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Tanks look like a horror show to someone who is claustrophobic. They also look hot as gently caress. I'm sure people will back me up here but just how much does being in a tank suck poo poo?
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Jul 1, 2019 18:51
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I can tell you Sherman tanks are definitely cramped but surprisingly cool inside despite that. The engine sucks air in such s way that there’s always a breeze blowing from front to back. Never been in with the gun going off though. That might change the dynamic
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Jul 1, 2019 19:16
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Tanks are terrifying. "I'm in an unstoppable metal death machine!" :gets taken out by valley teenager tossing a frag down the tube: I never understood the desire to be a tanker. Sure, you are in one of the deadliest contraptions ever invented, and with a good crew survivability, but it's still a cramped coffin full of fuel and bombs. I'm going to try and find "The Beast" streaming. bulletsponge13 fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Jul 1, 2019 |
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Jul 1, 2019 19:24
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Being a tank driver is the best combat arms job. Oh, we're running 24 hour ops. gently caress yeah, sleeping 22 hours a day in my driver hammock, better push the head rest back for the most power of all naps. Driver also controls the heater, but the TC still controls the aircon. SEP v2 fo' lyfe, son
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Jul 1, 2019 19:27
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bulletsponge13 posted:Tanks are terrifying. "I'm in an unstoppable metal death machine!" Those videos out of Syria with the tanks rolling along as the ammo cooks off looking like those old Fourth of July tank fire crackers it pretty “ughhhh”
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Jul 1, 2019 19:28
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I always felt more claustrophobic in a SEP because they add a cocoon of screens and technology around the commander. A1 4 lyfe
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Jul 1, 2019 19:58
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Anecdotal, but I've remember reading a few history WW2 books where tankers hated being in tanks so much they volunteered for poo poo like the SAS or airborne units or whatever just to get away from the things. Then again if you expected me to go up against a German 88 in a m3 grant or whatever I'd probably volunteer to get away from them also
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Jul 1, 2019 20:06
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I think the newer gen abrams and a limited amount of bradleys have AC, but generally most tanks/apcs don't. Can't imagine how badly it must have sucked to crew one in Iraq. Even with AC I'd have to imagine it sucks poo poo, since it's regularly 120+ degrees and that poo poo is just metal as gently caress and sitting there absorbing sun all day.
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Jul 1, 2019 20:27
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Will a tanker describe what it smells like inside a tank after days of use? Colorful language please
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Jul 1, 2019 20:36
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Smiling Jack posted:Anecdotal, but I've remember reading a few history WW2 books where tankers hated being in tanks so much they volunteered for poo poo like the SAS or airborne units or whatever just to get away from the things. This is one of those things where the reality is exactly the opposite of what you'd expect because you're far safer as the British/American tanker than the German gunner.
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Jul 1, 2019 20:49
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EBB posted:lol i got laid more often than i got to fire live rounds oof
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Jul 1, 2019 20:59
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soy posted:I think the newer gen abrams and a limited amount of bradleys have AC, but generally most tanks/apcs don't. Can't imagine how badly it must have sucked to crew one in Iraq. Uhm, I could be wrong here but, I’m pretty sure the Abrams has A/C. I’m pretty sure they’re meant to be able button up and operate, in an all out NBC environment. That means over pressurization which I gotta believe means HVAC. Could be wrong. It’s not a plane so my sperg knowledge on it is minimal.
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Jul 1, 2019 21:14
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The A/C system in the Abrams is to cool the electronic doohickeys in the tank, not the crew. Same reason server rooms have their A/C on full blast in December.
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Jul 1, 2019 21:21
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Air con was I'm pretty sure A2s onward, and yes it was a byproduct of the NBC system, which wasn't some super high tech seals, just running everything overpressure.
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Jul 1, 2019 21:56
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In the WW2 tanker memoirs I've read, they're painfully aware of all the threats. Any Bush could hide a German with a panzerfaust, any corner could hide a Panther or an 88, that kind of thing. But it still beats being infantry, sleeping in the mud and getting chewed up by mortars and MG42's.
