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Fangz posted:Rather debatable that adding days of application and drying time to the production of every single tank can qualify as 'elegant'. It couldn't break down in the field so I would suggest it was pretty elegant, relative to say the Panther's final drive.
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Oct 31, 2016 20:50
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ArchangeI posted:Are you perhaps suggesting that glorious tanks of third reich (never penetrated in combat) are DIRTY!? German tanks were so pretty that they wore skirts to battle 
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Oct 31, 2016 20:54
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Nenonen posted:German tanks were so pretty that they wore skirts to battle Just gonna say that the Sherman's (and Lee's) front drive housing is the closest thing to a tank codpiece I can think of.
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Oct 31, 2016 21:00
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xthetenth posted:Just gonna say that the Sherman's (and Lee's) front drive housing is the closest thing to a tank codpiece I can think of. "is that a bocage cutter or are you just happy to see me?"
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Oct 31, 2016 21:04
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Nenonen posted:"is that a bocage cutter or are you just happy to see me?" They don't call me Jumbo for nothing
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Oct 31, 2016 21:06
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xthetenth posted:Just gonna say that the Sherman's (and Lee's) front drive housing is the closest thing to a tank codpiece I can think of. 
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Oct 31, 2016 21:26
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There's the Dicker Max, an earlyish-war (participated in Barbarossa but that's about it) German TD with a 105mm cannon. Dicker Max.
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Oct 31, 2016 21:26
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MikeCrotch posted:They don't call me Jumbo for nothing I heard the soviets called your mother a coffin for four brothers
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Oct 31, 2016 21:36
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Panzeh posted:I'd like to see the T-70, one of those tanks that just stayed in service because they were there, ala the Stuart. It's hardly comparable, the last T-70s were taken out of service when the war ended, the Stuart is still in service.
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Oct 31, 2016 21:45
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FAUXTON posted:There's the Dicker Max, an earlyish-war (participated in Barbarossa but that's about it) German TD with a 105mm cannon. one of the vehicles that are good in bideo james and awful irl For combat trials the two prototypes were assigned to Panzerjäger Abteilung ("Anti-tank Battalion") 521 during the invasion of the Soviet Union. One accidentally caught fire and was completely destroyed by the detonation of its ammunition, but the other fought successfully until the end of 1941. It was rebuilt by Krupp during the first half of 1942 and returned to the 521st in time to participate in Case Blue, the 1942 summer offensive in Russia. It was not reported operational in reports made by the battalion in November—December 1942. it would maybe have been decent if it had been ready earlier so that the problems could have been fixed and if it had been used against the original target, the maginot line
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Oct 31, 2016 21:49
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The Soviets captured it and GABTU really wanted a second one, but their dreams never came true.
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Oct 31, 2016 21:57
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Ensign Expendable posted:The Soviets captured it and GABTU really wanted a second one, but their dreams never came true. what did they plan to use it against?
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Oct 31, 2016 21:59
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Ensign Expendable posted:It's hardly comparable, the last T-70s were taken out of service when the war ended, the Stuart is still in service. I think by this point Paraguay is just doing it so they can say they do.
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Oct 31, 2016 21:59
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Hogge Wild posted:what did they plan to use it against? If I had to guess, they wanted to examine the suspension. Everything else wasn't really anything new or useful for the USSR.
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Oct 31, 2016 22:01
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Ensign Expendable posted:If I had to guess, they wanted to examine the suspension. Everything else wasn't really anything new or useful for the USSR. what was special about the suspension?
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Oct 31, 2016 22:07
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Never mind, it was the Sturer Emil that GABTU wanted. But the Dicker Max did fall into Soviet hands, here's a photo taken by a Soviet war correspondent in February 1943. Edit: for completeness' sake, here's the Dicker Max that was the first to go: 
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Nov 1, 2016 01:20
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I want to caption that second image as "A German Tank, in its natural state."
