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Phanatic posted:Who probably had the best seat in the house to watch the climax of the battle from, floating in the ocean and periodically diving under to hide from being strafed. Gotta imagine it was a real change in spirits for him too, to go from getting shot down and seeing everyone else in his wing killed and the Japanese fleet looking invulnerable to watching the dive bombers wreck some serious poo poo.
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Jun 4, 2012 16:52
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Myoclonic Jerk posted:In it, the author said that, even if the US had lost Midway, the war was destined to end in Japanese defeat, just not as quickly. The US advantage in production of hulls and planes was so overwhelming, that the Japanese would have succumbed eventually. The author envisions a northern Pacific route through Canada and Alaska ( IIRC most of the US Navy shipbuilding, especially of the large displacement hulls, was limited to the Eastern Seaboard and not the West Coast. If the US Pacific Fleet was crippled and Pearl Harbor isolated, then the IJN could have potentially struck the Panama Canal, resulting in the need for all USN ships to go around South America to get to the Pacific.
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Jun 4, 2012 18:07
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) to support an invasion of Japan from the north, in which atomic bombs were not used, because production was diverted into building an even larger army and navy. IIRC, the invasion of Japan involved Soviet troops, resulting in a divided Japan and Tokyo, a la Germany.
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The interwar period is such an amazing story of tank development. All of the crazy things that they tried (Multiple turrets, tiny tanks, huge tanks, etc) and the doctrines that emerged from it. For every good idea there were about three others that made you wonder if they were dropping acid at the time. In some ways it was typical 'planning to fight the last war', but others parts were almost crazy sci-fi stuff.
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Jun 12, 2012 18:56
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One of the goals of the Tet Offensive was to bleed to the Viet Cong dry.
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Jun 30, 2012 02:40
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LP97S posted:Don't worry, I've been thinking the same thing in past. I'm sure they could make boatloads of cash with broadcasting rights and DVD/online sales of selling a hi-def broadcast. I really want to see a nuke go off in space. See how close they get to a spherical shape.
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Jul 21, 2012 19:04
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Insert name here posted:You can actually seem him get blown out of the turret at around 13 seconds in. At first I thought he was outside before because there's some movement by the back of the tank before it goes up, but yeah, you definitely see him get blown out of it.
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Jan 26, 2013 01:34
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StandardVC10 posted:I've heard this story about unmanned B-17s landing almost-safely, but I don't think they were of the flying-bomb variety. A better-sourced example of a post-ejection airplane landing itself can be found here. I remember a B-17 that made a semi-successful crash landing after all the crew bailed out. There's a picture of it in the background while you see a B-17 divot in the ground in the foreground.
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Jan 28, 2013 19:38
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Have there been any TV shows or movies outside of documentaries that have depicted the Battle off Samar? I mean hell, you'd think the events are practically made for TV, but I've never even seen it mentioned outside of a few video games. The closest I can find is this on Wikipedia: Wikipedia posted:While the battle is frequently included in historical accounts of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the duels between the destroyer and destroyer escorts and Yamato and the Japanese force was the subject of a Dogfights television program "Death of the Japanese Navy"[64] That episode, as well as a History Channel documentary was based on The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, written by James D. Hornfischer. The book is really good if you've never read it (You should).
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Feb 1, 2013 15:36
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:You're thinking of the Saratoga. She got nuked. The Enterprise was just plain scrapped. Which sucks just as much, really. Honestly I think scrapping is more insulting. At least a nuke test involves a ship dying to another weapon. Also the Saratoga took two nukes to kill.
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Feb 1, 2013 17:36
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I can only hope they made a special medal for the guy(s) that thought that up and made them wear it through the rest of their career.
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Apr 1, 2013 15:06
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Is Twilight the system that had the dispersion overlays for gunfire? I remember one of those games having them in the back of the book where you would lay it over the appropriate outline and roll the percentage dice to see where your shot went.
