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chitoryu12 posted:From my understanding of the M1's targeting system, the computer and laser rangefinding are basically video game-esque in how well they let you shoot a moving target with no effort at all. Having gunned Leo 2a4 and currently gunning an m1a2sepv2 you arent that far off. The difference is speed of the target- a moving ground target in combat will be going anywhere from 10 to 30 km/h, and the training targets we use are about maybe 8kmh? At 1.5 km missing a slow mover like that even with heat requires the gunner to gently caress up. Tracking comes MUCH harder when the target is a chopper doing even slight manouvering past 50km/h- or moving on all three dimensions. The tank turret is heavy and hydraulic stabilizer has weight-induced lag so sudden change on target speed and vector at high speeds isnt a breeze to track.
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Aug 31, 2018 04:29
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Cyrano4747 posted:I don't know about the Soviets, but the USAAF and USN were both enthusiastic users of amphetamines. I don't know when or if they stopped that, but the US military in general is full of stories about guys hopped up on combat uppers. Makhorka. Rough tobacco that rest of the world used as pesticide, Red Army used as ration cigarettes. Grown in russia and ukraine.
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Sep 14, 2018 00:36
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Raenir Salazar posted:Speaking of games, this came up in an argument on my Hoi4 gaming groups discord, but can strategy games benefit from having some sort of working historical knowledge of strategy/tactics? If you had someone go through Westpoint, gave them 300 On the absolute opposite If that idea, if every officer and NCO school in U.S Army included mandatory 200-hour course on Dwarf Fortress stress levels and suicide rate with the Army would drop with a matter of months. Nothing to do with military prowess or knowledge but with the idea of ”not everything can be NOW priority and poo poo needs to be organized in relation to other tasks happening at the same time” But no, since usually video game is a problem that has an optimum solution rising from the game mechanics having a west point graduate play a strategy game would only help him as far as the game mechanics allow. Even on grabd strategy games there will always be a ”video game solution” that differs from the optimum officer training solution.
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Sep 19, 2018 03:19
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Geisladisk posted:The IS's 122mm projectile weighs about 25 kilos. The Abram's weighs around 10kg, depending on the ammo type. Barrel diameter is only one dimension, the IS's gun was a big-rear end artillery gun firing a huge projectile at a relatively slow speed, the Abrams' projectile is smaller and flies almost three times faster. Also before Rheinmetall 120mm most guns with single-piece ammo had brass case. 105 full-length casing is a shitton of extra weight compared to 120mm combustble case. I dont even want to think a fullcased 122mm inside a tank that had ”Soviet wartime” crew ergonomy.
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Oct 1, 2018 13:17
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For m1 heat and later MPAT and OR Were the ”he” replacers
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Oct 1, 2018 14:00
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Obstacle reduction. Heat with delay fuze and steel headcone.
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Oct 1, 2018 14:09
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Fangz posted:I think that however you use technology to compensate, you're still gonna get much more boom out of a 20kg projectile than a 10kg projectile. The Abrams gun seems like primarily an anti-tank weapon with some capabilities added, the 122mm on these WWII heavies were primarily HE chuckers. Yes, lack of direct HE/frag round on a Leo 2 / abrams was a calculated risk. OG 120mm came with just 2 rounds- apfsds (sabot) and HEAT. Why? Because it meant that when you were at Fulda Gap whatever you happened to have loaded would OHK a DDR T62. 120mm HEAT will still make a difference against infantry, and some armies (coughcougg finns) still practise firing HEATs on treelines above dug-in crunchies as a frag funtime- Its not 125mm frag But that shower of fragments, comcussion and arm-length tree shards will ruin your day. Reason Soviet 125 is two-piece is the autoloader. Its much easier for it to ram two 10kg pieces in one at a time than one 20kg piece when tank has Cross-country shaking going on and it saves space. Only western 120 to use two-piece design to this day is CR2, and why is propably ”Because the Queen told us to”
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Oct 1, 2018 17:37
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Nothingtoseehere posted:If the wheelock is more complex than the flintlock, why did the wheellock come 100s of years earlier? Is it some kind of innovation you need to produce flintlocks to begin with? I mean look at the early semi-automatic handguns with their weird toggle-locks like borchardt or Luger. ”New idea to get X done” is usually not the most refined solution.
