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drat, my post is turning out to be much longer than anticipated, and I still have to skim over some important parts. Looks like I'll have to make a really general one and then a series of more specialized ones.
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Nov 13, 2013 23:08
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Finally, it's done! A few things to keep in mind: a) It's already super long, so forgive me if I gloss over your favourite StuG modification or whatever. b) It's quite Eurocentric, since most of the interesting things in the period I touch on happened there, and I haven't read much on the Japanese tank industry. c) In the interest of narrative flow, I group things together by topic, not time period, so there is some jumping back and forth in the WWII part, as a lot of things are happening in parallel. An Effortpost on tanks: a general overview Ask a someone to draw you a picture of a tank, and most people will draw you a vaguely similar shape: caterpillar type tracks, main cannon in a single rotating (likely rounded) turret, resembling Main Battle Tanks used by any military today. As it usually happens with any new technology, today’s nearly identical designs came from a varied and diverse background. The idea of an armoured thing that allowed you to kill your fellow man with impunity is not even remotely new, but lost popularity when metalworking could not counter gunpowder with quality, and there was no way to lug around enough metal to overcome it with quantity. With the invention of the internal combustion engine, that balance quickly shifted. An automobile could be covered in hardened steel several millimeters thick, protecting it from bullets. Such vehicles were suitable for fighting bandits and rioters, but the pock-marked battlefields of WWI proved them ineffective. The mud and shell craters proved too much for the overloaded engines of the armoured cars to handle. The need for a new vehicle arose. The first tanks, designed by British Admiralty (the Army had no desire to develop expensive new vehicles) were more akin to land battleships than anything recognized as a tank today. Cannons (“male” tank) or machine guns (“female” tank) were fitted in sponsons. The tanks were huge, with engine compartments that you could walk around in (and had to walk around in, as the engines were quite unreliable, and leaving the tank to fix them in the middle of a battle was not a desirable option). One feature that did last until today, however, were the tracks. Unlike the four or six wheels of a car or a truck, the tanks had many small wheels. One large wheel was connected to the engine, and would pull the track, composed of many links, and connected by flexible joints. That way, the tank had traction with a much larger portion of the ground than a car would, allowing it to pass through very poor terrain. In early tanks, no care was taken to ensure crew comfort. Gas from the engine and guns would collect inside the tank, armour plates being struck by bullets would shower the crew with paint chips. The tanks themselves were slow and sluggish. French and German tank designs that made it on the battlefield were closer to forts than the land ships of the British, making up for a lack of mobility of their cannons with a great number of machine guns on every side. These early designs, fearsome as they may look, failed to affect the outcome of the Great War in any meaningful way. They were too few in number, too unreliable, too new to be used to their full potential by conservative commanders of the time. However, a French tank built during the war managed to stand the test of time, the Renault FT-17. Unlike the monstrous Schneider and Saint-Chamond, this tank was much lighter. Instead of being crewed by almost a dozen men, it only required two: the driver, who controlled the tank by means of levers and pedals, looking through a slit in his hatch, and the commander, who also filled the role of gunner and loader, occupying an upright turret behind the driver. The tank’s machine gun was placed in a single rotating turret. The commander could look at the landscape around him through the machine gun sight or a cupola with vision slits. The tank’s engine was still placed in the rear of the vehicle, but in a much smaller compartment. Nobody knew that this small tank would shape the way armoured vehicles would be built for a hundred years. The Great War came to an end, borders were redrawn, but the bloodshed did not end, as the Russian Civil War erupted. Interventionist forces flooded into the country to defend the interests of the West, bringing with them a great gift to the defense industry of the RSFSR: French FT-17 and British MkV tanks. MkVs were seen as lacking even then, but four FT-17s captured at Odessa piqued the Bolsheviks’ interest. A tank was sent to Moscow as a present to Lenin, and then another, to be used as parts for the first one. The tank was deemed to have great potential, and served as a base for the first Soviet tank: named “Russian Renault”. 