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Jul 1, 2019 22:12
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Fish and Chimps posted:In the WW2 tanker memoirs I've read, they're painfully aware of all the threats. Any Bush could hide a German with a panzerfaust, any corner could hide a Panther or an 88, that kind of thing. Studies post war also showed the Sherman was still more durable than its reputation as well.
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Jul 2, 2019 00:26
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Phil Moscowitz posted:Will a tanker describe what it smells like inside a tank after days of use? Colorful language please I don't recall the smell but I did use some colorful language. 14 days in the field, we take the tanks to a giant car wash afterwards. It's just power hoses and such. Like with any cleaning job you want to go top to bottom and get all the mud and oil and grime off. You spray down the inside of the turret to get the layer of dip spit, sunflower seeds, and piss to flow into the sub-turret and out of the drain plugs. We forgot to take the drain plugs out that morning. So I crawl under this thing with a wrench knowing that the sub-turret probably has a couple hundred gallons of the nastiest water in it. Dip spit, piss, all kinds of grease and fuel and oil, plus the grey water we're cleaning with is not potable in any way. Took the drain plate and a fire hose spray of nasty water right to the face when the bolt came loose. I don't remember what I said but the rest of the crew said they just hear swearing coming from under the tank and then lots of gross water.
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Jul 2, 2019 01:17
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CommieGIR posted:Studies post war also showed the Sherman was still more durable than its reputation as well. The M4 Sherman was the best tank of the war not named T-34 (and the T-34 was the best tank of the war not named the M4 Sherman).
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Jul 2, 2019 01:45
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EBB posted:I don't recall the smell but I did use some colorful language. 14 days in the field, we take the tanks to a giant car wash afterwards. It's just power hoses and such. Like with any cleaning job you want to go top to bottom and get all the mud and oil and grime off. You spray down the inside of the turret to get the layer of dip spit, sunflower seeds, and piss to flow into the sub-turret and out of the drain plugs. 
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Jul 2, 2019 01:55
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EBB posted:I don't recall the smell but I did use some colorful language. 14 days in the field, we take the tanks to a giant car wash afterwards. It's just power hoses and such. Like with any cleaning job you want to go top to bottom and get all the mud and oil and grime off. You spray down the inside of the turret to get the layer of dip spit, sunflower seeds, and piss to flow into the sub-turret and out of the drain plugs. Was this a thinly veiled allegorical post about your time modding GIP or what?
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Jul 2, 2019 03:34
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Do you have ten minutes to listen to Orson Welles talk about building tanks to kill fascists? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9wv4W0oS3A
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Jul 2, 2019 03:47
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I wish there was something like Orson narrating one of his days dramatically. Wonder if Brian Blessed would do it.
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Jul 2, 2019 04:03
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:The M4 Sherman was the best tank of the war not named T-34 (and the T-34 was the best tank of the war not named the M4 Sherman). Pretttty much. It's weird in that the M4 and T-34's kicked all kinds of rear end where German tanks...their reps are massively overblown. Like the Tiger, that thing was pound for pound, a massive loving waste and a piece of poo poo depending on if it was adequately supplied or not. Gonna chalk it up to that one guys book who propagated the British referring to Sherman's as the Ronson while treating German tanks like they were all god tier. Can't remember the name of it at the moment.
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Jul 2, 2019 04:10
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When you say Sherman do you mean a plain 75mm armed Sherman , a 76mm Sherman Jumbo HVSS or a Sherman Firefly? Similarly the early T-34 kinda sucked with the 2 man turret but the T-34-85 was a huge improvement. Smiling Jack fucked around with this message at 05:23 on Jul 2, 2019 |
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Jul 2, 2019 05:19
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Handsome Ralph posted:Pretttty much. I'm going to say round about the time World of Tanks came out you saw this massive upsurge in both Sherman memes and Internet Tank "Experts" appearing with massive Tiger boners.
