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Aug 2, 2016 11:55
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Nenonen posted:So apparently Heinrich Himmler's lost wartime diaries have been found and Bild is publishing excerpts. They will be published in book form next year, but we already know from his notes that: I guess he didn't want to lose any credit if they succeeded, and if they failed he could just commit suicide. Someone dug up a bunch of info on the M551 program for me, and it's got me curious. Since it shared some technology and armament with the MBT-70, there are definitely times where observations of the shortcomings of the Sheridan created delays in the MBT program. I'm currently trying to find some information on the MBT-70 program, hopefully with a good amount of information on how German and American development teams communicated with each other. Does anyone have any good information on where to start? The only thing I've really read on the MBT-70 are the few cases in which Hunnicutt mentioned it.
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Aug 2, 2016 19:03
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spectralent posted:Ah, I can see where that'd be confusing. Essentially every cool head comes to relatively the same place that Harry Yeide did: The bare-bones paper doctrine for the US TD forces was pretty dumb, but putting a gun on an armored chassis and training the hell out of the crew to be flexible and deadly with them Wasn't So Bad. There were also decisions made after the doctrine like the post-Kasserine converting of GMC TD units to towed that was dumb for an army that needed to stay so mobile but McNair was an artillery man so what can you expect. What we ended up getting out of the GMC units was a bunch of guys who were put out front and had the initiative and training to know what they could do, whether it was M10s as artillery support in Italy, M18s working as mobile armored cav in France, or any of them being direct fire support for armored or infantry attacks, we made the best of a situation that could have been a big waste. Yeah I mean considering that the picture depicts four vehicles, two chassis, three guns, and two turrets, I couldn't blame anyone. Ooh, more questions: What kind of ways did ancient armies get through pike phalanxes frontally? I heard of the Persians charging their blade-wheeled chariots through them, but that seems weird in my brain because the horse literally goes before the cart. Plan Z fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Aug 3, 2016 |
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Aug 3, 2016 01:59
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Elyv posted:IIRC Roman Legionairies actually marched with 2 stakes as part of their loadout so they could set up their evening camps quickly. Would make sense, and stakes for the archers are a nifty idea, even if it is just "you want your anti-cavalry defense well here ya go. Don't lose it, or you gonna get lance in the face." I hear a lot of push-pull over the argument that French Generals of the Hundred Years' War were mostly just rich guys with too much desire for honor, recognition, and political gain, and not enough hobbies, but I feel like there may be a lot of misconceptions there if someone could clear it up.
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Aug 4, 2016 02:21
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SeanBeansShako posted:Please don't suck. Pleeeease don't suck It seems like a weird thing to focus on, but I like the fact that they didn't all react/duck at once, as opposed to the average movie where they'd just go "okay, script goes duck, wait for the director to cue." It's little things in movies like that that humanize them for me and draw me in. It's like in the early Total War games when soldiers wouldn't all move in perfect sync the second you clicked the button. Ice Fist posted:Speaking of all this armor talk: can someone do an effort post or otherwise point out some good places to read up on modern tank armor types/variations? You're best to read up on specific tanks, like specifically a T-64 tank book or something like that, and even then you won't get a lot of information on modern tanks (as in late '70s or so until now).