16 tanks, slightly modernized versions of the FT-17, were built, each with a proper name, as was the style with battleships. The Renault FT-17 continued inspiring Soviet tank industry on its way to its next tank, the “Small Support 1” (MS-1), or T-18. The T-18 was nothing special, carrying the same armament (two machine guns or a 37 mm cannon), still had two crew members, the same suspension and even the distinctive “tail” the FT-17 had in order to cross wide trenches. It was at this point that the young nation came to an impasse. The design was barely enough to satisfy modern requirements, and lacked much modernization potential. Engineers did not have the experience to design a new tank, and industry did not have the experience to build one. The answer was simple: turn abroad. At the time, two designs were available, but unwanted by their own countries. One was the British Vickers E, a light 6-ton tank. Instead of one turret, the tank had two: one with a machine gun, and one with a 37 mm gun or another machine gun. The tank was crewed by three men: one driver, and one gunner per turret. The Vickers E was an agile and very impressive vehicle for its time, but did not fit into the British armoured doctrine. Fortunately for Vickers, the genius of the design was recognized abroad. The USSR, China, Poland, and many other countries purchased Vickers E tanks. Another design of interest at the time was the child of Walther Christie. The tank had more in common with a car than a tank at first glance, with large rubber-rimmed road wheels instead of the small ones of the Vickers and Renault. Many history books highlight the ability of the tank to be converted from wheeled mode to track mode, reducing wear on the tracks, but ignore the design of the suspension. And boy, what a suspension it was. If you look at the suspension of the Vickers E, it is composed of eight road wheels per side, four per bogey. The two bogeys could travel independently of each other, using a leaf spring to absorb impact. The wheels could not move independently of the bogey, making the tank unable to “hug” complicated terrain. The tank’s main advantage, the ability to use the whole surface area of the track to pull itself, was lost. Christie’s tanks, on the other hand, had four large road wheels per side. Each road wheel had its own coil spring for shock absorption. This allowed each wheel to move up and down independently of its neighbours. This ability was so novel that any suspension with individual road wheels was called “Christie” for a period of time, regardless of what kind of spring it used. Christie’s invention was revolutionary, but the American military was reluctant to purchase it, despite its clear advantage over the unreliable T1 light tanks. However, much like with the Vickers tank, foreign buyers were easily found. Two bitter enemies, Poland and the USSR, were all too happy to purchase new technology at the mere hint that the other one was looking into it. The British and Americans were not the only ones the Soviets were borrowing design choices from. As a part of a secret agreement with Weimar Germany, a tank school was established at Kazan. Tanks built in Germany under the guise of agricultural tractors could be tested here, away from the prying eyes of foreign inspectors. German and Soviet tank commanders were also trained here. When Hitler came to power, relations between the two countries rapidly cooled, and the tank school was shut down. However, the core of the Panzerwaffe was already formed. With plywood cutouts instead of real tanks, the German army began training. Soon, cardboard cutouts were replaced with the first real tank, the Panzerkampfwagen I, built using the Vickers Carden-Lloyd tankette as a base. Combat characteristics of the Pz I were unacceptably poor for its time. Unlike the image of German tanks in popular media today, it could boast neither thick armour nor a powerful gun. Its armour could only protect from rifle bullets, and its armament consisted of two machine guns in a rotating turret: characteristics that could be found on a tank from two decades prior. It was slow and unreliable, but it was a start. Two former allies found themselves at odds with each other, as a civil war brewed in Spain: Germany backing the fascists and USSR backing the Republicans. Both received secret shipments of volunteers and the latest and greatest in light tanks each side could offer. The Germans sent their Pz I tanks, and the Soviets the T-26, a Vickers E with several years worth of refinements built in. One of those was the replacement of two turrets with one, mounting a powerful 45 mm anti-tank cannon. This cannon could knock out a Pz I at any distance, whereas the opposite could only be done at a very close range with amour-piercing bullets. However, the T-26 still only had anti-bullet armour. Towed anti-tank guns of the Spanish fascists had no problems penetrating it. The development of a tank