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A bit off-topic, but since this is pretty much also a "military theory and strategy" thread: Why is it that modern armies don't equip their forces with suppressors as a matter of course? As in not just special forces units but ALL units. My understanding of modern (call it WW2 and on) infantry combat is that it involves remaining undetected for as long as you can, and if you spot the enemy before they spot you to hold fire until all your guys are in position and ready. Under those circumstances, if the enemy were taking casualties and couldn't tell where the attack was coming from and perhaps down the line they couldn't initially tell that they'd even been engaged, surely that would be an incredible advantage for the attackers? Even in a pitched battle, doesn't gunfire give your position away? So if you can make your whole force silent, why not? I'm guessing that there's some drawback to suppressors that I'm overlooking, here. Hydrolith fucked around with this message at 11:41 on Jan 28, 2011 |
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Jan 28, 2011 11:38
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Hydrolith posted:So if you can make your whole force silent, why not? I'm guessing that there's some drawback to suppressors that I'm overlooking, here. Without any personal experience, I'm under the impression that suppressors don't actually silence a gun. They make a gunshot quieter so that they're more easily confused with background noise, but if you're paying attention you'll still know you're being shot at - the gunshot is still loud by any measure.
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Jan 28, 2011 12:39
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The extra length on the barrel makes it harder to aim and move around(especially in CQB), the extra weight effects the amount of other stuff you can carry. There are probably implications to cleaning the weapon and power of the round as well. Plus theres something to be said about make a loud noise when you want the enemy to keep their heads down.
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Jan 28, 2011 14:34
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Hydrolith posted:A bit off-topic, but since this is pretty much also a "military theory and strategy" thread: Speaking as someone with military experience, i honestly never understood the answer either. There are certainly drawbacks - but they aren't insurmountable. Drawbacks: 1 - Maintenance - suppressors are a bitch to maintain and they lose their effectiveness after a few hundred (or thousand) rounds. 2 - Weight/size - they aren't very heavy, but they can make a carbine a bit unwieldy, which makes traveling in vehicles/helicopters difficult. 3 - Cost Benefits: 1 - As listed above - 90% of combat (at least what i've experienced) is just shooting at puffs of dust or muzzle flashes. Lowering these identifying traits is a HUGE bonus; especially at night. 2 - You don't go deaf if you shoot indoors or in a car without earplugs. Nobody does guard duty with their ear plugs in. So to summarize - yeh, i've thought about this a lot and never found a satisfying answer.
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Jan 28, 2011 14:48
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Suppressors don't really work on rifles, most of the noise (especially downrange) comes from the sonic boom of the bullet, not from the detonation of cartridge. Here's an AWP whore illustrating. The only time suppressors really do anything tactically useful is with subsonic ammo.
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Jan 28, 2011 15:44
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The theory of infantry combat is that a rifle on the battlefield is a pretty insignificant thing in the whole galaxy of stuff that goes bang - the average rifle has 30 rounds per mag and are usually not squeezed off on full auto. Compared to, say, a squad machine gun, rifles just don't do a lot of the shooting. When I went through the army, the popular quip is that all you guys with rifles are really just there to protect the squad machine guns, your squad is really just there to protect the company machine guns, etc. There's a bunch of conclusions you can draw from that context, one of which is that unless you suppress your machine guns too, most of the firing on the battlefield is going to be unsuppressed anyway.
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Jan 28, 2011 16:28
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EDIT: ^^^^^^^ Now that seems much more plausible. But what about suppressed weapons for low intensity stuff like COIN?bewbies posted:Suppressors don't really work on rifles, most of the noise (especially downrange) comes from the sonic boom of the bullet, not from the detonation of cartridge. Here's an AWP whore illustrating. That's not true at all (the useful part, not the noise part). A suppressed rifle is much harder to spot since it has no muzzle flash and the audible 'crack' comes from the bullet, not the rifle. I imagine it's like being shot at from very long range - you here a loud snap or buzz, but don't hear the source of the shot. Zionist_en_fuego fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Jan 28, 2011 |
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Jan 28, 2011 16:30
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Zionist_en_fuego posted:That's not true at all (the useful part, not the noise part). A suppressed rifle is much harder to spot since it has no muzzle flash and the audible 'crack' comes from the bullet, not the rifle. I imagine it's like being shot at from very long range - you here a loud snap or buzz, but don't hear the source of the shot. You can rarely tell where gunshots are coming from by the report, especially in an urban environment. As for muzzle flash, the iron flash suppressors on most modern rifles are really pretty effective, there really isn't a good cost/benefit ratio there for widespread adopting of suppressors.
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Jan 28, 2011 17:00
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Zionist_en_fuego posted:EDIT: ^^^^^^^ Now that seems much more plausible. But what about suppressed weapons for low intensity stuff like COIN? They ARE being used a lot more than in the past, given the type of fighting that goes on today, and improvements in the technology and materials have made them more practical too. Equipping EVERYONE with a suppressor is still far off though.