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Apr 22, 2013 19:00
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Warbadger posted:TUSK was purchased in the hundreds and was a pretty good upgrade, specifically beefing the poo poo out of side hull protection with ERA and adding a bunch of generally nice things for urban combat (remote control loader gun with thermal sight, IED protection, infantry telephone, slat armor for the rear/engine). At this point TUSK II has also started appearing, including new ERA tiles and extending the ERA protection to the side of the turret. Coincidentally ERA on the side of the turret and hull basically shits all over the areas Russian tankers were taught to shoot at on the Abrams. It never ceases to amaze me how many times we have to learn this lesson.
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Jun 3, 2013 15:45
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:Alcoholism. It's a combination of new production and reserves. It's a lot easier to stockpile new tanks than it is to stockpile new crews. Also if a tank is disabled but not killed then it can possibly be brought back to combat effectiveness (Provided it's recovered, of course).
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Jun 3, 2013 15:52
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Newer Leo's also have the latest 120mm L55 from Rheinmetall, specifically the 2A6 I think.
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Jun 3, 2013 16:25
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There's a DU layer in the later models, starting with later A1s, I believe. It protects the front and front-side aspects on the turret and hull with the Chobham. The rear-sides and rear just has RHA.
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Jun 3, 2013 18:31
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Air-launched makes it even easier to attack the top of a tank too.
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Jun 4, 2013 01:11
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That also made it a rather miserable experience during winter if I remember right.
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Jun 5, 2013 18:55
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The British show Top Gear had a bit last series with the TerraMax that was pretty neat. Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pl_Pont_Zk
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Jun 5, 2013 19:15
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That picture makes it look like it has motion-capture balls on the underside.
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Jun 9, 2013 14:46
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Percentage over budget, of course.priznat posted:B-17 software development was way easier. If only! That thing barely had any processing power.
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Jun 10, 2013 23:24
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There's also the matter of while they may have been able to keep wartime material production up, the quality of that equipment was going down due to both disruptions and losses to Soviet advances. German metallurgy quality was taking a nose-dive by the end of 44. Add in the amount of weapons/resources/personnel that were kept in Germany for air defense (including fuel!) then it starts to show more strain.
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Jun 11, 2013 14:38
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Also the US has a bad tendency to get involved in Spreading Democracy in places where it's a lot easier to get one's hands on a MANPAD.
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Jun 13, 2013 14:51
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The CIA keeps on stealing control of the ones with missiles.
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Jun 13, 2013 20:44
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Any sort of damage to the air frame of a high-performance fighter would be very dangerous. Their skin isn't that thick to begin with and if you distort the way that air flows over it enough then it could possibly tear itself apart. Doubly so if you damage a support structure. Hell, the pilot(s) may not even know they're being attacked by a laser until things start to fail, if even then.
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Jun 14, 2013 14:29
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Dead Reckoning posted:Really terrible stuff. I would certainly read more about this as well. It's disgusting how much the rot of terrible but trendy business practices has penetrated into the government/military. You hit the nail square on the head when you said it could be sold to the government even after failing in the private sector. After all ideology triumphs over reality there. When I heard the entire concept of Just In Time being applied to military logistics early last decade I couldn't believe it. But then they took it a step further with contracted (disposable) supply runners. I mean poo poo, how can you think that is a good idea? How can you not see that people will die if it breaks down at any point? Taerkar fucked around with this message at 18:08 on Jun 24, 2013 |
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Jun 24, 2013 18:05
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Cyrano4747 posted:It also rather pointedly ignores the existence of an enemy who is dedicating everything he has towards ensuring that it does break down/get delayed/etc. That's not a bullet-point on the presentation therefore it's not an actual concern. Not like these systems work properly without people shooting up your supply lines
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Jun 24, 2013 19:06
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I suspect that the true replacement for the A-10 will be a UAV. That job is now such a high-risk endeavor that drones will be the only way in the future.NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:There was an effort post a while ago about how the A-10 would not do that well against modern AA. It probably wouldn't hurt to replace it with a cost-effective, multi-role plane. I don't really see the US getting into a shooting war with anything using a modern AA network. The current 'War on Terror' is pretty biased towards those countries that can't field such a thing. quote:Laser VTOL stealth fighter would not be my first choice. Lasers aren't even that great against ground targets.