is a constant race between cannon and armour. In the mid 1930s, the cannon was winning. Armour that was enough to defeat a rifleman in 1918 was not as impressive when it came to the latest models of anti-tank cannons, or even anti-tank rifles. The French were some of the first to design a tank with thick armour, impenetrable by anti-tank guns of the time. However, this led to a problem. The resulting low speed and high fuel consumption led to a decrease in tactical and strategic mobility. Despite their seemingly impressive armour, they were incapable of serving as an effective combat unit. Thick armour was no stranger to other nations either. The British Empire was building Matilda infantry support tanks, armed only with machine guns, at first, but with armour thick enough to survive a shelling from any anti-tank cannon of the era. The Germans briefly flirted with heavy tank designs armed with a low velocity 75 mm gun, but they did not find a place in German doctrine. The Soviet Union experimented with “111”, also known as T-46-5, designed by Koshkin, the yet unknown young engineer. The tank was a failure: its mass and thin tracks led to poor performance, and its gasoline engine was too weak to carry such a heavy tank. The BT-SV was another attempt to create a heavily armoured tank, using the BT tanks (the design that evolved from the Christie purchase many years back) and armour plates that were highly sloped, instead of very thick. This great advance is often credited to Koshkin and the T-34 by popular history, but that is not so. Even Tsyganov, the designer of the BT-SV, used the French FCM 36 as a direction of how to (and also how not to) design a tank with sloped armour. However, he was arrested for wasteful spending of government budget (as a great fan of dead-end projects on the BT chassis), and the BT-SV went nowhere. I have talked enough about armour, so let’s talk about cannons. Tanks were armed with three main types of guns at the time: machine guns, low velocity guns approximately 75 mm in caliber, and high velocity guns 40-50 mm in caliber. The two former types were mean to fight infantry. A shell meant to kill people and destroy fortifications does not need to fly fast, but it needs to carry a lot of explosive substance. On the other hand, a shell that needs to penetrate armour needs to move much faster. A big heavy shell is also good in this case for reasons that I will get into later, but in order to propel a big shell at high speeds, you need a lot of gunpowder, meaning its case needs to be thicker to withstand the impact, meaning it can carry less explosives. Technology of the time forces a choice between AP (armour piercing) and HE (high explosive) effects, which is evident in tank designs. Germany, at this point, had the Pz III, with a high velocity 50 mm gun, and a Pz IV, with a low velocity 75 mm gun. The Soviet Union had its T-26 and BT-7 with high velocity 45 mm guns, and T-28 with a low velocity 76 mm gun, and two machine guns in mini-turrets. The Soviet T-35 behemoth carried five turrets, one with a 76 mm gun, two with 45 mm guns, and two with machine guns. The French B1 was similarly multi-gunned: it had a 75 mm howitzer in the hull and a 47 mm gun in the turret. If you wanted to fight tanks and infantry at the same time, such dual layout was your only option. In the early stages of WWII, heavy armour showed its advantages, but also its downsides. French tanks were nearly invincible to German guns, but proved ineffective when time came for grand maneuvers. British Matildas performed much more respectably, but even their mighty hide could be pierced by 88 mm anti-aircraft guns. In 1939, Soviet engineers built the 76 mm L-11 tank gun, the most powerful tank gun to date. It combined a large caliber for the time with previously unheard of speed, resulting in an anti-tank weapon of unparalleled power. This cannon was put in the heavy KV-1 tank, with then unheard of 75 mm of armour, and later the medium T-34 tank, with only 45 mm of armour, but at a large angle. Both tanks received an even longer 76 mm gun in 1941, increasing their anti-armour capability further. While invincible on paper, the tanks had their problems, as any new design does. Instead of focusing on correcting the obvious flaws, Soviet engineers placed their bets on the tanks’ successors, the KV-3 and T-34M, scheduled to begin production in 1941. The ancient (dating back to 1931!) T-26 tank was scheduled to be replaced with the modern T-50, boasting as much armour as the T-34, with a superior torsion bar suspension, like the KV-1. However, not a single T-34M or KV-3 was built by the time the war reached Soviet soil, and only a miserly amount of T-50 tanks made it out of the factory, with their initial mechanical problems still unsolved. The USSR, having lost a large percentage of its obsolete tank park in the first few months of the war, and with its factories ramping up production again in the East was forced to produce the T-60: a simple version of the T-40 