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Jan 28, 2011 17:10
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Nuclear Pogostick posted:Of course, that brings up the whole fact that US tanks throughout world war II were usually pretty goddamn outmatched in everything but two regards: Two additional points to throw in about TDs and US armour policy in general. Axis military power was hugely over-estimated especially in the first half of the war (The Victory Program estimated the Luftwaffe to be 10 times it’s actual size). It was only latter that novel techniques showing there were not as many German tanks and vehicles to shoot at as had been thought were believed. Secondly in the US (and the Commonwealth) the cream of the pre-war defense industry was allocated to the Air force and the Navy. Armoured vehicle manufacture (if not design) tended to be given to civilian manufactures who often didn’t have a good understanding of what they were doing or have the contacts in military or government to push out innovation and pull in requirements the same way the aircraft manufactures did.
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Jan 28, 2011 19:27
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Nuclear Pogostick posted:But yeah, like the guys before me said in a far more eloquent matter, the TDs were made to rush forward and pop enemy vehicles, but weren't honestly that great at it. They didn't rush forward, they set ambushes in their own defensive zone. And they were great at it. I don't want to just say "they won so they are good", but can anyone name a single time that US TDs were put in place to fulfill their doctrinal role and failed to do so, or did so at extremely high casualties? The majority of German tanks that were destroyed in battle were destroyed by ground AT fire, and most of that fire came from TDs. They did their job. quote:The M10 was fairly obsolete, but the Hellcat and M36 Jackson were decent - it's just that as time went on they became less and less practical. While the idea of having a quick-moving, shoot and scoot force to take on enemy tanks using speed is all well and good, it just was not really worth it or particularly effective in the long run when considering the input of manpower and resources. Why spend X thousand dollars and X amount of raw materials and man hours on a TD unit when you could just slap a 76mm gun on an Sherman with HVAP (high velocity armored penetrator, basically the predecessor to today's sabot rounds, aluminum casing around a dense core like tungsten) rounds and have it be more flexible? Because the US had built 7500 of them already by the end of 1943? No reason to junk them, I imagine if you ask the guys on the ground they would say they would rather have more AFVs than fewer. Not to mention this is a cherry-picked criticism of US TDs. For all the problems with US TDs not being flexible enough, they were far more flexible than open-topped German TDs like the Marder, Nashorn, etc, that didn't even have turrets, and nobody is jumping up and down on them. quote:Of course, that brings up the whole fact that US tanks throughout world war II were usually pretty goddamn outmatched in everything but two regards: reliability and ease of manufacture. It took until nearly the end of the war to field the Pershing, which was one of the only US tanks that could take on a Panther or Tiger and have a snowball's chance of winning (and even then, it'd have to get fairly lucky). Only if you compare the top 1/3rd of the German armor fleet to the bottom 1/2 of the US armor fleet, which isn't really fair. The US sent to Europe in 1944 7000 76mm Shermans, 2300 105mm Shermans, 3000 TDs with 76mm guns, plus roughly 3000 British vehicles with 17lb guns on US chassis (2/3rds Fireflies, 1/3rd Achilles), not counting the 9000+ AFVs with 76mm guns that didn't make it to Europe before the war ended. The Germans built 13230 heavily armored AFVs, 3/4ths of which went to the East. So the Western Allies had roughly 3300 heavily armored German AFVs to fight against (Panthers, Tigers), and had over 15000 of their own AFVs with guns capable of making kills on those uparmored German AFVs. That's a 5-1 advantage. So, yeah, a bunch of the Allied AFV fleet couldn't kill a Panther, sure - that's because 29000 Shermans were built before the first Panther rolled out of the factory. It shouldn't be surprising that sometimes Panthers met 75mm Shermans, but it isn't like the Allies couldn't touch the Panthers - the Allies had 5 times as many Panther-killers as there were Panthers. And, Panthers were not the only tanks the Germans had - half of the German armor fleet in 1944 could be killed with 75mm fire, from the front at medium range. The only place a reasonable complaint can be made is US tankers, in the first few months of the war. Brits had Fireflies, and later on US had 76mm Shermans, but for those first few months US tankers were stuck with 75mm Shermans while the 76mms were being shipped over. And what happens during that time? Panzer Lehr counterattacks in July and after the break-in is stopped by US TDs. XLVII Panzer Korps attacks at Mortain in August and after the break-in is stopped by US TDs. The doctrine worked. So, yeah, it would be great if every Sherman had been a Pershing instead. But in reality, the Western Allies responded tremendously well to the threat of German up-armored AFVs.
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Jan 28, 2011 21:17
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Throatwarbler posted:The theory of infantry combat is that a rifle on the battlefield is a pretty insignificant thing in the whole galaxy of stuff that goes bang - the average rifle has 30 rounds per mag and are usually not squeezed off on full auto. Compared to, say, a squad machine gun, rifles just don't do a lot of the shooting. When I went through the army, the popular quip is that all you guys with rifles are really just there to protect the squad machine guns, your squad is really just there to protect the company machine guns, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_arms It isn't accurate to say that your riflemen exist to protect your machine guns. In the simplest sense of the idea, machine guns exist to fix your enemy in place and/or suppress his fires so that your riflemen may maneuver on the enemy.
