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Jobbo_Fett posted:Because of two main reasons Why would an "armed' bomber be heavier and slower than the normal version? Surely it would have fewer crewmembers, and several machine guns/cannon + ammunition can't weigh more than a bomb load, can it?
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Dec 1, 2020 20:51
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PeterCat posted:Why would an "armed' bomber be heavier and slower than the normal version? The attempt at building a B-17 covered in machine guns was so heavy it couldn't keep up with the formation it was supposed to gunship for. The YB-40. It was like 4000 pounds heavier than a normal B-17 fully loaded with bombs.
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Dec 1, 2020 20:54
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PeterCat posted:Why would an "armed' bomber be heavier and slower than the normal version? More gunners and more machine guns means you're adding a lot of weight that you wouldn't normally have in a "clean" version. Then you have to account for ammunition as well, on top of anything else, such as more armor or other supplies for the crew (first aid kits, etc), which adds up. Your normal bomber does carry a heavy load, yes, but if your gunship ever weighs more, than it will always be slower and heavier.
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Dec 1, 2020 21:02
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PeterCat posted:Why would an "armed' bomber be heavier and slower than the normal version? A .50 cal weighs more than 80 pounds. Add in a 180 pound gunner, his gear, his ammo - it adds up quickly.
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Dec 1, 2020 21:12
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BalloonFish posted:And back when tanks moved at sub-warship speeds and didn't have wireless they did use semaphore: I feel weirdly patriotic here.
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Dec 1, 2020 21:15
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Maybe I'm misunderstanding something here. The way I read the posts earlier in the thread, heavy bombers in the 1920s could fly higher and faster than light fighter planes. What I was proposing was mounting forward facing machine guns on similar heavy bombers to use to attack the enemy's incoming heavy bombers. This is a different concept than the YB-40 which was designed to fend off single engine fighters over Germany.
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Dec 1, 2020 21:17
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You still have the time to altitude and speed differential problem. I guess you get a bit more loiter time.
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Dec 1, 2020 21:22
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HEY GUNS posted:Why not study central Europe in the seventeenth century, when everything has at least two names and sometimes about five Not enough puttees, sorry
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Dec 1, 2020 21:22
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PeterCat posted:Maybe I'm misunderstanding something here. The way I read the posts earlier in the thread, heavy bombers in the 1920s could fly higher and faster than light fighter planes. What I was proposing was mounting forward facing machine guns on similar heavy bombers to use to attack the enemy's incoming heavy bombers. The concept of the escort gunship came about only in WW2, really. Plenty of bombers have had forward-facing guns, but they are for defensive purposes. As for using them that way, its a really dodgy prospect. Bombers in the 20's and up to mid-30's are either faster or fly higher than fighters, yes, but attacking enemy bombers is still a dangerous thing. You can't really get the same high-angle attacks as offered by fighters, and your large target of a plane is that much more susceptible to incoming fire. Well armored bombers weren't much of a thing back then, and sophisticated bits like self-sealing fuel tanks less so.
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Dec 1, 2020 21:23
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Night10194 posted:The attempt at building a B-17 covered in machine guns was so heavy it couldn't keep up with the formation it was supposed to gunship for. The YB-40. It was like 4000 pounds heavier than a normal B-17 fully loaded with bombs. Thank you for this. Geez American WW2 weapon designers really did just stick on as many .50 cal machine guns as the platform could carry
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Dec 1, 2020 21:39
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Uncle Enzo posted:Thank you for this. Geez American WW2 weapon designers really did just stick on as many .50 cal machine guns as the platform could carry You say this like it's a bad thing. 
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Dec 1, 2020 21:49
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https://twitter.com/Casey/status/1333192113098407937 https://twitter.com/Casey/status/1333194059377119232 For me it's either Stalingrad or the Alamo, easy. Both if possible.
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Dec 1, 2020 22:12
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Note he said with, not during.
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Dec 1, 2020 22:16
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zoux posted:For me it's either Stalingrad or the Alamo, easy. Both if possible. Do they even have a birth ward in Alamo? Sounds like you could very possibly die at birth. I would be born on the first Moon landing. Neil Armstrong as my mother and Buzz Aldrin as the midwife, hell yeah! Nenonen fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Dec 1, 2020 |
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Dec 1, 2020 22:21
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Stabbing Antonio López de Santa Anna with a bowie knife straight out the womb
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Dec 1, 2020 22:23
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zoux posted:https://twitter.com/Casey/status/1333192113098407937 This person's wish is to fight in WW1? You don't gotta have a time machine for that, pretty sure there's any number of places right now where you can experience the delight of being shelled repeatedly until some shrapnel guts you.
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Dec 1, 2020 22:39
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Uncle Enzo posted:This person's wish is to fight in WW1? You don't gotta have a time machine for that, pretty sure there's any number of places right now where you can experience the delight of being shelled repeatedly until some shrapnel guts you. He may just really hate the French.