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Nov 1, 2016 02:38
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Hogge Wild posted:one of the vehicles that are good in bideo james and awful irl There's a later section talking about how the braking system tore itself apart under typical use. Which is fine if you're doing the Soviet thing of balancing durability against combat expectations and coming out with a tank that cost half as much and came off the line twice as fast as it did two years prior. Germany? "Forged by dwarven smiths in the mines of moria" is the language I like to borrow when doing the comparison. With the way German war industry was planned out, they needed tanks that would be able to make it to the front without taking maintenance losses, and then rack up impossible combat lifespans with only field repairs. Having a tank that breaks its own drat self when operating in noncombat scenarios is basically "German Tank Design, 1941-1945" with a tiny handful of exceptions. Of course that tank was bad. It was designed by Germany during WWII. It has the same kind of "diamonds are hard ergo they aren't brittle" blind spots that practically every tank had when it wasn't lifted from stolen blueprints.
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Nov 1, 2016 06:05
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I'm currently reading a book on Q-ships that, while it is really interesting, definitely is showing its nearly 100 years of age. Does anyone here either a) have a good recommendation for a book on Q-ships or b) mind sharing information on Q-ships? The whole idea of a ship and a crew that wants to attract a sub, get shot at by said sub, and then ambush them is really interesting. As an aside, were Q-ships used in WWII or later? It seems like most of the information I can look up is dealing with WWI, and I would think that the technological advancements of the time/learning from the past wold have severely hampered the usefulness of Q-ships post WWI.
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Nov 1, 2016 06:57
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lenoon posted:These soviet industry posts are fantastic, much appreciated. USMC_Karl posted:As an aside, were Q-ships used in WWII or later? It seems like most of the information I can look up is dealing with WWI, and I would think that the technological advancements of the time/learning from the past wold have severely hampered the usefulness of Q-ships post WWI. Not super effectively, but they were used in WWII. The US slapped a couple together on existing hulls right after the war started, and I think the UK had a few.
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Nov 1, 2016 07:18
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Q-ships largely came to be a thing because, especially in WWI, the technology really didn't exist to effectively hunt submerged submarines, so you had to get them on the surface. They appeared to be more of a measure out of desperation and they weren't particularly effective. There was also something at the time, called, Prize Rules or Cruiser Rules, international rules of war and such things. It basically went along the lines of, if you want to sink a merchant man, you have to give the crew a place of safety, take them aboard or at least let them get into their lifeboats. These were written for a time before uboat. And for a time, German submarines abided by these (I think?), surfacing next to a submarine, allowing them to enter their lifeboats before sinking her. When presumably someone thought, if only we had a deck gun! Not sure how often or for how long that was a thing, but it stopped pretty drat quickly when they realised Q-ships were a thing.
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Nov 1, 2016 07:24
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BattleMoose posted:Q-ships largely came to be a thing because, especially in WWI, the technology really didn't exist to effectively hunt submerged submarines, so you had to get them on the surface. They appeared to be more of a measure out of desperation and they weren't particularly effective. Yeah, definitely seems as if in the book that the whole idea went something like this. 1) Q-ship steams around in a known u-boat hunting area. 2) U-boat spots the Q-ship and, wanting to save the torpedoes (right?), surfaces to engage with deck gun. 3) The Q-ship pretends to abandon ship, lowering a launch with some of the crew in it while the meat of the crew hides on the boat. 4) The Q-ship (hopefully) either gets the u-boat to close in to easy shooting range or takes a long time to abandon ship while trying to slyly close the distance. 5) The Q-ship (supposedly) drops merchant flags, raises "the white ensign," and opens fire. 6) The u-boat is (hopefully) sunk, but is more likely just damaged or scared off. 7) The Q-ship then either tries to dump some depth charges where the u-boat was seen diving or chalks it up as a win and hauls rear end out of there. Still, it is definitely interesting imaging these situations. Especially when reading about sail driven Q-ships and schemes where Q-fishing trawlers towed mines with nets in them in the hopes of snaring some pesky u-boats.