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Oct 2, 2018 11:14
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Geisladisk posted:So why didn't massive strategic chemical bombing happen? Was there a practical limitation of some sort, or was not even Hitler willing to be that big a bastard? Or was it a MAD-esque situation of nobody wanting to start poo poo because of the retaliation? Both sides developed them but had the ”lets not open the pandoras box this time” mentality until the end. Churchill was all about gassing the poo poo out of Germany but rest of his staff werent. British actually had a cargo ship filled with mustard gas artillery rounds explode in Italian port which caused a major ”this never happened” campaign https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raid_on_Bari check under ”John Harvey”
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Oct 6, 2018 00:58
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Chillbro Baggins posted:Quite true, but then they made better bombers and the cycle started over. "The bomber always gets through" lasted well into the Cold War until modern surface-to-air missiles came into play -- the giant, lumbering B-36 could out-turn any fighter sent after it at the time, because at 60,000 feet the air's so thin that the little hotrod fighters' control surfaces couldn't do poo poo. The B-36's rudder and ailerons were the size of a fighter's wings, and it turned just fine. Yes but a key part If the philosophy was that the said bomber could just end the war by demolishing the opponent until they submitted. Even the allied air offensive in Europe failed on that, Although the A-bombs can be claimed to have vindicated the idea.
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Oct 7, 2018 13:25
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aphid_licker posted:Yeah but afaik basically all the weapons the US's enemies used came from outside the bombed area, no? Yes But douhet’s theory is that the bomber starts and ends the war, that merely by bombing from air the war ends on the losing side submitting. This theory was the hot poo poo on 1930s and turned out to.. well, not really play out for the simple reason that countries Keep on trucking even If somebody dumps bombs on them.
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Oct 7, 2018 14:45
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The Lone Badger posted:I assume you need very different shells for AA and AT. Would any given gun have both available, or would they be issued depending on what the gun was positioned for? The AA batteries had a small allotment of AP rounds afaik depending on their location. Also the tank version on tiger used different fuses, But the fuse could be changed on the spot so there are cases of heavy tank battalions stealing ammo from their AA detachment. Then again as far as germans go thats the norm- only reason Rommel made it to the sea in france was him stealing all the fuel and ammo his neighboring units had.
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Oct 9, 2018 06:08
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bewbies posted:I've always wondered had battleship development continued if they would have developed long rod penetrators for the big guns. Unlikely. The damage output of a sixteen-inch cannon was never the issue, Especially since ship armor has gotten thinner, not thicker, since 1945. The problem was and remains that first the air power, and later a much smaller ship with antiship missiles could sink a battleship from way beyond Its response range. Even a huge gun APFSDS would be super unlikely to bridge the range gap between a gun and an antiship missile.
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Oct 14, 2018 17:08
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Milo and POTUS posted:This seems like a pretty decent idea for the most part, are there any overt or hidden disadvantages to it? Yes. The m1 turbine is a horrible on fuel economy and breaks down way too often even with jp8 only. Having crewed a Leo 2a4 for FDF back in the day and Now crewing a m1a2 for US Army I can safely say the ”we should convert to diesel” conversation that US armor development has pretty much once a year has a lot of reason to it. Same reason is why soviets dumped the turbine, though for them the turbine unreliability was even bigger issue because Soviet engineering. Also on the size of Tanks, Tiger I and Leo 2 are almost exactly same size. Tiger, however has a crew of 5.
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Oct 15, 2018 11:27
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Nebakenezzer posted:So is the constant breakdown thing because it was not well designed, or because it is old? Its just that turbine engines have a shorter (by a wide margin) lifespan than similar size diesels and shorter mean time between failures. The worst example of this was the t80 where 500 hours of operation was design requirement but was very rarely reached in real life. M1 is nowhere near as bad but still way less durable than a similar power diesel.
