doesn't dam it behind you to ensure that you don't run out of water and get stranded, but you can drive an oiler up the canal to replenish you. I think a tank that dug its own trenches was a Churchill idea
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Jan 4, 2019 09:15
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gradenko_2000 posted:I think a tank that dug its own trenches was a Churchill idea It sure was! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultivator_No._6 Also, I recently had a chance to ride and try to drive an IS-3 - This is the same one that the separatists got running in the Donetsk region and was then captured by the Ukrainian army. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgzvVMpHJ-k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCefihT1ss4 Apologies for the potato quality, but APPARENTLY, GoPros die in the cold. However my Pixel 3 recorded pretty good video but theres like 10 minutes of just driving around. Let me know if anyones interested and ill process and upload. Also the driver position is super uncomfortable.
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Jan 4, 2019 10:07
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Battleships are basically water tanks when you think about it.
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Jan 4, 2019 10:28
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This is a good summation. I'll add to that and basically say that the armor was a significant force multiplier, particularly in Lam Son 719 when much of the ARVN training was still geared toward lower level counterinsurgency operations. Tanks were used aggressively and the introduction of T-54s was something of a shock(it drove the US to start providing M48s to ARVN, for example) So long as US airpower was a significant factor, though, the concentrations needed to make effective armor attacks also provided very good targets for tactical air support and they were always very vulnerable and easier to spot from the air than infantry and artillery were. The AAA and artillery were the NVA's decisive arms at Lam Son 719, more than the tanks. In 1972 you start seeing TOW missiles which gave the helicopters an effective weapon against the tanks.
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Jan 4, 2019 10:38
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Alchenar posted:You know that any piece of military kit who's description includes the words 'as a stop gap solution' is going to be an absolute disaster. Either that or so adequate it stays in service for multiple decades.
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Jan 4, 2019 11:10
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Jack2142 posted:Actually Yeah, but the Cybran also have great aircraft to keep their land destroyers alive. 
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Jan 4, 2019 14:34
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Jan 4, 2019 14:40
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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apart from all of the other wildly obvious problems with the concept, how are you going to depress any of the guns sufficiently to hit stuff?
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Jan 4, 2019 14:47
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Launch torpedoes, obviously
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Jan 4, 2019 14:48
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Mazz posted:On top of what Cessna said, it basically took every lesson the USSR learned in WW2 and distilled it into 1 vehicle. Not only did they (and others) make several hundred thousand over time, it is likely the image that comes to mind when you say tank for like 2/3s of the worlds population. It has been the single most influential armored vehicle, especially in terms of small conflicts, for the last 70 odd years. Couldn't you also make a case for Centurion? Like the T-54/55 it's the first of the MBTs and kind of the grand-daddy of all subsequent Western MBTs. Unlike the T-54/55 though it wasn't built in nearly as large numbers, but its design was hugely influential and like T-54/55 variants it's still operated today. Britain and WWII tanks is kind of interesting, they mostly seem to have made a whole bunch of crap during the war, then in '46 they made a vehicle which essentially defined Western tank design for half a century if not more.
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Jan 4, 2019 14:54
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Randarkman posted:Couldn't you also make a case for Centurion? Like the T-54/55 it's the first of the MBTs and kind of the grand-daddy of all subsequent Western MBTs. Unlike the T-54/55 though it wasn't built in nearly as large numbers, but its design was hugely influential and like T-54/55 variants it's still operated today. The Pershing definitely deserves some kind of 'underrated' award. The M26 is really just thought of as 'could have done with more of them in WW2', but every US tank up until the Abrams was some form of modernisation of it.
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Jan 4, 2019 15:08
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 KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:apart from all of the other wildly obvious problems with the concept, how are you going to depress any of the guns sufficiently to hit stuff? Intentionally flood your ship to create lean, like the crew of USS Texas did.
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Jan 4, 2019 15:16
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Platystemon posted:If you get stranded on dry land, call in this thing: Slap four battleship turrets on that, an anti-aircraft gun, two waist-mounted miniguns, make it amphibious, slap a torpedo launcher on for underwater defense, add a wide-area shield dome generator, and add a factory that can produce combat-ready tanks on the back, and you have yourself a UEF Fatboy. 
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Jan 4, 2019 15:21
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:apart from all of the other wildly obvious problems with the concept, how are you going to depress any of the guns sufficiently to hit stuff? Rain fire on the rear lines while driving over the trenches.
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Jan 4, 2019 15:24
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abrams is gonna be bigger than a Maus pretty soon
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Jan 4, 2019 15:25
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If the Panama Canal doesn't exist (because say, 3 years before this publication the French gave up because everyone working on it kept dying too fast) then this isn't actually the worst idea if you are looking for alternatives to cross from Atlantic to Pacific. Obviously you have to assume ship sizes stay the same despite engine power increasing enough to make your train carriage viable but there you go.
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Jan 4, 2019 15:25
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it's basically just an incline plane, those already exist for canals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKbXZCwHt4U
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Jan 4, 2019 15:27
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Alchenar posted:The Pershing definitely deserves some kind of 'underrated' award. The M26 is really just thought of as 'could have done with more of them in WW2', but every US tank up until the Abrams was some form of modernisation of it. Alot of the really late-war and immediately post-war tank designs had pretty incredible longevity and lasting influence, you have the M26 Pershing and then the Patton tanks, you have Centurion as I mentioned and the subsequent British and Western tanks built around the same general design idea, and then you had the T-54/55 which itself was an improved version of the T-44 which had been in development since late 1943 to replace the T-34*. *Looking at the T-34 and T-44 and T-54/55 is kind of interesting because you see how the Russians were willing to discard so many features of their most successful WWII tank design, most notably easing up a bit with the armor sloping (at least on the sides and rear) and replacing the Christie suspension with torsion bars, both of which took up way too much internal volume in the T-34. Also, unlike the T-34, the T-54/55 and its derivatives were extremely reliable, though in fairness to the T-34 it wasn't really meant to be, at least when the war got serious, it was only really meant to be produced and go to the front, fight and be destroyed and replaced before it broke down (because of this the Russians got pretty decent mileage out of using American tanks as training vehicles).