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Jan 28, 2011 23:05
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gohuskies posted:They didn't rush forward, they set ambushes in their own defensive zone. And they were great at it. I don't want to just say "they won so they are good", but can anyone name a single time that US TDs were put in place to fulfill their doctrinal role and failed to do so, or did so at extremely high casualties? The majority of German tanks that were destroyed in battle were destroyed by ground AT fire, and most of that fire came from TDs. They did their job. I misspoke when I said "rush forwards". I meant that in a relative sense - move up then set up an ambush for the German tanks. My mistake. I agree that the TDs were effective for sure - I have had several chats at length with a Jackson crewman whose vehicle took out several german heavies, including a Tiger I. Most of my knowledge is from him and the time I spent working at a TD museum, as well as talks with the curator. I really do need to find some real literature on the subject. If you have any books you reccomend, please share - I'm always willing to take recommendations from people more knowledgeable than I. quote:Because the US had built 7500 of them already by the end of 1943? No reason to junk them, I imagine if you ask the guys on the ground they would say they would rather have more AFVs than fewer. Not to mention this is a cherry-picked criticism of US TDs. For all the problems with US TDs not being flexible enough, they were far more flexible than open-topped German TDs like the Marder, Nashorn, etc, that didn't even have turrets, and nobody is jumping up and down on them. I meant that in terms of new production - not saying in any way they should have junked the ones already produced. The question was more rhetorical, I was meaning that as the war progressed and post-war they figured out that the TD doctrine was somewhat inefficient, hence the introduction of MBTs like the later versions of the Patton series. They were phased out for a reason, but handled well while they were in action. quote:Only if you compare the top 1/3rd of the German armor fleet to the bottom 1/2 of the US armor fleet, which isn't really fair. The US sent to Europe in 1944 7000 76mm Shermans, 2300 105mm Shermans, 3000 TDs with 76mm guns, plus roughly 3000 British vehicles with 17lb guns on US chassis (2/3rds Fireflies, 1/3rd Achilles), not counting the 9000+ AFVs with 76mm guns that didn't make it to Europe before the war ended. The Germans built 13230 heavily armored AFVs, 3/4ths of which went to the East. So the Western Allies had roughly 3300 heavily armored German AFVs to fight against (Panthers, Tigers), and had over 15000 of their own AFVs with guns capable of making kills on those uparmored German AFVs. That's a 5-1 advantage. So, yeah, a bunch of the Allied AFV fleet couldn't kill a Panther, sure - that's because 29000 Shermans were built before the first Panther rolled out of the factory. It shouldn't be surprising that sometimes Panthers met 75mm Shermans, but it isn't like the Allies couldn't touch the Panthers - the Allies had 5 times as many Panther-killers as there were Panthers. And, Panthers were not the only tanks the Germans had - half of the German armor fleet in 1944 could be killed with 75mm fire, from the front at medium range. True - the thing was that Shermans were much less survivable. Although the problem was only particularly pronounced earlier in the war, Shermans were nicknamed ronsons for a reason - Usually a panther or a lucky Panzer IV Ausf. H could knock out several shermans before being knocked out itself. The numbers were most definitely important - and one of the primary advantages the allies had - the ease of manufacture thing was in regards to just how many Shermans were made. Even with a good kill count before being destroyed, there was just no way that the German armor could have numerically really made that big of a dent, and that's counting their weaker tanks like the Panzer IIIs and earlier IVs. quote:The only place a reasonable complaint can be made is US tankers, in the first few months of the war. Brits had Fireflies, and later on US had 76mm Shermans, but for those first few months US tankers were stuck with 75mm Shermans while the 76mms were being shipped over. And what happens during that time? Panzer Lehr counterattacks in July and after the break-in is stopped by US TDs. XLVII Panzer Korps attacks at Mortain in August and after the break-in is stopped by US TDs. The doctrine worked. So, yeah, it would be great if every Sherman had been a Pershing instead. But in reality, the Western Allies responded tremendously well to the threat of German up-armored AFVs. Most definitely. Like I said, they weren't bad, they got the job done - just inefficient in the long run. The 17pdr armed british tanks - the Archer, Achilles, and Firefly, usually - were wonderfully effective in killing the german tanks - they just were lacking in protection in comparison. Thank you for enlightening me as to those exact statistics, by the way. It's always fun learning new things.
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Jan 28, 2011 23:18
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Nuclear Pogostick posted:True - the thing was that Shermans were much less survivable. Although the problem was only particularly pronounced earlier in the war, Shermans were nicknamed ronsons for a reason - Usually a panther or a lucky Panzer IV Ausf. H could knock out several shermans before being knocked out itself. The numbers were most definitely important - and one of the primary advantages the allies had - the ease of manufacture thing was in regards to just how many Shermans were made. Even with a good kill count before being destroyed, there was just no way that the German armor could have numerically really made that big of a dent, and that's counting their weaker tanks like the Panzer IIIs and earlier IVs. Actually, tactical considerations had a lot more of an impact on how a tank did in battle than the actual type of tank, considering the chanciness of what might happen upon a successful hit and the difficulty of acquiring a target in a tank. In general, the defensive side has a tremendous advantage in tank warfare because they can watch likely approaches and fire first. Most tanks in WW2 could not survive fire from mid-late war AT guns period, the armor of the t-34 probably said more about its opposition than itself, even then, attacking t-34s took horrendous losses in 1941 just like attacking BT-7s or T-26s. In the West, the numerical disparity in casualties can more accurately be described to the fact that most of the armor the Allies had was being used offensively, in the times the Germans did attack en masse with armor, they took rather severe casualties. Also, considering the numerical disparity in numbers of tanks by the Germans and Allies in the West: The US never had a 5:1 advantage in tanks in the field until late in the war. They instead used their numbers to promptly replace their few, but powerful armored divisions. Consider that for every US AFV lost, they took about one crew killed. This includes Stuarts and US TDs.