reconnaissance tank, with amphibious capability removed, and high caliber machine gun swapped for a 20 mm autocannon. This tank was simple enough to be built in car factories, and it had to be, as the USSR needed tanks badly. Germany, having invaded the USSR with the aforementioned Pz III and Pz IV tanks was shocked. Neither cannon could penetrate a T-34 or a KV-1 from the front. The two tanks received longer guns, but the 88 mm FlaK gun remained the only reliable way to eliminate the Soviet tanks at a long range. In the winter of 1941, it was evident that the plan to swiftly crush the USSR has failed. Germany remembered all of those heavy tank projects from the 1930s, and swiftly upgraded some for that wonderful 88 mm gun. The new Tiger tank was inspired by the DW (Durchbruchswagen: literally Breakthrough Vehicle), and was not that much different from it. Despite entering the battlefield in 1942, it still had the same boxy design as tanks of the previous decade. The 100 mm of front armour was a tough nut to crack for Soviet 76 mm guns, but not a problem for their 85 mm anti-aircraft gun at any effective combat range. By this time, the Americans knew they could not sit out the war forever. Unfortunately, its tanks were downright primitive compared to those fighting in Europe, with relatively weak 37 mm guns and thin armour. The temporary solution was the M3 Medium tank (nicknamed Lee). The tank had three levels of armament: one 75 mm gun in the hull, one 37 mm gun in a fully rotating turret, and a machine gun mini-turret on top of all that. It was huge, and not very well received by either American forces or the British and Soviets that received it through Lend-Lease. In 1942, the Americans put the 75 mm gun in the turret, and got rid of the puny 37 mm gun, resulting in the M4 Medium tank (nicknamed Sherman). The tank was slightly smaller, but putting the big gun in the turret made it a lot more versatile and maneuverable. Later versions of the Sherman received 105 mm howitzers for infantry support or 76 mm guns for improved anti-tank performance. The British installed a powerful 17-pounder 76 mm gun into their Shermans, resulting in a very potent tank destroyer, capable of taking out any German tank head-on. This modification was called the Sherman Firefly. In 1943, it was clear that the quality advantage that Soviet tanks enjoyed in the early war has lapsed. The T-34 was limited by its small turret. The armour of the KV-1 was no longer as impressive as it used to be, but the tank was still more expensive than the T-34, while bringing the same gun to the battlefield. The KV-1S was a lighter version of the KV-1, but still big and expensive. A new tank was needed. That tank was the IS. Equipped with an 85 mm cannon, it had more armour than a KV-1, was faster, and more reliable. Later on, the gun was upgraded to 122 mm in order to effectively combat German Ferdinand SPGs and fortifications. Also in 1943, Germany put a new medium tank into production, the Panther. The project started out as a T-34 equivalent at 30 tons (initially, even a T-34 clone), but swelled up to 50 tons during the design process. The very long 75 mm gun and thick sloped front armour was supposed to defeat the Soviets’ quantity with quality, but the tank was plagued by reliability problems until the very end of the war, and its thin side armour made it vulnerable to every gun in the Soviet arsenal, including man-portable anti-tank rifles. The front armour was not particularly impressive either, as the quality of German metal was steadily declining. Even a non-penetrating hit meant that the armour could crack and fall to bits, or that fragments could break off the rear and damage the crew and internals of the tank. Despite the Panther being a medium tank, the upgraded Pz IV remained the core of the German armoured forces until the end of the war. In 1944, Germany sent out a new addition to their zoo, the King Tiger. Combining an even more powerful 88 mm gun than the Tiger and thicker armour like the Panther, it made a fearsome opponent on paper, but was victim to the same problems as the Panther: poor armour quality and reliability. The Germans were not the only ones to start building a new tank. The Americans finally became unsatisfied with the Sherman, and built the heavy Pershing tank. It was much heavier, with a 90 mm AA gun, but used the same engine as the Sherman, leaving it lacking engine power and prone to breakdowns. The Pershing did not see combat until 1945, and even then, its design left much to be desired. During the late years of the war, light tank production stopped completely. The end of the war would spell death for heavy tanks. Germany, everyone’s favourite builder of overweight beasts, was out of the tank-building business for a long time. The US focused on perfecting the Pershing tank, now classified as a medium. The USSR continued the IS series for a number of years, but it became evident that the gun was winning over armour once again. It was impossible to protect