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Aug 5, 2016 22:57
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MrMojok posted:OK tankophiles, I know of no better place to ask this. Anything in Death Traps that wasn't about Cooper's basic job should pretty much be disregarded on principle. It could have been interesting if someone just got a bunch of stories from this guy, but there was a ghost writer throwing in a ton of nonsense, mostly to sell books out of controversy (it worked). The story sounds fishy, or maybe exaggerated. It's not impossible, though. There's the famous story of the KV tank at Raisenai that held up a battalion (I think) for a whole day, inflicting a few dozen casualties and knocking out a few guns and trucks. There were isolated stories around the war of similar deeds, usually involving armor facing an unprepared and/or unexpecting enemy. Nothing on the level of what was depicted at the end of Fury, though. One of the benefits of the Sherman was lots of ways for crew to look outside. There were multiple periscopes and the like. It wouldn't have been perfect but was arguably the best tank in the war in terms of vision. The film was alright. There were some pretty accurate depicitions (when they're assaulting the hedgerow was alright, although condensed because it would probably be hard to film everyone spaced out realistically), and some pretty bad ones (there's a 5 on 1 Sherman-Tiger fight). Like everyone else said, it could have ended shortly after landmine, and it could have been a pretty good character movie about what happens to different people based on their experiences. It really felt like there were three writers in the film who were in an editing fight before the script had to be shipped. Plan Z fucked around with this message at 08:44 on Aug 9, 2016 |
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Aug 9, 2016 08:42
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The only media I've seen that servicemen seem to agree on being realistic are Generation Kill and Pentagon Wars, and even Generation Kill has some debate about it. I had to watch Hurt Locker with a guy who was in US Marines EOD for eight years and I loving got an earful about it.
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Aug 9, 2016 18:40
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MrMojok posted:Sorry, was tanks trying to maneuver around to shoot each other in the rear end not a real thing? Yes, but not in the ways one may immediately think. Average tank engagement was hundreds of meters, so that means in the average engagement, you'd have move hundreds of meters in circumference to do so, taking forever and exposing yourself to fire in the meantime. Scoring even a bouncing hit is also going to be like firing a gun at a soldier. If they have their wits, they're not going to stick around. So it's basically in your best interest to just fire and avoid being hit by either relocating or staying ahead of their aim. This is how a lot of successful maneuvers were done: Fire, re-locate, fire. If you play your cards right and the terrain and battle are in your favor, you can score killing hits more easily by hitting sides/rear, best demonstrated in battles like Arracourt or many Tank Destroyer engagements since it was specifically part of their training. Realistically, the average tank engagement of the war involved two tanks that could score a combat kill frontally, with certain obvious exceptions like with the panics of the B1, T-34, KV, etc. Also, tank formations as any other are ordered to form into a way that makes out-maneuvering by the enemy difficult to impossible. This is also where I make the disclaimer that tank-on-tank combat was relatively rare, and the average tank was usually knocked out by towed guns, mines, or handheld weapons so while yes the Sherman had to flank a Tiger or Panther, the situation where it needed to happen didn't come up terribly often.
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Aug 9, 2016 20:10
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ArchangeI posted:Is sloped armor just really difficult to make or why did they decide to go with a box tank in tyool 1943? It had a bit of an extended development phase which started around the time when Pz. IIIs and IVs were considered the new standard. Didn't help that it wasn't particularly impressive in 1940 or so when it was first getting off the ground, forget 3 or 4 years later when they could get Shermans in larger numbers. Also, speaking of the problems with the QQF 75, here's a little tank project from the war:  Churchill NA 75. I know they built and fielded a few hundred, but I've never read any accounts of their performance. Plan Z fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Aug 11, 2016 |
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Aug 11, 2016 22:12
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spectralent posted:Yeah, I knew about use of armour in Africa, I just wasn't aware that the high rate of tank losses in France was because of fuckups, I thought it had more to do with the terrain and role they were forced into. The British and American sectors each ran into their own problems in France. The US for the most part was stuck in hedgerow country, which was a defender's delight and an attacker's nightmare. They spent the first part of the summer trying to figure out how to quickly move through the hedges while also figuring out how to better coordinate combined armor/infantry tactics. This led to some pretty impressive field innovations like telephones hooked up to tanks and special plows fitted to Shermans that cut particularly well through the dense, high hedgerows. Then Omar Bradley took a map of Normandy, drew a bunch of planes flying over it, made explosion noises with his mouth, and drew a bunch of arrows pointing east and the breakthrough got underway. The British had more open ground to deal with in their sectors, and due to high attrition rates, didn't always have the optimal amount of infantry to deal in coordinated combined warfare. The open ground also led to them suffering a lot of casualties to AT guns firing from long distances. This was all exacerbated by incorrect intelligence on the Panther. Despite some captured German officers insisting the Panther was to replace the Panzers III and IV, intel believed it was going to be more like the Tigers, rare beasts that weren't worth scurrying over. Their guess turned out wrong, and approximately half of all tanks in France were Panthers. Coupled with the limits of hedgerows to out-maneuver, and this was a large headache. And then the mud of fall forced all the tanks back onto roads where they took a marked increase in casualties due to land mines. That's the end. No moral. Plan Z fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Aug 12, 2016 |
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Aug 12, 2016 04:22
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:alternatehistory.com I don't know how people can put up with that. I once ran into a Boo who insisted that the Abrams could not frontally penetrate a Tiger II and I wanted to put my head through the wall.