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Jan 29, 2011 00:16
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Panzeh posted:Actually, tactical considerations had a lot more of an impact on how a tank did in battle than the actual type of tank, considering the chanciness of what might happen upon a successful hit and the difficulty of acquiring a target in a tank. In general, the defensive side has a tremendous advantage in tank warfare because they can watch likely approaches and fire first. Most tanks in WW2 could not survive fire from mid-late war AT guns period, the armor of the t-34 probably said more about its opposition than itself, even then, attacking t-34s took horrendous losses in 1941 just like attacking BT-7s or T-26s. Indeed. Pak 40s and the infamous 88s would kill pretty much anything in the Allied inventory, but lucky 3 inch AT guns could kill most German armor as well. People don't give enough credit to dismounted AT - it was slow, yes, and best used when static, and many of the lower caliber guns were rendered useless early on, but the later AT guns could kill most armor pretty well when used intelligently.
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Jan 29, 2011 00:35
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Nuclear Pogostick posted:If you have any books you reccomend, please share - I'm always willing to take recommendations from people more knowledgeable than I. Tank Destroyer tactics became much less aggressive as the war went on, the paper Seek, Strike, and Destroy: U.S. Army Tank Destroyer Doctrine in World War II is online with the full story. And be sure to look at this exciting product announcement
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Jan 29, 2011 00:56
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Veins McGee posted:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_arms The rifle is point defence for crew served weapons. The personal offensive weapon is the grenade.
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Jan 29, 2011 01:03
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My main source on US TDs is Harry Yeide's "The Tank Killers: A History of America's World War II Tank Destroyer Force". I will check out that article though, looks interesting. With regards to gun-armor statistics, it is interesting to note that through the war, the side with the inferior gun-armor statistics - Germany in France 1940, Germany in East Front 1941-42, Russia in East Front 1943-1945, Allies in West Front 1944-1945 - is the side that is winning. Obviously having bad gun-armor statistics doesn't make you win, rather that winning has to do with many factors and gun-armor statistics don't really make that much difference in the big picture.
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Jan 29, 2011 01:15
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AbleArcher posted:The rifle is point defence for crew served weapons. The personal offensive weapon is the grenade. I am not sure what this means, but it sounds like you mean dudes primarily use grenades for assaulting a position, which isn't doctrinally true and even if it were things don't work like this irl. http://www.lejeune.usmc.mil/2dfssg/med/files/FMFM%206-5.pdf look at this, pages 50 & 51 and pages 125-133. Manual says outright that assault fire is designed to kill, demoralize, and suppress and is characterized by its accuracy and violence, and it's riflemen and automatic riflemen who do these assault fires.
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Jan 29, 2011 02:50
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The problem with American Tank Destroyers is not that they were incapable of defeating German armor; being as they were designed specifically for that role it isn't surprising that they were successful on the occasions where they were able to engage German armor. The problem is that wartime experience clearly demonstrated that it was unnecessary or even dangerous to have separate armored formations for infantry support and anti-tank combat, because medium tanks equipped with powerful main guns could perform both roles without the danger of your AFVs meeting the wrong sort of enemy and getting chewed up. Had the American army developed such an AFV and produced them for widespread frontline service in lieu of the M4 Sherman and TDs (e.g. if they had not halted work on the T20 series), those tanks would have done just as well as the TDs at armored warfare while reducing the vulnerability of tanks attached to the infantry. As it was, they were convinced that the TDs made innovating on the M4 unnecessary, so they kept it in service after it had become obsolete. The clearest indication of the real utility of American-style Tank Destroyer doctrine is that the Soviets and Germans (who actually engaged in large-scale armored warfare) never entertained the idea, and moreover the concept completely disappeared after the war even in American usage.
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Jan 29, 2011 03:15
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quote:machine guns Of course I don't mean riflemen literally just huddle around their machine guns and nothing else. What it was trying to get across is that individual rifles aren't nearly as important as machine guns which comprise the bulk of the unit's firepower.
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Jan 29, 2011 03:26
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EvanSchenck posted:The problem with American Tank Destroyers is not that they were incapable of defeating German armor; being as they were designed specifically for that role it isn't surprising that they were successful on the occasions where they were able to engage German armor. The problem is that wartime experience clearly demonstrated that it was unnecessary or even dangerous to have separate armored formations for infantry support and anti-tank combat, because medium tanks equipped with powerful main guns could perform both roles without the danger of your AFVs meeting the wrong sort of enemy and getting chewed up. Had the American army developed such an AFV and produced them for widespread frontline service in lieu of the M4 Sherman and TDs (e.g. if they had not halted work on the T20 series), those tanks would have done just as well as the TDs at armored warfare while reducing the vulnerability of tanks attached to the infantry. As it was, they were convinced that the TDs made innovating on the M4 unnecessary, so they kept it in service after it had become obsolete. It wasn't like the American armored units were hopelessly outclassed by invincible German uber-tanks. The division of tanks and TDs wasn't dangerous, it actually turned out to work okay. The historical narrative has been heavily influenced by books like Death Traps, a memoir that argues that the Shermans were, well, death traps. It tells a tale of heroic tank crews sent into the inferno against King Tigers. And that wasn't how it went. Not every German tank was a Tiger. Half the German armor fleet could be killed from the front, at medium range, by a Sherman's 75mm gun. Stories like these argue "if only we hadn't made all those M10s, those 76mm guns could have gone in Shermans instead, what a waste!" When in fact the Sherman did just fine the vast majority of the time.