yourself from modern HEAT ammunition and missiles. A tank’s best bet to remain safe was to be small and fast. Additionally, with the threat of nuclear war hanging over the world, a tank had to be cheap, and light enough to be delivered to its destination quickly, and in large numbers. Heavy tanks were non Egypt-viable. Medium designs with relatively thin armour, like the French AMX 30, German Leopard and Soviet T-54 would rule the battlefield for a number of years. Over time, these medium tanks were upgraded with better protection and superior firepower, but never at the cost of mobility, like in WWII days. Eventually, tanks and doctrines changed to the point where the medium tank joined its light and heavy brothers in the recesses of history. Engineers combined the protection and firepower of a heavy tank with the mobility of a medium tank, forming a new type of vehicle: the main battle tank. Ensign Expendable fucked around with this message at 15:49 on Nov 14, 2013 |
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Nov 14, 2013 01:11
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Koesj posted:It should probably be the AMX-30 in your last paragraph, the -13 is the light tank platform with the oscillating turret. MBTs really aren't my area of expertise, so I picked a French post-war design I was vaguely familiar with. I guess the AMX-30 fits in that list better.
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Nov 14, 2013 02:51
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The Soviets implemented autoloaders for those two exact reasons. No turret bustle, since that would ruin the totally sweet soup bowl turrets every Soviet tank had since the T-54.my dad posted:Amazing effortpost Ensign Expendable. However, Well, I'm shamed forever.
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Nov 14, 2013 15:43
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There might be a slight error here.
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Nenonen posted:I'm in a hurry so this'll be brief & stupid but rifle maximum ranges can be misleading - sure, the weapon itself is powerful and accurate enough, but most of actual combat, or hits resulting in casualties, take place at much reduced distances. Yup, with a Lee-Enfield, your only chance of harming someone at 3 kilometers is to have a platoon of guys empty a magazine or two in the direction of the target. That distance is a challenge even for modern match-grade ammunition, even at a known range.
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Nov 14, 2013 19:59
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I am a fan of the Soviet March of the Artillerymen.
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Nov 14, 2013 22:20
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Jewcoon posted:Really odd engineering version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMVVCG4WnwM That's a perfectly normal engineering song. a travelling HEGEL posted:cavalry.txt :iamafag: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgZCzi4W-wc Edit: I like this version better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnFhgoMnpeI Ensign Expendable fucked around with this message at 02:34 on Nov 15, 2013 |
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Nov 15, 2013 02:32
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Nenonen posted:In addition, late in the war there were the Jagdpanzers - including Jagdpanzer IV (based on Panzer IV), Jagdpanther (based on Panzer V Panther) and Jagdtiger (based on Panzer VI - you guessed it - Tiger). The JagdTiger was based on the Tiger II. There was no tank destroyer based on the Tiger (unless you count the Ferdinand). Also, the coolest assault guns are easily the Soviet ones. One gun? Pah! Three guns!  Stalin didn't like having three guns, so one big gun!  Panther tank got you down? No problem, load high explosive!  Ferdinand giving you trouble? Blast him with a concrete penetrating shell, instead of penetrating the armour, it will just push half of the plate through the hull!  Maus on the horizon? Way ahead of you there, comrade, welcome the BL-8!  The Soviets tried all sorts of crazy poo poo with their assault guns, equipping them with guns up to 203 mm in caliber (but then realized those were dumb and didn't build any). I also wrote an article on medium assault guns, but aside from the double barrelled SU-122, there isn't really anything crazy there. Interestingly enough, there were no distinctions between assault guns, self propelled guns, and tank destroyers in Soviet nomenclature: even though the latter were unofficially called tank destroyers occasionally, the three types of vehicles were lumped together under the designation "SAU" (samohodnaya artilleriyskaya ustanovka, self-propelled artillery mount). VanSandman posted:The trick is to time your firing mechanism so you can only shoot when you won't hit the propeller. This took a while to work out, actually. Or just put the gun on the wings, or into the propeller axis!