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Oct 16, 2018 01:42
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Re on the tank transmissions: the reason pointed that tanks grew bigger than anticipated (pzIV started as 16 ton medium at 1936 and was 28 tons by 1944) is just a part of the equation. The other part is HOW big they grew. A 55-ton tank with 560 hp engine (Tiger I) was a gigantic problem engineering-wise- you cant just upscale a pz4 and hope it works. This led to solutions that were complex and there just because it was the only possible option for the tech of the day- like tigers’ track work that consisted of THREE intertwining rows of road wheels per track. It ”worked” but hasnt been used since because as a solution its retarded. Germans and soviets got the short end of the stick here because the constant land war in eastern front meant for them all stops were off. Also Soviet transmissions were hardly better than germans. KV series were plagued by poor transmission their entire life with drivers using a hammer to change gears. a tank from end of thirties weighing at 45 tons this was very much foreseeable. T-34s had transmission problems all the way into T35-85’s at Late 1943. You have to realize that western allies moved slowly from 15-tonners of 1930s to twenty-tonners at 1940-1942 and capped at 25-35 ton medium tanks at 1944 onwards. (Pershing nonwithstanding) Eastern front? Soviets put KV1 (45 tons) to table at the end of winter war, 1940 february. T-34 (30+ tons) 1941. IS2, ISU 152, 44+ tons, 1944. And for germans it was even more retarded jump from pzIV F2, at 24 tons, to PZ VI (Tiger) at 55 tons. And then they upped to the retardation with PZVII (kingtigger) at 68 tons- which I may add is heavier than all other CURRENT MBTs in service aside from Merkava IV and Abrams. You can claim ”teutonic engineering” and KRUPPSTEEL all day long but the reality is they just took on a challenge that the engineering of the day was hardly ready for. (Not trying to wehraboo just noting the massive difference on scale between german / Soviet heavy programs and western allies) And when asked about tanks vs heavy industrial equipment you have to remember that excavators dont speed across uneven terrain 20-30 kilometers an hour. The strain a tank puts on the engine, track and transmission is totally different profilewise than a slow-moving industrial workhorse. Industrial heavy duty needs torque to push stuff/pull stuff, But doesnt have to go fast. Tank needs torque AND to go fast, often at the same time.
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Oct 19, 2018 23:20
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Also on how big of a difference soviets had on their tank design philosophy on 1930s is found on Guderians memoirs. Guderian was one of the people responsible for tank design when Germany was rearming on 1930s. The Soviet-German pact gave germans a training ground on Kazan, USSR, to train tank crews and design Tanks in secret. in exchange soviets had full access to review all german tank designs. Guderian notes on his diary of this time that soviets were on multiple occasions trying to accuse him of hiding german heavy tank plans when he (truthfully) showed them the then-prototype PZ4 that weighted around 16 tons, claiming it as the german heavy infantry support tank. Soviet military attaches would not take his word and claimed he was lying. Why? Because the soviet heavy tanks on testing at the time were 30-40 tons or bigger (T28 which weighed, you guessed it, 28 tons, had been put to Soviet service in 1933)
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Oct 19, 2018 23:32
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Ensign Expendable posted:And the T-26 weighed 26 tons, right? Nah, T26 was a Soviet copy of a vickers 6-ton, but just highlights how fast the size increase was- when soviets lost their fleet of t-26s and T28s at operation barbarossa their replacement was a T-34. (They continued producing light tanks as t-60/70 but on much smaller numbers compared to mediums than pre-war). On the other side after british lost their tank fleet after dunkirk their cruiser program would sit at around 17-23 tons until 1944 and Cromwell. This is is also a doctrinal issue for them, since british designs were constrained by their rail-loading policies which limited the max width of a tank.
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Oct 20, 2018 07:53
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The T-28 weighed 21.5 tons when it was accepted into service in 1933. By comparison, the heaviest German tank the Soviets would have been aware of at that point was the Grosstraktor, coming in at 19 tons, hardly a huge leap away from the Soviet medium tank.