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Jan 29, 2011 03:41
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gohuskies posted:It wasn't like the American armored units were hopelessly outclassed by invincible German uber-tanks. The division of tanks and TDs wasn't dangerous, it actually turned out to work okay. The historical narrative has been heavily influenced by books like Death Traps, a memoir that argues that the Shermans were, well, death traps. It tells a tale of heroic tank crews sent into the inferno against King Tigers. And that wasn't how it went. Not every German tank was a Tiger. Half the German armor fleet could be killed from the front, at medium range, by a Sherman's 75mm gun. Stories like these argue "if only we hadn't made all those M10s, those 76mm guns could have gone in Shermans instead, what a waste!" When in fact the Sherman did just fine the vast majority of the time. Well, I think the answer lies somewhere in between, both US tanks and TDs were adequate enough against enemy armor during WW2, but TDs were ineffectual as they were used at first, and by the time the fully armored M10/M18/M36s showed up in numbers, the US response was to replace self-propelled battalions with towed AT gun battalions(with heavier guns than the usual pieces assigned to the infantry). The towed AT guns, as you might expect, showed incredible ineffectiveness, while the self-propelled TDs were somewhat effective depending on the tactical situation. Their primary weakness was that they were not very good operating closely with infantry in support of them. In hindsight, it probably would have been better to just have more shermans, or that these vehicles should have been replacing the towed AT pieces with the infantry, rather than deployed in dribs and drabs for odd tasks. The facts do show the ineffectiveness of towed AT pieces in offensive operations.
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Jan 29, 2011 04:03
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So the whole Tunisia situation has got me wondering, how many times in history has the military risen up to defend the people against corrupt government and end up fighting against a government-loyal police force in an apparently benevolent manner? Or is that how pretty much every military dictatorship starts?
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Jan 29, 2011 13:32
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Eej posted:So the whole Tunisia situation has got me wondering, how many times in history has the military risen up to defend the people against corrupt government and end up fighting against a government-loyal police force in an apparently benevolent manner? As far as I know it's how Thailand works.
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Jan 29, 2011 15:37
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EvanSchenck posted:The clearest indication of the real utility of American-style Tank Destroyer doctrine is that the Soviets and Germans (who actually engaged in large-scale armored warfare) never entertained the idea, and moreover the concept completely disappeared after the war even in American usage. If by 'tank destroyer' you mean a tracked vehicle with light armor and a large main gun, the Soviets fielded an enormous number of the SU-76, as well as the ZiS 30 and the SU-85. The Germans fielded the Panzerjager I, a bunch of Marders, Hetzers and Nashorns. Postwar, the Americans fielded the M50 Ontos. If you include anti-tank guided missiles, the concept of a thin-skinned heavily armed vehicle is extremely prevalent, even today.
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Jan 29, 2011 15:49
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Comrade_Robot posted:If by 'tank destroyer' you mean a tracked vehicle with light armor and a large main gun, the Soviets fielded an enormous number of the SU-76, as well as the ZiS 30 and the SU-85. The Germans fielded the Panzerjager I, a bunch of Marders, Hetzers and Nashorns. This is a totally different thing. What Soviets and Germans did was out of necessity - they needed more AFV's than they could build proper tanks, so they built turretless tank destroyers. The leading theorists in the two dictatorship swore by general purpose tanks - not that their pre-war designs necessarily reflected this except for T-34 and KV-1, but there was no such systematic separation of AFV's that would kill tanks (TD's) and AFV's that would breach enemy infantry lines and push through (tanks) as there was for the US. Soviet pre-war system was based on two main types, the infantry tank (T-26) that would support infantry and the cavalry tank (BT-5 and 7) that would exploit breakthroughs. Medium tanks T-28 and T-35 would be used in breaking through fortified lines. T-26 and BT's had a 45mm gun (equivalent of the German 37mm gun against armour) and the medium tanks a 76.2mm low velocity gun that wasn't any better. But during that period it was considered to be sufficient. In the Finnish Winter War Soviets realized that the very light T-26 and BT-5 didn't have enough protection, as 37mm ATG's had become the standard. The 45mm gun wasn't sufficient either. This resulted in the KV and, I think, affected the development of the T-34. The designing of the latter had already started in 1939 but the Winter War experience must have had some role in its final form when its production started. But between this and 1941 when Germany invaded Russia, only a handful of KV's and less than a thousand T-34's had been built - about half of Red Army's 20,000 strong tank force was made of T-26's and most of the rest was BT's. Because it was easier to build a 76.2mm gun and put it on a light tank chassis, this was done to beef up the AFV force. Not because Soviet generals wanted tank destroyers but because there was nothing better available. The German experience was kind of similar, except that they had to have a crash program in the 1930's