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Jan 4, 2019 15:29
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Squalid posted:
It may also have been a design in an artillerist's textbook for something that could have existed but didn't really, those books are full of things like that. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 16:35 on Jan 4, 2019 |
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Jan 4, 2019 15:38
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Like imagine a guy riding full gallop futzing around with a match and the end of his lance.
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The Lone Badger posted:1) Take a destroyer
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Jan 4, 2019 15:39
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Saint Celestine posted:It sure was! Details!
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Jan 4, 2019 15:43
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Cythereal posted:Slap four battleship turrets on that, an anti-aircraft gun, two waist-mounted miniguns, make it amphibious, slap a torpedo launcher on for underwater defense, add a wide-area shield dome generator, and add a factory that can produce combat-ready tanks on the back, and you have yourself a UEF Fatboy. 
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Jan 4, 2019 15:43
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GotLag posted:Alternatively: Still missing the shield generator, ability to travel underwater, torpedo launcher, and chainguns.  It's a giant brick of armor, guns, and strange extra features that I'm sure the Marines insisted on.
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Jan 4, 2019 15:52
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chitoryu12 posted:Details! "i'm more of an Ideas Guy"
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Jan 4, 2019 16:02
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Randarkman posted:Alot of the really late-war and immediately post-war tank designs had pretty incredible longevity and lasting influence, you have the M26 Pershing and then the Patton tanks, you have Centurion as I mentioned and the subsequent British and Western tanks built around the same general design idea, and then you had the T-54/55 which itself was an improved version of the T-44 which had been in development since late 1943 to replace the T-34*. The T-34 was never treated as a disposable tank. Drives to increase reliability of all components, from track links and tires to the engine and transmission, went on until the very end of the war. In practice, they could get about the same lifespan out of T-34s and Shermans towards the end of the war: 2000-2500 km of driving, 200-300 engine-hours. You're right that the sloped sides and coil spring suspension took up a lot of space in the sides of the tank. Work to make a torsion bar T-34 began in 1940 (along with many other improvements), and assembly of a prototype began in 1941, but the start of the war put an end to that.
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Jan 4, 2019 16:10
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Other than a crippling lack of VTOL capability and a nationwide decrease in bad haircuts, what would the short and long term effects of just rolling the Marine Corps into the Army and Navy be?
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Jan 4, 2019 16:15
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Panzeh posted:This is a good summation. I'll add to that and basically say that the armor was a significant force multiplier, particularly in Lam Son 719 when much of the ARVN training was still geared toward lower level counterinsurgency operations. Tanks were used aggressively and the introduction of T-54s was something of a shock(it drove the US to start providing M48s to ARVN, for example) The extent to which we hosed over the ARVN is breathtaking. We built that army as a mini-US army, but focused on all of the shortcomings and few of the strengths. We made it a conventional army and trained it to re-fight the Korean War, so it wasn't optimally set up for counterinsurgency work - but when it came up against conventional enemies with tanks in '71/'72, whoops, we had built it too weak to deal with them. Panzeh posted:So long as US airpower was a significant factor, though, the concentrations needed to make effective armor attacks also provided very good targets for tactical air support and they were always very vulnerable and easier to spot from the air than infantry and artillery were. The AAA and artillery were the NVA's decisive arms at Lam Son 719, more than the tanks. In 1972 you start seeing TOW missiles which gave the helicopters an effective weapon against the tanks. Yeah, that's why I walked back my "timid" characterization of the PAVN's use of armor above. It's easy to say "they had tanks, they shouldda used them" - but the prospect of shooting up PAVN tanks was a wet dream for any USAF pilot or planner in Southeast Asia. If those tanks had been deployed in numbers before the US was rushing towards the door every plane in that half of the world would have lined up to bomb them.
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Jan 4, 2019 16:17
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Other than a crippling lack of VTOL capability and a nationwide decrease in bad haircuts, what would the short and long term effects of just rolling the Marine Corps into the Army and Navy be? Better yet, what would be gained?
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Jan 4, 2019 16:18
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quote:In his memoirs, Churchill said about it: "I am responsible but impenitent".[ 
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Jan 4, 2019 16:22
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Other than a crippling lack of VTOL capability and a nationwide decrease in bad haircuts, what would the short and long term effects of just rolling the Marine Corps into the Army and Navy be? The thing the Marines do better than anyone is 1) go places quickly, and 2) integrate ground forces with air and sea firepower. This is a relatively unique capability that no other force can currently replicate, and it is a necessary one within the scope of current US defense strategy. So, there isn't really any reason why the units that provide this capability have to be called "marines" but if one were to dissolve the USMC, those capabilities would have to be rebuilt elsewhere in the DoD. This would be extremely time consuming and expensive. I'm no fan of the USMC's belief they're special snowflakes nor a lot of aspects of marine culture and policy but they do what they do very well, and they're the only ones that do it.
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Jan 4, 2019 16:24
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