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Nov 16, 2013 07:22
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Hovermoose posted:For example how was mine field breaching done during world war II? If you had time, send in sappers and have them pick the mine field apart at night. If you were in a hurry, you bring one of these:  The two big wheels in the front of the tank will roll over mines and the mines will explode, but the wheels can take a number of explosions before the tank can't move anymore, and none of the explosions actually damage the tank itself, just the expendable attachment.
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Nov 17, 2013 02:01
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Fangz posted:3. If you get one of the arsehole commanders, then, well... You and the rest of the boys say your prayers to Marx and advance as though the minefield wasn't there. Some of you will get through, hopefully, and maybe the casualties you incur will be balanced by the element of surprise. Good luck! "They marched their men through minefields!" was a very common thing to say to illustrate the cruelty of whoever you didn't like. The Soviets said it about the Tsarists, trash level popular "historians" said it about the Soviets, and yet no actual text of order on marching through minefields has ever surfaced. Raskolnikov38 posted:Their most hilarious anti-mine method from the Germans was zimmerit. Having developed a mine/bomb a soldier could attach to a tank via magnet, the Germans begin pasting ridged clay onto their tanks, adding days to construction time. The ridges would prevent the mine from sticking to the hull and the tank moving was expected to shake it off, as they assumed the allies would also use magnetic mines. They never did. It also didn't work.
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Nov 17, 2013 05:27
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Alchenar posted:Depends how old you are talking about. As EnsignExpendable has pointed out the Germans made a thing of raiding French stockpiles for guns and welding them onto anything that moved (and the Atlantic wall). Oh, that's basically high tech cutting edge compared to what was pulled out of museums. AATREK CURES KIDS posted:Was any old artillery used (in desperation) in World War II? The military museum in Paris has an old cannon with Russian names and a date from 1945 carved into it. Depends how old you're talking. I've seen a document enumerating model 1900 76.2 mm cannons for use by the Moscow Militia. There were two 6 inch Vickers model 1873 cannons set up in fixed turrets at Kolomna at the end of 1941. Allegedly, 6 inch model 1877 howitzers were also used as improvised AT guns in defense of Krasnaya Polyana, retrieved from stores of an artillery school. A British Ordnance BL 60-pounder was photographed in 1941 at Volokolamsk. Bitter Mushroom posted:I guess maybe you could improvise some kind of grapeshot, since the actual ammunition old cannons used might be pretty scarce.. I don't actually know though, although I am very fond of the occurrences when ye olde weaponry shows up again in modern history. High explosive is high explosive, and can do some pretty serious damage. The Tsarists kept some stuff literally forever, so it's not hard to imagine ammunition was available.
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Nov 17, 2013 18:38
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Rabhadh posted:The British artillery could've been a wee bit more accurate when firing on a certain motorcycle courier. My Soviet era artillery textbook specifically states that firing on a single motorcyclist is a waste of ammunition.
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Nov 18, 2013 16:07
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:So 20+ years after the opening of the Soviet archives are there still lots of things still to be uncovered, translated, regarding WWII or do we have as good a grasp on things as we're gonna get? Short answer: there's plenty left. Long answer: Let's take the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, one of many archives (and my favourite, because this is where most of the tank stuff is). What's in it? Literally everything, every document that has ceased to be useful to the Red Army, like this thing. Literally a scrap of paper with haphazard scribbles, transcribed, indexed, and filed away in the infinite halls of Podolsk. Another issue is that the documents are sorted by owner. You can't just say "I want everything on the IS tank" and get a nice index, you have to ask for Artillery Committee documents, Kirov factory documents, Uralmash documents, documents of the various Fronts and Guards Independent Heavy Tank Breakthrough Regiments, etc. And then sit there and skim through tons of materials irrelevant to what you need. And when you do find them, you have to give them to a frail old lady to run through an equally frail old photocopier, which kind of limits how much information you can extract. That's one archive, out of hundreds, if not thousands, and that's just for getting the documents you need. As far as translation to English, that's another bottleneck.
