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I know it's an off chance that anyone reading this doesn't know about Forgotten Weapons, but it's seriously top ten best Youtube channels. The host, Ian, is a really chill and knowledgeable guy. He doesn't make up bullshit off the top of his head like every other gun channel, and he focuses entirely on gun history and mechanics, only bringing up politics when it's part of a weapon's historical background, or when it comes to preserving historical pieces. My mom and sister used to be terrified of guns, but his videos really demystified firearms for them, and now they like joining me and my father at the range. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrfKGpvbEQXcbe68dzXgJuA
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Jul 21, 2020 22:04
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PTSDeedly Do posted:Anybody know the casualty rate for tank crews? Dying in a tank seems like a total nightmare. Depending on the country, for every tank knocked out, roughly 1, to something like 1.9 men died. American tankers tended to have the lowest casualty rates due to the M4's hatches being easy to use and get through. Crew casualties in the M4 also improved when after the initial fighting North Africa, when they added an improved stowage container, as well as trained the crews being to store less ammo in open spots around the tank. Germany had a pretty high casualty rate due to a mixture of poor metallurgy, no PPE for their crews (the closest thing they had to a helmet was a padded beret), tight or poorly-placed hatches, and just the general place they were put in throughout the war. The Soviets had a spike in the aftermath of Barbarossa, but mostly stayed level across the war. The conventional wisdom for a long time was that this was due to the crews being ordered to not abandon their tanks, then command realizing this was a blunder, as an experienced crew was far more valuable than a tank. Lately, though, I've seen some people posit that it's also just likely that a lot of those crewmen just didn't make it back to friendly lines after the tanks were knocked out. Soviet tanks could also tend to be really cramped and difficult to get in and out of. Surprisingly, the British were the Allied nation with the highest tank casualty rates. Most people point to the fact that they didn't wear helmets, which is half-true. British tankers did have helmets that basically looked like Brit paratrooper helmets with a bumper welded on, but they just weren't widely distributed. Other factors included that the British were typically trying to fight an offensive war with (for the most part) lightly-armored tanks in environments where there was a lot of open ground like North Africa and northern Normandy. Edgar Allen Ho posted:That is a bad take! France was a mess in general. The Allied powers knew that Germany would come through the Ardennes, there was mostly a general disbelief that they could quickly get armor through The Ardennes. There was also very little liaison between countries, so the French would start chewing out the Belgians for abandoning a sector while The Belgians insisted that they had divisions exactly like they were supposed to, or countries not having enough translators between multi-national attached units. The shiny, new beautiful tanks that France had for the battle were dead-ends in terms of design, and were delivered to troops who didn't have time to train with them. Entire armored columns were stuck out in the middle of nowhere because the crews didn't know how to use their new dual fuel tanks. The politics were the absolute biggest performance-killer. With a measure more order and preparation, the Battle of France could have been catastrophic for Germany. They took more of a shellacking in Poland than people give them credit for, and a more sustained fight in France could have potentially knocked them out of the war early.
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Jul 22, 2020 14:17
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toggle posted:Were the tank battles in Fury accurate? How do you gently caress up a movie about tanks in late war germany?? Surely they'd be enough real stories of tank crews to fill out 2 1/2 hours? The clerk being thrown into bow gunner position was something that regularly happened to fill out tank crews in the late war. I like the detail of different soldiers having their own homebrew uniforms. That was pretty common for troops that stayed in the front line long enough. The infantry assault on the hedgerow was pretty realistic. The assaulting tanks and infantry were a little closer together than they normally would have been, but that wouldn't have been a good shot for the movie. The same goes for how they showed urban combat, especially the affinity for white phosphorous shells. The Tiger battle is less realistic. Normally, armored convoys wouldn't have driven bumper-to-bumper like that. They would have likely had something like 50m between tanks while traveling down a road, so they could maneuver and void jams during a fight while giving the enemy a wider range of targets to worry about.The Tiger being alone was realistic. There were very few Tiger Is left in Germany at the time, and running into a lone tank like that wouldn't have been unheard of. Like everyone else said, the Shermans with the 76mm guns wouldn't have had an issue fighting the Tiger at that range. What would likely have happened in real life is that Shermans would have taken pot shots and tried to regroup into better shooting positions. They would not have done that cavalry charge, and would not have done that sick flanking attack. I guess the only other thing is that the Fury would not have survived that side shot near the end. I guess I don't need to say that the last stand wasn't terribly realistic. There were single stories like Raiseinai where a single tank was able to hold off a German regiment for a day, but Fury's scene was obviously over-the-top. Tank hatches could be locked, so the German soldiers wouldn't have been able to open that hatch at the end. Overall, I think they got it down pretty well. It's still bewildering after they put so much effort into the rest of the movie that they succumbed to the 5v1 Sherman/Tiger myth. Like, think about that scene. That small unit of tanks looked like every other crewman was killed. That's something like an 80% casualty rate, which would have been absurd, especially that late in the war. Plan Z fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Jul 25, 2020 |
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Jul 23, 2020 01:34
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