to have any kind of Panzer force by 1939 due to the Versailles limitations that were fully chucked aside only as Hitler rose to power. As a result, German tank force for the invasion of Poland* was as follows: Panzer I (MG) 973 Panzer II (20mm) 1220 Panzer III (37mm) 87 Panzer IV (short 75mm) 198 Czech tanks (37mm) about 160 ...yeah, nothing too spectacular. Again, just like the Soviets, German generals didn't think that a division to tanks and TD's was desirable. But Panzers that could knock out KV's couldn't be built in sufficient numbers, so Panzerjägers and Jagdpanzers were built to complement them. In contrast, the US doctrine dictated that TANKS DON'T FIGHT TANKS. *source: https://www.achtungpanzer.com quote:Postwar, the Americans fielded the M50 Ontos. If you include anti-tank guided missiles, the concept of a thin-skinned heavily armed vehicle is extremely prevalent, even today. Someone might wonder what 'main battle tank' means. In WW2, armies used a wide array of specialized armoured fighting vehicles: close support tanks that would support infantry with direct gun fire, tank destroyers that would engage enemy tanks, assault howitzers that would pound enemy fortifications with heavy fire etc. Then there was a separation between light, medium and heavy tanks, where light and medium tanks were fast and ideal for exploitation, while the heavy tanks could withstand enemy anti-tank fire. But toward the end of WW2, tank designing moved more toward a compromise design that could sufficiently fill all those roles. Eg. a Panther was heavily armoured (at least from the front), could knock out any enemy tank, was also good against infantry, and was very mobile. After the war the great powers invested in Heavy Tanks for a while, but then realized that MBT was the way to go. Nenonen fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Jan 29, 2011 |
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Jan 29, 2011 17:26
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Didn't this argument already happen? Like literally, verbatim, spending pages discussing the intricacies of a couple of american tanks while everybody else gives up on the thread?Eej posted:So the whole Tunisia situation has got me wondering, how many times in history has the military risen up to defend the people against corrupt government and end up fighting against a government-loyal police force in an apparently benevolent manner? It still remains to be seen whether the military is actually going to be "benevolent" or not. While they've ousted the president, the government hasn't really been set up properly yet. It certainly seems like they're on the people's side (which seems incredibly rare in military coups) but there's still plenty of time for them to set up their own strongman and refuse to give up the power they've seized "for the people". Hopefully it won't happen, but it usually does. There was a similar situation fairly recently in a sub-saharan African country, the name of which is escaping me right now, hopefully somebody else can fill it in. The president had been popular and served two terms (the limit) and was barred from revising the constitution, so he started trying to scrap it and dissolving parliament. Once that went down, the military basically said they refused to watch their country suffer under another dictator, ousted him, and almost immediately held fair elections and stepped down. l33t Lurker fucked around with this message at 18:08 on Jan 29, 2011 |
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Jan 29, 2011 17:59
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Nenonen posted:This is a totally different thing. What Soviets and Germans did was out of necessity - they needed more AFV's than they could build proper tanks, so they built turretless tank destroyers. The leading theorists in the two dictatorship swore by general purpose tanks - not that their pre-war designs necessarily reflected this except for T-34 and KV-1, but there was no such systematic separation of AFV's that would kill tanks (TD's) and AFV's that would breach enemy infantry lines and push through (tanks) as there was for the US. Really? So the Pz III and the Pz IV had the same role at the beginning of the war? The quote I was responding to was that the Soviets and Germans never entertained the idea of tank destroyers, which is demonstrably false. Nenonen posted:In contrast, the US doctrine dictated that TANKS DON'T FIGHT TANKS. Really? If US doctrine dictated that tanks never fought tanks, then why were tanks given armor piercing shells? Page 37, FM 17-33, "The Armored Battalion, Light and Medium": 37. TANK VERSUS TANK ACTION (see FM 17-10).-Attacking tanks frequently encounter hostile tank units unexpectedly. At other times they may be required to attack hostile tanks deliberately in order to break up an attack or a counterattack. It is therefore necessary that all personnel be carefully trained in recognition of hostile and friendly tanks; characteristics and capabilities of hostile tanks as to armor, armament, and speed; vulnerable parts of hostile tanks upon which fire will be effective; range at which each of our weapons is effective against hostile vehicles; enemy methods of tank employment; and methods of combating hostile tanks, such as the use of speed, defilade and cover, and ambush. The statement that I was responding to was that the United States did not continue tank destroyers development postwar. This is inaccurate. (I've already mentioned the Ontos). In the early 1950's, the Army wanted to field a light, fast, and hard hitting gun which could 'shoot and scoot'. The Cadillac Motor Car division of General Motors built the pilot model, 90mm Gun Motor Carriage T-101, and eventually was standardized as the 90mm Self Propelled Gun M56, nicknamed the SPAT (Self-Propelled, Anti-Tank), or the Scorpion. The T-101 chassis was also tested with a 106mm recoilless rifle, but the M56 was the only one issued.