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Aug 13, 2016 18:46
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SlothfulCobra posted:If they were so effective, are armed forces today still using flamethrowers? Or were they banned for being too messy or horrifying? Mixture of not practical for modern warfare, and "sort of banned" depending on the situation. Some nations have napalm thermobaric rockets in their arsenals. Last I read, the US dumped its flamethrowers within a few years after Vietnam and pretty much says "No incendiaries anywhere near civilians, including against vegetation and wildlife. If you can attack a military target and it's nowhere near a civilian population, then you do you. Also, incendiaries by air are pretty much cool with us whenever." EDIT: Found the thing: http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/190579.pdf
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Aug 16, 2016 07:03
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SeanBeansShako posted:gently caress the SS now, gently caress the SS always and gently caress the SS forever. Now I need a drink reading all that. The most disgusting thing to me is how they're slowly achieving some kind of exalted status as an "elite fighting force." To say nothing of the fact that they were largely poor-to-acceptable fighters, I'm more bothered that they're treated as anything but jackbooted monsters.
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Aug 20, 2016 18:02
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Supposedly there was an incident about a thousand years ago in China where they coated monkeys in flammable material and sent them into enemy camps. It sounds like one of those things that got passed down to quack 18th century European "historians" through a game of telephone, though.
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Sep 4, 2016 13:40
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What were different ancient armies' stances on using enemy equipment? I realize they wouldn't just throw them away, but considering how standardized everything was (All of you go together because you all have the same sword/spear/shield/armor), would they melt down captured equipment and re-craft it to their use, distribute it to their own forces. give it to the populace for last ditch defense? Kind of curious to hear what different people with different knowledge have to say.
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Sep 6, 2016 03:40
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:You can't do this in the ancient period with iron or steel weapons, game of thrones lied to you. With bronze age weapons there is no suggestion of standardization afaik. Never saw GoT, but I ask this stuff because I don't know at all.
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Sep 6, 2016 19:19
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A museum I worked at had the only unaltered M1917 US Tank known in existence. The people running it put it in as part of their WW1 exhibit, and put painted cement on it to make it look like it was covered with mud. When the current curator got his job and saw how it was presented, he had it immediately pulled, cleaned and restored.
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Sep 7, 2016 04:39
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Fuligin posted:One of my Latin professors in college once described the gladii armed Roman cohort as a threshing machine steadily mulching and stabbing its way through unprepared Gallic shield walls, and the image has stayed with me forever after. Hey, when it gets asses to elbows, a short, heavy sword shines over big, unwieldy weapons that you can't get enough space to use.