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Nov 23, 2013 17:38
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It's not that hard to make a decent arrow, the hardest part is making many arrows that all fly the same. I don't shoot at very large distances, but at even 20 meters you start noticing slightly heavier arrows flying differently than slightly lighter ones.
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Nov 27, 2013 17:21
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:What civilization had the world's first standing professional tank destroyer? Well you see, it all depends on the definition of a tank destroyer. If you define a tank destroyer as any armoured vehicle armed with a dedicated anti-tank gun then the first such vehicle would be god drat it that's not a real question, is it?
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Dec 1, 2013 02:28
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Imperial Germany. Because they were the only ones who needed such a thing in 1916. It was a guy with a special bullet for his Mauser. He was replaced by a guy with a big rifle. And you didn't even post pictures? 
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Dec 1, 2013 19:48
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Saint Celestine posted:Did it work? Mark IV says it has 12 mm armor max. I assume so? Presumably, but I haven't read anything about its performance. Shimrra Jamaane posted:What's the recoil on that thing? With no muzzle brake, it must be a bitch. I shot a PTRD once, and that was bad enough with a muzzle brake and a shoulder pad.
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Dec 1, 2013 21:30
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Everything up to a Tiger was vulnerable to a PTRD from the side, the Tiger needed a little more oomph. Sadly the tests don't include Panthers, but 17% of Panthers inspected at Kursk fell to a 14.5 mm bullet to the side. Edit: German one to compare
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Dec 2, 2013 06:40
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Slavvy posted:I wonder at the accuracy of these figures, I remember reading that the soviet method of testing armour effectiveness was...less than scientific. They would repeatedly shoot the same tank using multiple munitions, which would weaken the armour and skew the results. Also 'destroyed' could just mean disabled and ditched by the crew, or ditched and not recovered by enemy forces in time, or ditched then destroyed by heavier weapons. Different parts of the tank. If you penetrate the side, the front shouldn't be compromised. The tests I read do point out cases where the armour was weakened, and the test is later repeated on a fresh catch. Fudging penetration figures and lying to your own army is a good way to get shot for treason.
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Dec 2, 2013 15:24
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INTJ Mastermind posted:To be fair this is Stalin we're talking about. Saying that the fascist tank cannot be penetrated by our great and righteously patriotic antitank rifle is just as likely to get you shot. The tests I've read have as many negatives as they do positives, with a bonus by the geniuses at Gorohovets that states "we shot at it six times, missed all six, and broke the gun on our seventh try, oops". No one was shot for that either. The USSR didn't have commissars prowling the halls and executing people for littering and not wiping their feet.
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Dec 2, 2013 16:32
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A bit late, but here are some (rather optimistic, apparently) thicknesses of stuff that a rifle bullet will penetrate. http://sovietguns.blogspot.ca/2013/10/mosin-penetration.html
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Dec 4, 2013 22:38
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SeanBeansShako posted:Hey now. You laugh, but I have read a document about liberation of a concentration camp, where the one of the officers remarked that the laundry facilities are excellent, and they absolutely must have them.
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Dec 5, 2013 06:27
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a travelling HEGEL posted:There's waaaay more tragicomedy in my period, though. Torching villages for smoke/light was a common thing on the Eastern Front of WWII as well. Plus more modern warfare brings fun times when peasant conscripts misunderstand technical details, such as a German prisoner insisting that German tanks use compressed air for armour.