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Dec 1, 2020 22:41
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Uncle Enzo posted:Thank you for this. Geez American WW2 weapon designers really did just stick on as many .50 cal machine guns as the platform could carry The canadians would dismount the .50 cals on lend lease shermans and do all kinds of poo poo with them.
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Dec 1, 2020 22:41
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:The canadians would dismount the .50 cals on lend lease shermans and do all kinds of poo poo with them. I am forever sad that no Skink exists anymore. A true casualty of the war.
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Dec 1, 2020 22:42
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Pagoda masts for tank semaphore.
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Dec 1, 2020 22:45
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PeterCat posted:Why would an "armed' bomber be heavier and slower than the normal version? Also, bomb load is usually dropped at one point. I mean, you can also drop guns and their gunners halfway through the mission, but they tend to not like that.
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Dec 1, 2020 23:06
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Jobbo_Fett posted:The concept of the escort gunship came about only in WW2, really. Wasn't there some plan to mount aft-firing Sidewinders on the B-1 for defense too?
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Dec 1, 2020 23:25
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Jobbo_Fett posted:More gunners and more machine guns means you're adding a lot of weight that you wouldn't normally have in a "clean" version. Then you have to account for ammunition as well, on top of anything else, such as more armor or other supplies for the crew (first aid kits, etc), which adds up. Your normal bomber does carry a heavy load, yes, but if your gunship ever weighs more, than it will always be slower and heavier. You also drop the bombload over the target, at which point the bombers become even lighter compared to the gunships.
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Dec 2, 2020 00:06
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FuturePastNow posted:Wasn't there some plan to mount aft-firing Sidewinders on the B-1 for defense too? I seem to recall a plane having that but I absolutely don't know which one it was. Just like there's a plane with rails on the upper side of the wings.
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Dec 2, 2020 00:06
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MrYenko posted:You also drop the bombload over the target, at which point the bombers become even lighter compared to the gunships. Correct.
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Dec 2, 2020 00:06
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TaurusTorus posted:I have some pike related questions: The wood for the shafts came from coppiced trees. The shafts were tapered to be more balanced, and the European medieval/early modern pikes didn't have butt spikes unlike the classical Macedonian ones. No idea if Asian pikes had them. And the Macedonian pikes were made from two parts that were connected with a bronze tube. According to http://deventerburgerscap.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-14th-century-pike-and-its.html the shafts had "average diameter of 24.7 mm at 10 cm underneath the pikehead, 3 meters from the pikehead the diameter was 35.8 mm on average, and at the bottom it was about 30.3 mm. "
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Dec 2, 2020 00:19
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What is the thread's opinion of Max Hastings? https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1985/05/05/their-wehrmacht-was-better-than-our-army/0b2cfe73-68f4-4bc3-a62d-7626f6382dbd/ article posted:
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Dec 2, 2020 01:11
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PeterCat posted:Maybe I'm misunderstanding something here. The way I read the posts earlier in the thread, heavy bombers in the 1920s could fly higher and faster than light fighter planes. What I was proposing was mounting forward facing machine guns on similar heavy bombers to use to attack the enemy's incoming heavy bombers. It's an issue of kinematics. You need to get up to the altitude where the enemy bombers are, at the same place the enemy bombers are, if you want to be able to engage them. Before radar, you don't really know where the enemy bombers are or where they're going. They know their target, but you don't, and you can't cover everywhere. Once you factor in the time-to-climb and get up to their altitude, what sort of speed advantage do you have, and how close to them are you? If you're approaching head on, great, if you have to fly a course just to catch up with them, let alone a tail chase, what sort of speed advantage do you have? A few knots? Good luck catching them before they drop their bombs. Without some sort of coherent air warning and control network that could detect the inbound bombers with enough warning to put planes in their path, it was very difficult to put your planes in gun range of the enemy bombers This is the same reason the U2 was such a difficult target in its day. It's not like they didn't see the U2 coming on radar, it's that by the time the missiles they fired at it got up to 70,000' they kinematically couldn't achieve a hit before running out of fuel. Sure, eventually they scored but it's not like Powers's U2 was the first one to overfly the Soviet Union or the first one they fired a bunch of SA-2s at. Same thing with the SR-71 later, successful interception depended on advance notice of its flight path because otherwise by the time you got up to altitude to be in a position to shoot at it it was gone; once the MiG-31 came along successful intercepts were possible and the SR-71 stayed out of Soviet airspace but it regularly violated China's. Before the advent of SAMs even the B-36 would have been a tough target for fighters of the day to handle because it'd take the MiG-15 something like 15 minutes to get up to 50000' and up that high it could hardly turn.