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Sep 10, 2016 03:04
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ChickenWyngz posted:Finally caught up reading Yeah. Suppressive fire forces the enemy to stay inside the tank, so they can't peer out and get the unobstructed 360 view from being able to stick their heads out. This can be debilitating, especially in close environments and result in slow response to targets as well as making it difficult to navigate. Forcing five guys to coordinate their giant vehicle through uneven terrain while engaging targets hundreds of meters away with vision ports as wide as their eye span is a pretty tough challenge. It's not the best description, but you get where I'm going. Certain models of early tanks (talking WW1 and some inter-war tanks) didn't have very great metal and repeated fire could force splash (metal fragments) all around the inside of the tank, causing injury. You could also in theory break equipment on the exterior of the tank. I read about lots of radio antannae being cut by what the crew can only assume was shrapnel or bullets. This all doesn't mention the fact that bullets hitting tanks can be loud as all hell for the crew. Plan Z fucked around with this message at 10:18 on Sep 10, 2016 |
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Sep 10, 2016 10:15
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Nenonen posted:Or an armoured car. Yeah. You ever notice how if a reporter calls an APC or other armored vehicle a tank, milturds lose their minds? Yet we never question when soldiers of the day said "tank." That, or people outright throw fits and call you disrespectful to our veterans if you question how in one soldier's memoirs, he seemed to have the rotten luck to run into more Tiger tanks than were ever on the Western Front. Back on topic, I'm thinking a lot of "tanks" destroyed through extraordinary means were probably things like armored cars, half-tracks, SPGs, etc. Not to disrespect the accomplishment, but I think I could have saved a lot of time as a kid trying to wrap my head around how some soldier took out a "panzer" in a seemingly impossible way. So I got Hunnicutt's book on light tanks, and as usual I'm stuck re-reading the Sheridan parts. I know every armored vehicle had problems, but the Sheridan's is easily my favorite list to read for pure entertainment value. A few issues over its different versions and lifecycle: -Engine harmonics resulting in equipment coming loose -Missile guidance system not working properly depending on the position of the sun relative to the tank. -Caseless ammunition expanding in humid environments (remember this thing served in Vietnam) and not chambering/getting stuck in the barrel. -Sheridan gunners having a tell-tale bruised eye from the gunsight recoiling into their face every time the gun fired. -Early versions of the barrel cleaning system blowing debris from the bore back into the crew compartment -Test version of the tank flipping over as a result of firing to the side relative to the chassis. And many more. Though to be fair, damned near every one of the problems like this were fixed and probably helped future development. I just have a soft spot for the little thing.
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Sep 12, 2016 22:26
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OwlFancier posted:In fairness the missile guidance thing is par for the course, early heatseekers really liked to try and commit heliocide. Yeah, true. It stuck out because once they found a pretty quick fix it started scoring a pretty impressive hit rate in testing.
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Sep 12, 2016 22:47
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Cyrano4747 posted:I broadly agree with what you're saying, but it should also be kept in mind that tanks aren't half as invincible as popular culture (or your average milhist loving 10 year old) thinks they are. There are tons of documented cases of crews abandoning vehicles because a bunch of superficial fire and smoke made them think they were about to cook alive, weak points in armor that led to spectacular one in a million kills, etc. Also, most soldiers probably don't really grasp the difference between a mission kill where their sticky bomb or cluster of grenades or whatever fucks up a bogy and everyone leaves, and a actual kill-kill. Doubly so if you're talking Americans, because most of the time the loving thing ends up behind their lines in a couple hours anyways so there really isn't much of a difference. Oh yeah, definitely. Descriptions of "knocked out" could be vague and tanks were more vulnerable to things like fire more than people assume. I'm talking about passages that were more obviously kind of an issue like "Then a panzer moved up, and with a burst of my friend's Tommy, we were able to knock out one of the crew and it pulled back," (loving Stephen Ambrose was the worst about passages like that) probably meant they ran into something like a Marder or another open-topped vehicle, but when I was younger, I was wondering what the hell happened since I just took "panzer" to mean "a Panzer tank, and absolutely nothing else." spectralent posted:Yeah, my hypothesis here is that the GI's seeing a Pz IV on it's lonesome and going "Tiger!", while the, uh, I don't know the word for soviet troops, but he's there with a Pz IV and a Tiger nearby and going "Okay well the bigger one's probably the Tiger". That, and if you're in a tank facing another tank, and you're seeing it from hundreds of meters away and only one or two crewmen have magnified optics, a Panzer IV could easily be a Tiger.