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Jul 2, 2019 09:42
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The Sherman was a fine design that performed fine. It’s reliability was fine, armor was fine, and it’s gun was fine, along with fine crew comfort. We just built a fuckload of them and easily overwhelmed the bespoke handcrafted panthers and tigers, especially the ones that broke down 50 feet away from the train that just offloaded them
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Jul 2, 2019 09:50
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Kelly's Heroes is the first thing I remember that made a Tiger seem like some unstoppable thing.
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Jul 2, 2019 11:13
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https://twitter.com/kevinrizor/status/1145967027556880386?s=19
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Jul 2, 2019 12:46
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It's a shocker to see that for sure, but there's an article down that Twitter thread that explains what's up. It's a dummy that the Dutch/Germans were using for reconnaissance training.
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Jul 2, 2019 12:51
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thesurlyspringKAA posted:The Sherman was a fine design that performed fine. It’s reliability was fine, armor was fine, and it’s gun was fine, along with fine crew comfort. We just built a fuckload of them and easily overwhelmed the bespoke handcrafted panthers and tigers, especially the ones that broke down 50 feet away from the train that just offloaded them Bespoke, handcrafted prototypes by slave labor with a drive system designed for a smaller tank.
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Jul 2, 2019 13:06
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I mean, I realize the tweet is supposed to be funny, but I can absolutely see a proper citizen reporting that exactly in that way to the Polizei
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Jul 2, 2019 13:09
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I think it was the Battle of the Bulge movie from the 60s where a TC says it’s like throwing tennis balls when his Sherman is engaging a tiger.
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Jul 2, 2019 15:34
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The Tiger was neither a bad tank, nor a good one. It was very good at what it was designed to do: Kill other tanks in open country, and provide shock value on the battlefield. Otherwise, the Panthers, Panzer Mk 4, and the StuGs were better overall tanks. If I had to choose based on killing power alone, the 8.8cm armed Jagdpanther was a more suitable tank killer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jjSG8EMG_M CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Jul 2, 2019 |
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Jul 2, 2019 16:26
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The Panther was a godawful tank. The French did post-war tests on it and found that it was basically a prototype that was rushed into service with all the resulting problems. A number of them: * The final drive would break after about 150 kilometers on the initial production versions, because it was meant to be a medium tank but the weight ballooned until it was almost as heavy as the Tiger without any improvements to the drive system. The transmission would also brake if you tried to neutral steer or weren't careful shifting while going downhill. Repairing or replacing the transmission required disassembling the entire top of the front hull to lift it in and out. * There was no unmagnified optic for the gunner, so he was basically looking at the world through binoculars the whole time. * The turret traverse was tied to the engine speed on some versions, so the driver had to rev the engine to get the turret going fast enough. The traverse was so weak that the gun would start rotating down under gravity on slopes. * The interior was cramped and awkward because insufficient design work was done on ergonomics. In particular, the driver had to shove his feet awkwardly under a drive shaft to reach the pedals. The French looked at their captured Panthers and decided that there was no way they would be of use even in minor colonial skirmishes. They saw virtually no post-war use even by nations that received them and were mostly scrapped or put into museums.
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Jul 2, 2019 16:39
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Yeah, a lot of the German tanks sucked for various reasons, but if you actually ran into a Panther or Tiger II on the battlefield and all you had was a 75mm Sherman things were gonna suck for you. However, PBEM games of Combat Mission were always great when you wrecked some guys Tiger I with a frontal hit with a Sherman and you got an angry email about how that wasn't possible. Edit: 76mm Sherman, of course Smiling Jack fucked around with this message at 16:57 on Jul 2, 2019 |
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Jul 2, 2019 16:54
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When you're in a prepared defense, and the enemy isn't 100% steamrolling you, all your poo poo seems OP. Good tanks fighting through hedge rows and forests and such against hidden AT guns don't seem as impressive as the tank that's been camouflaged, waiting to smash the first enemypiece of armor to turn the corner.