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Dec 2, 2020 01:52
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PeterCat posted:What is the thread's opinion of Max Hastings? He bangs his 'the germans were better' drum hard and it's easy to miss the nuance of his position - German soldiers fought hard because they had guns to their heads, whereas Allied soldiers didn't and tended to know they could ask for mass firepower rather than risk themselves. Clinging to that line though means that he often glosses over instances where Allied troops overperformed or the Germans underperformed. He also has to dance around the fact that, well, the Germans lost and we won. e: also peddles the myth that Allied equipment was inferior - by and large it wasn't. I think it is fair though to look at the disparity of forces on the Western front in late 1944 and conclude that something had gone a bit embarrassingly wrong on the Allied side given their performance. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Dec 2, 2020 |
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Dec 2, 2020 01:54
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He explains the Germans losing by claiming ghr troops they lost to the Soviets were their best ones. These opinions always ignore the defeat of the Arika Corps.
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Dec 2, 2020 02:22
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PeterCat posted:What is the thread's opinion of Max Hastings? Every British military historian I know hates him.
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Dec 2, 2020 02:24
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FuturePastNow posted:Wasn't there some plan to mount aft-firing Sidewinders on the B-1 for defense too? Not sure about that one, but the XB-70 was planned to have an even wilder version; http://www.astronautix.com/p/pyewacket.html 
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Dec 2, 2020 02:37
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PeterCat posted:He explains the Germans losing by claiming ghr troops they lost to the Soviets were their best ones.
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Dec 2, 2020 02:52
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Nessus posted:Were the Afrika Corps cream of the crop or something? I always heard they were notably more professional (and perhaps more importantly better supplied) than the Italians but weren't like hyper elite SS space marines or something. I don't know how they were considered, but it's always glossed over that 400,000 Germans surrendered to the Allies in North Africa when the question of German superiority in the war comes up. As far as Hastings' article, I don't know where he gets the idea that German gear was better than American gear. The small arms were comparable, and I'd say the only real advantage the Germans had was the MG42, which isn't going to win the war. The Tiger and Panther vs Sherman has been beat to death in this thread so I won't rehash it, but there wasn't much else that was better.
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Dec 2, 2020 02:58
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Yeah I thought the German presence in Africa was all of like 5 divisions, backed up by more numerous Italian units.PeterCat posted:I don't know how they were considered, but it's always glossed over that 400,000 Germans surrendered to the Allies in North Africa when the question of German superiority in the war comes up. It's not anywhere near that many, that number was about half Italians. PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 03:06 on Dec 2, 2020 |
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Dec 2, 2020 03:04
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:Yeah I thought the German presence in Africa was all of like 5 divisions, backed up by more numerous Italian units. 400,000 is what stuck in my head, must have been a total I read a long time ago instead of the number of Germans. Wiki states 189,000 Germans and around 250,000 Italians. Either way, nothing to sneeze at. It almost becomes a "No True Scotsman" fallacy. If the Germans were being defeated by the Americans and British then those Germans must the lowest quality of the Wehrmacht. PeterCat fucked around with this message at 03:30 on Dec 2, 2020 |
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Dec 2, 2020 03:26
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The 21st and 15th panzer were both very good units when they were with DAK and it was accompanied by Italian units that varied considerably in quality- a more varied force made up the reinforcement wave that came with the Axis re-commitment to Africa in Tunisia but it was still generally pretty good. The 21st panzer in Normandy was a mid-refit division that was a shell of its former self. In general, I think the Hastings passage is overselling it. Everyone came out of ww2 with a healthy respect for the power of airpower and especially artillery. Compared to the Germans, everyone was a bit deficient in small arms and I don't think that's a sign that there's no desire for the infantry arm to be good. After the war, the US changed the platoon organization and made changes to the small arms loadout to improve their organization, and I don't really see Hastings providing evidence of neglect here. Both the western and Soviet armies beat up on a variety of Axis formations- while there were a bit more proportionally good divisions in the west, this had more to do with the lower frontage there, but there certainly were quite a few quality panzer divisions bogged down in fighting around Normandy during Bagration. The US was fighting quality troops in places like the Hurtgenwald or around St. Lo in Normandy. Artillery was definitely a big strength in the US Army, and small arms not, but the impact of the latter is a bit less than the former.
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Dec 2, 2020 03:33
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Max Hastings is full of poo poo but US infantry did have definite problems during WW2, the most damaging of which was that because of how the draft worked the technical branches of the Army (the Air Force, Engineers, Armored Branch, etc) got first dibs on the brightest recruits and plain infantry units had something like lowest priority.
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Dec 2, 2020 04:15
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Was pulling the cream of the crop out of the infantry the right call because they could have proportionally greater effect in other areas? It makes sense in theory but infantry take the heaviest casualties so maybe you could reduce that by upping the quality.
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Dec 2, 2020 06:34
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McNamara would disagree
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Dec 2, 2020 06:58
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