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Sep 12, 2016 23:42
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Fuligin posted:Why is this word even a thing? Honest question. It was a way of specifying enlisted men who would end up taking part in combat operations. Someone pointed out, though "hey let's not call people on peacekeeping 'warfighters.' Also, it sounds really stupid. Wait, they released the game already? poo poo."
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Sep 13, 2016 07:45
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It could reasonably have been a proper Pz I or II. The majority of Inter-war tanks weren't particularly impressive in terms of armor or overall construction so it could have been either a proper combat or mobility kill. Doesn't really matter though, as the claim is both plausible and impressive to a dumb goon in a chair like me.
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Sep 13, 2016 08:01
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feedmegin posted:Did they not distinguish between direct-fire and indirect-fire pieces, then? While they were most likely designed to do so, it didn't end that way in practice all the time. In Italy, M10s commonly took over as indirect fire artillery. And if it was safe for an artillery SPG to do so, they'd just go ahead and engage in direct fire. Even the Sherman variants had sight arrangements for indirect fire, which pretty much anyone who used them appreciated. The names didn't define roles so much. Tank destroyers' official names almost always ended with "Gun Motor Carriage," (same as SPG) but their roles were usually "tank destroyer" since they were literally designed as anti-armor vehicles and issued only to tank destroyer units. It wasn't always consistent, though. If I remember right, most artillery SPGs had GMC in the name, with a handful of them like the M7 were called Howitzer Motor Carriages, but their intent didn't differ. Plan Z fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Sep 13, 2016 |
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Sep 13, 2016 19:36
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While trying to have some of my questions answered (I'm super into armored warfare, but really wanted to learn more ancient stuff recently), I ran across this channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv_vLHiWVBh_FR9vbeuiY-A/featured It's presented like a high school presentation, but the simple visualizations helped me wrap my head around things like roman military/political organization and how certain battles played out on a grander scale.
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Sep 16, 2016 05:20
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Chump Farts posted:Hey all, I'm going for a History MA and in the big leagues now. I'm doing a historiography on how perspectives of the two main armies in WWII changed as time went on and the Russian archives released. My bibliography so far is: https://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Soviet-Military-Strategy-World/dp/0891413804 Paints a picture of how Soviet intelligence influenced their own army. The Soviet intelligence machine is a vastly underlooked monster of a system in the war.
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Sep 19, 2016 04:36
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HEY GAL posted:loving bribe them not to fight you This was sort of done in Iraq during the Bush years.
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Sep 19, 2016 22:36
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The T-34 is poo poo because it's not the SU-76M. Same goes for all other armored vehicles TBH.
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Sep 20, 2016 09:07
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SeanBeansShako posted:Which thanks are you thinking of? The most famous two were the Valentine and Matilda II, which were "infantry" tanks that didn't get issued high explosive rounds. I can only assume the logic was that the machine gun would take care of any non-armored targets. Hell, mobilized howitzers for a time were issued a majority or entirety of smoke rounds rather than HE.
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Sep 28, 2016 04:06
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Can anyone do any pieces on utility/history of slingshots in ancient combat? It's something I've always been curious about, but whenever I remember to look it up, the stuff I find is unsatisfactory. Whatever era/military info you can share would be wonderful.
Plan Z fucked around with this message at 10:46 on Oct 6, 2016 |
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Oct 6, 2016 10:36
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Do you mean slingshots or slings? Meant slings, sorry.
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Oct 6, 2016 17:21
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chitoryu12 posted:Slings were pretty loving badass. A strong thrower at close range could embed a bullet in someone's flesh or fracture a skull. P.H. Blyth's Effectiveness of Greek Armour Against Arrows in the Persian War gives a 24 gram sling bullet an average energy of 30-36 joules. This isn't much compared to a gun or a composite bow, but it's enough to dent bronze armor or kill. David was packing the ancient world's equivalent of a handgun against Goliath. I've seen people using them on Youtube in stuff, but it still never gave me the idea of the power, but this helps a bit more. I remember seeing a few battle stories where they were effective against cavalry since a loving-fast rock did have uses against a person precariously balanced on a moving animal that frightens relatively easily.