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Jan 29, 2011 18:04
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Throatwarbler posted:Of course I don't mean riflemen literally just huddle around their machine guns and nothing else. What it was trying to get across is that individual rifles aren't nearly as important as machine guns which comprise the bulk of the unit's firepower. This is extremely arguable. Large squads, like those fielded by the Marines, are able to put out good quantities of fire with their rifles and SAWs alone. This was, of course, not the case prior to the widespread adoption of large capacity select-fire weapons. Nowadays the role of the Platoon MG as an instrument of suppression is one it performs very well until the platoon is faced with an enemy on a front too long for these to cover reliably, or in concentrations too geographically disparate for the MGs alone to deal with. Seeing as an American platoon has only two MGs, and Soviet-based platoons are three squads of ten men to a squad, plus the command squad, you can see how this might be tricky. While the MG can do the suppression work of a fire team or two, and is thus more valuable than an individual rifleman, it is, for obvious reasons, not as portable and thus not as flexible as the rifleman's weapon.
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Jan 29, 2011 18:23
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Eej posted:So the whole Tunisia situation has got me wondering, how many times in history has the military risen up to defend the people against corrupt government and end up fighting against a government-loyal police force in an apparently benevolent manner? Turkey has had this sort of thing happen repeatedly. Government gets corrupt, country falls into chaos, military takes over for a few years, democracy is restored, repeat.
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Jan 29, 2011 18:31
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:I am not sure what this means, but it sounds like you mean dudes primarily use grenades for assaulting a position, which isn't doctrinally true and even if it were things don't work like this irl. at 2-32 wow! Is the US really still teaching ‘marching fire’. Left foot down and shoot! I would count SAWs as crew served, even if an individual can load and fire the weapon, there is still a dedicated assistant for the weapon. Same would go for a Marksmen or Sniper who has a dedicated spotter. The grenade has qualities that the other weapons don’t. for one it can be used from a ‘safe’ position where the enemy direct fire weapons can not bear. Gaining access to such a position and undermining the defense is surely the point of fire and maneuver. The enemy may quit before the assault is necessary, but it will be the threat of the coming close assault that fire is enabling, not the fire itself that compels with-drawl or surrender. An irresistible attack requires Stormtroopers, not Rifleman.
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Jan 29, 2011 18:34
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Goddamn it a mod should change this thread's title to "Spergin' about contemporary Military Tactics" and move it to debate and discussion. So this isn't entirely a threadshit, I'll add something of content. In regards to the brief bronze vs iron discussion earlier in the thread, my understanding of the reason behind the change to iron was that an iron sword could just straight up break a bronze sword, rather than a bronze sword not being able to stay sharp/deadly. Modern Day Hercules fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Jan 29, 2011 |
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Jan 29, 2011 18:50
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:This is extremely arguable. Large squads, like those fielded by the Marines, are able to put out good quantities of fire with their rifles and SAWs alone. This was, of course, not the case prior to the widespread adoption of large capacity select-fire weapons. SAWs are machine guns.
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Jan 29, 2011 19:22
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Modern Day Hercules posted:In regards to the brief bronze vs iron discussion earlier in the thread, my understanding of the reason behind the change to iron was that an iron sword could just straight up break a bronze sword, rather than a bronze sword not being able to stay sharp/deadly. Another reason is that Iron is easier to get at than making bronze, which requires tin, something that wasn't in great supply during the late bronze age / early iron age. Bronze was superior to early Iron (pretty darn soft), but a number of factors including tin shortages lead to people working with Iron, and by-the-by discovered ways of making it better so that by the time more advanced refining techniques for getting tin came along iron/steel was strong enough, and cheap enough to have supplanted bronze as the metal of choice.
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Jan 29, 2011 20:27
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Comrade_Robot posted:Really? So the Pz III and the Pz IV had the same role at the beginning of the war? Basically, yes. Of course, their capabilities differed, and ideally their roles too. They were still medium tanks, though, and were supposed to do a medium tank's job. Tanks were seldom met early in the WW2 (medium tanks even rarer), and when they were encountered, division commanders usually couldn't afford the luxury of re-organizing their tank unit deployment solely on the basis of which model has the better gun. It is worth remembering that in 1939-1940, medium and heavy tanks (Matilda II, Char D2, Char B2, Somua S35) were still rare on both sides. quote:The quote I was responding to was that the Soviets and Germans never entertained the idea of tank destroyers, which is demonstrably false. Seems like you mis-read it. He was specifically talking about the US tank destroyer doctrine. Here: The clearest indication of the real utility of American-style Tank Destroyer *doctrine* is that the Soviets and Germans (who actually engaged in large-scale armored warfare) never entertained the idea, and moreover the concept completely disappeared after the war even in American usage. If you ignore the word 'doctrine', the sentence gets the meaning that you were thinking of, but it's not really EvanSchenk's purpose I think. It's not very clearly spelled out, though. It's also worthwhile to notice that US tank destroyers were more akin to open-top tanks with revolving turrets, whereas Soviet and German tank destroyers had no turrets and many didn't even have coaxial (or any other) machineguns! quote:Really? If US doctrine dictated that tanks never fought tanks, then why were tanks given armor piercing shells? Doctrines aren't exactly road maps to victory that can be followed at all times. It just means that in strategic and operational planning leaders should try to use correct forces for correct missions, but if anyway tanks encounter tanks then of course they must have some means for dealing with them, even if insufficient at times - eg. M5 Stuarts in 1944 with their 37mm guns could not be expected to counter medium tanks. Tank destroyers were also given HE shells, even though they were meant to exist primarily for their titular purpose. This is nothing unusual: even anti-aircraft guns were given armour piercing ammunition so that they could be pressed into anti-tank role if an urgent need arose. Have you read Roman Jarymowycz's "Tank Tactics, From Normandy to Lorraine"? I find it enlighting on the issue of how US tank doctrine evolved from WWI to 1944. It also compares the US, British, French, Canadian, German and Soviet doctrinal paths.