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Nov 1, 2016 07:44
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MANime in the sheets posted:Not super effectively, but they were used in WWII. The US slapped a couple together on existing hulls right after the war started ...for the US. So probably not very effectively given that was two years after the war began for most other countries 
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Nov 1, 2016 14:19
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BattleMoose posted:Q-ships largely came to be a thing because, especially in WWI, the technology really didn't exist to effectively hunt submerged submarines, so you had to get them on the surface. They appeared to be more of a measure out of desperation and they weren't particularly effective. Yeah, a combination of this and just straight up arming legitimate freighters led to the Germans abandoning Prize Rules and moving to unrestricted submarine warfare. Note that this had the knock on effect of the sub being unable to check what the ship was carrying and where it was from, hence the famous adverts stating that anything in the Atlantic/Channel was liable to get sunk with no warning. It should also be pointed out that while WWI destroyers were less capable than their WWII counterparts, the same can also be said for the submarines themselves. Once the Brits got their arses in gear on the second go around of unrestricted submarine warfare, started a convoy system and started properly allocating destroyers to escort efforts (on top of getting help from the Americans on that front), submarines were in for a pretty rough time if they wanted to actually try to get shots off. A lot of those WWI destroyers were still in service on ASW duty come WWII as well due to the savage shortage of ships the Royal Navy was facing.
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Nov 1, 2016 18:07
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Q-Ships are commonly given as a reason for going to Unrestricted Submarine Warfare, and it's a pretty convenient one because it puts the blame squarely at the feet of the other guys. But I've always thought it was a pretty sucky excuse. It seems certain that even without Q-Ships, the next obvious thing of escorting merchant ships with destroyers would probably have killed off the whole 'surface and demand surrender' doctrine anyway.
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Nov 1, 2016 18:25
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Fangz posted:Q-Ships are commonly given as a reason for going to Unrestricted Submarine Warfare, and it's a pretty convenient one because it puts the blame squarely at the feet of the other guys. But I've always thought it was a pretty sucky excuse. It seems certain that even without Q-Ships, the next obvious thing of escorting merchant ships with destroyers would probably have killed off the whole 'surface and demand surrender' doctrine anyway. Pretty sure destroyer escorts didn't really come into effect until convoying started in earnest, which didn't happen until a way into the second round of USW as Jellicoe was unconvinced of how effective it would be and the port authorities on both sides of the Atlantic were concerned about overloading port facilities by having huge convoys turn up at once. Sub warfare was working fine under prize rules until freighters themselves started fighting back or hiding as Q ships. By definition the next step would be USW to stop subs having to expose themselves to enemy fire. There would be no reason to start destroyer escorts if the Merchant Navy was still having success sinking German subs using armed freighters. Now it might be the case that the German Navy wanted to move to USW in order to sink more tonnage and was looking for an excuse, but I can't remember if that came up in discussions. There's quite a lot of evidence surrounding the decisions made around USW since the Kaiser, Bethmann-Hollweg and the military argued about the subject a lot over the course of the war.
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Nov 1, 2016 18:46
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The Royal Navy fought tooth and nail against having to escort freighters with destroyers, which is funny. By WW2 they realized it's a pretty good idea.
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Nov 1, 2016 18:47
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Is there any documentation of where exactly the bleeding edge of ASW was at the end of WWI and how much got forgotten in between wars? I remember turning up mention of a dipping sonar made for flying boats to use late in WWI, but trying to collate fragmentary mentions like that would be pretty hard.
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Nov 1, 2016 19:31
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I've been starting to continue reading Castles of Steel recently and I'm slowly getting to the Battle of Jutland. Dear god, I knew Wilhelm was interfering pretty badly with the German Navy, but I didn't know it was that bad!  Even when the German admirals just gave up on using the High Seas Fleet for a while and came up with submarine warfare against commerce as a desperate way to continue fighting, good old Kaiser Wilhelm II. found ways to sabotage his U-Boats. Mostly by waffling around in a comical manner. I mean it's nice that he was so chivalrous about how a fleet was supposed to conduct itself at sea, but it got really painful when he essentially repeatedly went "Yes/No/Yes/No" on the issue of how restricted submarine warfare should be. All the cases where the Imperial Government got a deal with the US, followed by some captain accidentally torpedoing yet another passenger liner with Americans on them just added to the farce. Even more painful were all the cases where German admirals hosed up trying to reconcile bafflingly bad Imperial orders with reality. That part where Admiral Ingenohl just turns around and retreats back into harbour, leaving all of Admiral Hipper's battlecruisers hanging was so horrible I nearly snapped my e-book reader in two just from pity.  Great Britain really should have built our old emperor a statue, he was the greatest war hero they ever had.