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Oct 6, 2016 20:47
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Endman posted:The Dicker Max will never not be the most hilariously named armoured vehicle. Same but for the SLAMRAAM as surface-launched AA.
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Nov 21, 2016 09:08
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Cyrano4747 posted:This is going back 100 or so posts but I just wanted to comment on how someone mentioned it being a bit of a mind gently caress to consider war in terms of lives cut short: Yeah. I was going through that while reading a book on the Polish forces of WW2. Most every story seemed wildly implausible, but I guess to fight all the way through the worst human war and two major countries' attempts to wipe out either the existence or idea of Polish People, you're going to have nothing but such incredible stories. It can manifest in a lot of ways, too. If a German unit doesn't survive a large Soviet attack, or for that matter several, then there's nobody to tell the tale of that victory to the West after the war. If someone does survive and win against a large-scale operation, then that's another book citing soldiers saying "The Soviets threw wave after wave at us, and due to our side's inherent superior training/tactics/whatever, we cut them down" that fuel a lot of the misconceptions about the Eastern Front. Or for another example, the case of "Death Traps." Despite Shermans having an above-average crew safety record for tanks in the war, it gets the reputation for getting knocked out a lot, partly due to there being plenty of survivors to tell the tale of a combat loss. If it was most any other tank, odds are that most of the crewmen would have died eventually after one or more combat losses. It's then easy for some German tanker who either is the one guy who never got shot up and/or sat in their impregnable fortress snowflake tank that was off the frontlines half the time to talk about "Tommy Cookers" and "pregnated in combat." Or hell, just all of the Generals after any war who take all of the positive credit and no blame for the problems, preferring to throw shade on dead/retired officers who can't fight back.
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Nov 28, 2016 19:32
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Nenonen posted:I just fail to see the use of such metric. Automatic weapons were popular in WW2, but unless you were issued one then what would you do? Ditch your boltlock rifle? Or go back to basic training and wish better luck? It was situationally well-liked. It could go places Pattons couldn't which meant yay fire support and cover, and a 152mm cannon and two MGs beats the hell out of a Gavin with a machine gun. Same deal with the Ontos or Duster in Vietnam. A light vehicle with good firepower where there normally was nothing better or at all is appreciated. But yeah, Sheridan crews pretty much universally hated the godforsaken thing.
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Nov 29, 2016 01:08
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Cyrano4747 posted:Dont call it that. Okay. There needs to be a term that describes "ironic" behavior turning around on you. Call it the 4chan Constant or something.
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Nov 29, 2016 03:05
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Nenonen posted:Here's another way of deploying the Sheridan, if you don't need that C130 afterwards: The best place to deploy a Sheridan is into a toilet, then flush the toilet.
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Nov 30, 2016 01:06
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SlothfulCobra posted:How do most veterans feel about that anyways? There was a big explosion of people making a show of honoring veterans after 9/11, but not to the point of...y'know, making the VA work or anything. Mom's dad didn't really like it, as he was basically a Holden Caufield type from whom I inherited most of my personality. He disliked the idea of people who didn't want to do anything to actually honor or help Veterans, but were afraid of not being seen to "support the troops." He was pretty messed up physically and emotionally from deploying in both WW2 and Korea and talked me out of enlisting but always liked to talk about tanks with me. Dad's dad would just roll his eyes. He spent around ten years in the army forcing Germans to build golf courses, hunting down AWOL soldiers (quite a lot of them committed suicide), and competing on the Army diving team, so he viewed as something kind of hollow but tended to just roll with it. He found it kind of darkly funny that people would say it to him while his wife was the one who actually went overseas for the war effort. My aunt especially hated it to the point where she stopped bringing up my uncle who died in Vietnam. All three of these people said they never really heard the phrase often until the post-9/11 era.
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Dec 1, 2016 15:28
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JcDent posted:Have you ever tried being a tank commander in ArmA? Does the book have a name/English release?
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Dec 12, 2016 22:42
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