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Jan 29, 2011 20:49
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Iron Chef Nex posted:Another reason is that Iron is easier to get at than making bronze, which requires tin, something that wasn't in great supply during the late bronze age / early iron age. Bronze was superior to early Iron (pretty darn soft), but a number of factors including tin shortages lead to people working with Iron, and by-the-by discovered ways of making it better so that by the time more advanced refining techniques for getting tin came along iron/steel was strong enough, and cheap enough to have supplanted bronze as the metal of choice. These are the only reasons. Iron swords did not break bronze ones with any kind of regularity. Plus in ancient Greek warfare you do not often see dudes going sword to sword since they have shields for that sort of thing, and besides that spears were the primary weapons. AbleArcher posted:I would count SAWs as crew served, even if an individual can load and fire the weapon, there is still a dedicated assistant for the weapon. Same would go for a Marksmen or Sniper who has a dedicated spotter. The grenade has qualities that the other weapons don’t. for one it can be used from a ‘safe’ position where the enemy direct fire weapons can not bear. Gaining access to such a position and undermining the defense is surely the point of fire and maneuver. The enemy may quit before the assault is necessary, but it will be the threat of the coming close assault that fire is enabling, not the fire itself that compels with-drawl or surrender. An irresistible attack requires Stormtroopers, not Rifleman. I'm not saying that grenades don't have advantages or that they are not useful in an assault, I'm saying that your characterisation of them as "the personal offensive weapon" and rifles as "point defence for crew served weapons" is ridiculously myopic. Both rifles and squad automatic weapons clearly serve an offensive role in an assault. Throatwarbler posted:SAWs are machine guns. Ah I see. They are not usually referred to as machine guns thus my confusion.
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Jan 29, 2011 21:05
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Putting silencers on machine guns isn't practical yet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o-RL6FjGEQ Note the silencer is glowing and possibly on fire after only a few bursts. The Chinese produced and fielded a tank destroyer in the 1990s. 
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Jan 29, 2011 21:27
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Nenonen posted:If you ignore the word 'doctrine', the sentence gets the meaning that you were thinking of, but it's not really EvanSchenk's purpose I think. It's not very clearly spelled out, though. Right. Other nations certainly built tank destroyers but the idea of creating independent "tank hunter" formations was never part of it, nor did they assume that having these tank destroyers erased the necessity of having fully up-to-date multirole medium tanks. German and Soviet SPGs operated in conjunction with more conventional forces, and were in fact never designed to be able to work independently. German and Soviet SPGs were designed for economy, lacking turrets so larger guns could be accommodated in already available light and medium tank chassis, which also meant that they had to be covered by other forces to avoid being outmaneuvered and outflanked. Many German TDs, like the Marder series or Hetzer, were even adaptations of chassis captured from defeated countries, getting a little more mileage out of something that was otherwise useless. The Germans and Soviets saw the Tank Destroyer as a potentially useful economization, getting some of the utility of a tank without paying the full tank price. By contrast, American tanks were no less expensive or complicated than a full-size tank, the only difference was that they sacrificed protection for speed and firepower. The Americans saw it as a substitute for conventional tanks in armored combat. Tank destroyers of various descriptions continue to be produced but they never approached the American doctrinal approach. Nobody is planning to field battalions composed entirely of ATGM carriers. gohuskies posted:Half the German armor fleet could be killed from the front, at medium range, by a Sherman's 75mm gun. Stories like these argue "if only we hadn't made all those M10s, those 76mm guns could have gone in Shermans instead, what a waste!" When in fact the Sherman did just fine the vast majority of the time. I'm not unilaterally saying that the Sherman sucked or that it didn't do just fine 80% (or whatever) of the time, I'm saying that the United States was capable of procuring a medium tank that would have done just fine 95% of the time, and probably would have done so if they hadn't been stuck on Tank Destroyer theory. Throatwarbler posted:The Chinese produced and fielded a tank destroyer in the 1990s. The Type 89 is probably explainable by the same principles underlying the Soviet and German WWII experience. China was no doubt spooked by the chance of facing off against modern MBTs with an armored force based around updated T-54s. Namely they would have been sweating the Russian T-72s and T-80s, or even worse the T-72s being exported to regional rivals like India and Vietnam. In the '70s and '80s they didn't yet have the military-industrial complex necessary to build a local equivalent. Thus a tank destroyer, a full size gun in an already available light chassis, might have looked like an attractive stopgap pending the availability of a better option.
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Jan 29, 2011 23:43
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Both rifles and squad automatic weapons clearly serve an offensive role in an assault. But it's a purely supporting role. 40mins of spade work and the defender has fighting position that will absorb any amount of small arms thrown against it. The defender will be on known ground and his own fire will order of magnitude more effective because of it. The attacker cannot trust to winning a contest of fire. Even if he did he is likely to exhausted and low on ammo to hold the position when the enemy counter attack arrives. It’s the arrival of the grenade (admittedly followed shortly after by a bayoneted assault rifle) that explains to the enemy the defense has failed.
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Jan 30, 2011 00:01
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