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Jul 2, 2019 17:01
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chitoryu12 posted:The Panther was a godawful tank. The French did post-war tests on it and found that it was basically a prototype that was rushed into service with all the resulting problems. A number of them: Panther final drive weakness wasnt due to being a prototype: It was due to bombing wiping out the neccessary machining tools to make the proper final drive gearing. The driveshaft was also not uncovered, so it really wasnt that bad. The Panther, despite being a T-34 copy, was still a better tank than the Tiger. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Jul 2, 2019 |
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Jul 2, 2019 17:10
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I thought the final drive issue was because of the spline geometry? Ie. They went for conventional gears rather than elliptical gears Edit: bombing precision machining factories would do lead to that decision so makes sense
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Jul 2, 2019 17:14
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Yeah, straight cut gears are bad. Sherman used Herringbone gears and other gear cuts. Panther didnt have that due to lack of machining equipment that late in the war. Its also why the Tiger's transmission fared better: It was made prior to the huge bombing campaigns of the 8th Air Force, so they got the machining done earlier. Tigers engine suffered more than its transmission.
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Jul 2, 2019 17:25
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CommieGIR posted:The Tiger was neither a bad tank, nor a good one. The latter part is true, the former is not...at all. quote:It was very good at what it was designed to do: Kill other tanks in open country, and provide shock value on the battlefield. If you just look at a Tiger company that has reached its position, and engaged the enemy, this would be somewhat true, albeit mostly due to its gun. Judging the Tiger by its overall quality as a tank, you need to regard, reliability, performance, mobility, cost, logistics support required and so on. Once you do that, the Tiger turns into a bad tank. And not like "a little under 'okay'", but properly bad. And you can rationalize that by looking simply at who had both a huge influence in its design specifications and the final word in the development process. A megalomaniac dictator with zero engineering experience, surrounded by yes-men. Massive amounts of unangled armor that made it so heavy it was severely undermotorized. A notoriously unreliable transmission in the worst possible location on the tank that was put under a colossal amount of strain due to the Tiger being overweight. Glacial turret traverse, a decent on-paper mobility on optimal terrain that went to poo poo once endurance and range was considered, an engine prone to overheating, low obstacle clearance, a suspension with a tendency to throw tracks, maintenance-intensive tracks, etc. The way it was deployed with respect to support numbers compacted things. A huge lack in designated tow vehicles, leading to Tigers towing each-other (which, in turn, made more Tigers break down), lack of maintenance capacity in forward deployment positions, and a lot more issues made the out-of-combat losses skyrocket. And then you look at the cost. So. loving. Expensive. People like to point out its ~sick~ K/D ratio (which tends to ignore out-of-combat losses, cost, pound-for-pound efficiency, etc.) and how serious the allies treated it, but if you look at the big picture, it was a genuinely bad tank. Not just inefficient, but bad. quote:Otherwise, the Panthers, Panzer Mk 4, and the StuGs were better overall tanks. The Panther by itself AND COMPARED to the Tiger, agreed. Regarded as a tank by itself, and judging it by the same criteria as the Tiger, it also suffered from a lot of the issues that made the Tiger bad. Tons of design features looked great from a point of engineering innovation, but made for a nightmare in terms of mass-production and maintenance. Similar weight issues, an engine prone to overheating, etc. pp. Better than the Tiger overall? Absolutely. An okay tank by itself? Mmmmaybe. A good choice for the war effort? Absolutely not. quote:If I had to choose based on killing power alone, the 8.8cm armed Jagdpanther was a more suitable tank killer. Again, the choice of killing power alone is the problem here, though the Jagdpanther, and a number of the other ones of Germany's lighter tank hunters - despite suffering similar issues as listed above - were actually pretty good both in terms of individual performance AND overall efficiency. Duzzy Funlop fucked around with this message at 17:44 on Jul 2, 2019 |
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Jul 2, 2019 17:39
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