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Nov 1, 2016 19:57
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A bit late, but those Soviet industry posts were incredible reads. Thanks for those posts. I mean, goddamn. "Thanks for creating our entire industrial base comrades!" 
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Nov 1, 2016 20:04
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xthetenth posted:Is there any documentation of where exactly the bleeding edge of ASW was at the end of WWI and how much got forgotten in between wars? I remember turning up mention of a dipping sonar made for flying boats to use late in WWI, but trying to collate fragmentary mentions like that would be pretty hard. Yes please, this. WWI submarine/ASW stuff is hard to find because it gets drowned out in the noise of its big brother from a few years later.
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Nov 1, 2016 20:32
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Libluini posted:Great Britain really should have built our old emperor a statue, he was the greatest war hero they ever had. We probably did at some point, I mean he was Queen Victoria's grandson.
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Nov 1, 2016 20:41
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Kemper Boyd posted:The Royal Navy fought tooth and nail against having to escort freighters with destroyers, which is funny. By WW2 they realized it's a pretty good idea. They always knew it was a good idea, it's just that there weren't enough destroyers to go around and they were desperately needed to keep the Grand Fleet afloat.
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Nov 1, 2016 21:04
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Waroduce posted:Any recommendations on a book about Queen Elizabeth II? I just watched the netflix trailer with my girlfriend and it sort of sparked my interest. She's a head of state (or figurehead of state) that has been alive through alot of poo poo.... That would be a unusual and deeply weird personal experience. Coming soon to Netflix, a big budget series about 18+ year old me's personal life Can you imagine sitting down and watching it.
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Nov 1, 2016 21:15
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Deptfordx posted:That would be a unusual and deeply weird personal experience. also a little weird, if you think about sitting through that
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Nov 1, 2016 21:16
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Alchenar posted:They always knew it was a good idea, it's just that there weren't enough destroyers to go around and they were desperately needed to keep the Grand Fleet afloat. I remember something like bad analysis on part of the Royal Navy playing a role too. The thinking was that putting ships into convoys would allow the Germans to sink more ships than otherwise if they found one. At the time, it wasn't realized that running convoys makes finding targets harder for the subs.
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Nov 1, 2016 21:16
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HEY GAL posted:every time she hears their national anthem it prays for god to save her Also calls for the smiting of a tenth of her subjects including all the locals around Balmoral.
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Nov 1, 2016 21:19
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Well that's just common sense. Those people are Rebellious. It's right there in the lyrics 
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Nov 1, 2016 21:43
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Kemper Boyd posted:I remember something like bad analysis on part of the Royal Navy playing a role too. The thinking was that putting ships into convoys would allow the Germans to sink more ships than otherwise if they found one. At the time, it wasn't realized that running convoys makes finding targets harder for the subs. That's actually true when submarines are pretty rare and most ships going their own way won't encounter one. Once the numbers on patrol go up then so does the likelihood of any given cargo ship encountering one and your chance of survival becomes greater when in a convoy. Note that Channel trade with France and Holland had convoy systems introduced much earlier than Atlantic trade in large part because the concentration of ships made it the better option. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Nov 1, 2016 |
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Nov 1, 2016 22:12
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feedmegin posted:Also calls for the smiting of a tenth of her subjects including all the locals around Balmoral. Only, I think, for a brief period a couple hundred years ago. God Save The Queen is rewritten only marginally less often than Russia's national anthem.
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Nov 1, 2016 23:03
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