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Aug 21, 2013 14:52
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The problem is that the first bit of "A capable, flexible plane that doesn't break the bank." tends to lead into the second bit, the boondoggle. One-size-fits-all is great on paper, but there's no reason why we don't use specialized airframes for what we need. vvvv Index funds. Anything else is foolish. Taerkar fucked around with this message at 15:18 on Aug 21, 2013 |
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Aug 21, 2013 15:10
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:On the subject of procurement, how badly is our ( They are the gears upon which the MIC turns its money-printing press, oiled by congresscritters seeking to get votes by bringing those jobs to their districts.
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Aug 21, 2013 15:36
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) procurement process messed up by people looking to make a buck? Is it a very serious problem, or is it blown out of proportion?
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Snowdens Secret posted:Seeing as this is the Cold War thread and all, it's worth pointing out that we don't get into fights with people who might give us a rough time by ensuring as few countries as possible think they could give us a rough time. History isn't kind to rich and powerful civilizations that let their defense go to poo poo. Definitely true, but as I said before the future of this sort of stuff is going to be UCAVs, especially in a high-loss area like CAS. You might still have piloted planes are interceptors and air-superiority, but for bomb trucks and strike platforms there really isn't any advantage anymore to having people in the sky.
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Aug 21, 2013 16:32
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Lemmie tell you about Millennium Challenge 2002...
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Aug 21, 2013 18:09
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To give the DoD a (very) little bit of slack it seems like the only way the F-35 could be more convoluted is if it was required that every part be made by a different company
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Aug 23, 2013 03:22
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LP97S posted:License the Eurofighter and rebuild Skyraiders Skyraider UAV.
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Aug 23, 2013 17:42
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You're far too young to be posting on SA, priznat.
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Feb 17, 2014 21:02
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iyaayas01 posted:Wrong. Killing the F-35 project could have only happened before the first big checks were written. No one wants to be the pariah that'll be blamed for that boondoggle if it was killed. People would scream for someone to blame and no one would care that it was actually the right decision. Well, a right decision would be to flip off the USMC and say no VTOL silliness, and a further right decision would be to not have a plane be designed to operate off of both the land and carriers be the majority of our combat airframes.
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Apr 16, 2014 23:18
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That was the original idea (claim really), but since you've got different versions for each branch, that's going to cause problems. The Navy has different needs than the Air Force, so either you have things that are superficially similar, or you're going to have a compromise. Have enough compromises and you've got something that's not even a jack-of-all-trades airframe.
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Apr 17, 2014 00:44
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Isn't it closer to 2 gens though? At least in the navy with the F-14 and superbug? 1.5?
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Apr 17, 2014 02:54
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Blistex posted:Now you could say, "the allies had orders of magnitude more resources to waste, so this was a valid strategy", but you also have to look at production numbers in Nazi Germany. By 1945, BF-109 monthly production rates were almost 2x what they were in 1943, and only coming up 3,000 of the 14,000+ made in 1944. Keep in mind though that production numbers in Nazi Germany were also really screwy because of how their factory production worked. Various things would get (unreasonably) high priority so that increase in production may and probably did come at the cost of something else going down. And of course German production methods were rather obsolete at the time anyways.
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Apr 21, 2014 03:54
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Oh god the 262. At least the 163 had the common decency to blow itself up on the ground every now and then. The 262 is so incredibly overrated.
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Apr 21, 2014 20:57
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Oh god do they ever. Glorious Invincible KruppStahl!
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Apr 23, 2014 13:52
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