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Dec 5, 2013 19:02
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a travelling HEGEL posted:Fine! The people I study are no more special than the people all of you study. Y'all happy? Pfft, people, people are boring. Now excuse me while I look at these blueprints of tank engine air filters. Ensign Expendable fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Dec 5, 2013 |
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Dec 5, 2013 21:37
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Phanatic posted:Meh. Just wait for the Abrams to run out of gas. Just cripple the suspension with HE, and then the Shermans can drive off to take actual important objectives. Or pummel the tank until the crew surrenders due to concussions, it worked with KVs.
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Dec 6, 2013 21:13
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Yeah, it was never called Hetzer during the war, just Jagdpanzer 38t or G13.
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Dec 6, 2013 21:51
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They could if they shoot enough. When I get home, I might calculate how much they'd have to shoot. Edit: provided they sit still, of course. Ensign Expendable fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Dec 6, 2013 |
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Dec 6, 2013 23:01
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bewbies posted:Actual performance of the M1's armor (edit: and all modern AP rounds) is classified. I'd add though that the speculations you're looking at are not for the HAP models. Shermans vs Abrams: Math time! One M1 Abrams and 16 M4 Shermans spawn in a featureless plain, N km apart (assume the Shermans are placed so closely that they can be approximated as a single point). The Shermans begin firing HE-fragmentation shells at the Abrams (which is broadsiding them so this exercise isn't ridiculously unfair), as fast as possible. How long would it take to incapacitate the Abrams? (Assume that the Shermans are either already ranged in). The M1 Abrams is about 8 meters long and 2.4 meters tall. The suspension takes up about half of that height, but half of the suspension is protected by skirt armour, so let's take it out of the equation (for bonus credit, repeat the question with the assumption that each ERA soaks up one hit, and the skirt behind it soaks up another hit). The Shermans are shooting at a 8 meter by 0.6 meter target. The following is my Soviet ballistics table for Lend-Lease guns. M48 HE is the last shell type on this page. Figures are given in meters of mean deviation, meaning that 50% of the shells will land inside the given range, and 50% will land outside. The first column is depth, the second is height, and the third is width. Every artilleryman knows the sequence 2, 7, 16, 25, 25, 16, 7, 2, the likelyhood of a shell striking in eight even sectors on a target. This sequence lets us be a little more precise than just a 50% guess.  Up until about 1000 meters, the Shermans' vertical deviation would mean that more than 50% of the shells would strike the suspension. The horizontal deviation is only 0.3 meters, meaning that all shots will land within a ~2 meter width, which is not a problem. Since we have 16 Shermans firing, 8 shells would hit on the first salvo, likely immobilizing the Abrams. However, the odds get progressively worse as the Shermans move away. At 3000 meters, they can only hope to hit anywhere on the Abrams 50% of the time. Brief internet Googling has told me that the Abrams can comfortably engage at a range of 4000 meters, so let's investigate that range. The Shermans have the vertical deviation of 5.5 meters at this point, meaning that the 50% deviation is nearly ten times bigger than the height of their target. Using the sequence above, you can reduce the range to roughly a quarter by taking a 50% hit to your hit chance, so at that range the Shermans have a 25% chance to hit with 2.75 meter deviation (or about the full height of the Abrams), a 12.5% chance to hit with 1.37 meter deviation, and a 6.25% chance to hit with 0.682 meter deviation (getting close!) and 3.125% chance of hitting roughly within the height of their target. Horizontally, they have much better odds. The 50% deviation is only 1.8 meters, so the 50% range of the shot is less than 4 meters, half of the width of an Abrams. Overall, they have a 72% chance to hit width-wise, and 3.125% chance of hitting height-wise, giving a total chance of 2.25%, or about 1 in 44. 16 Shermans firing would take about 3 volleys to achieve this. That is, if they are ranged in well enough. And the Abrams isn't moving (unless they can lead perfectly at 4 kilometers). Edit: corrected math. Ensign Expendable fucked around with this message at 00:56 on Dec 7, 2013 |
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Dec 7, 2013 00:40
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The more tank people, the better, we're highly underrepresented in this thread.
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Dec 8, 2013 02:37
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Ah, the Sherman. Big turret ring, sturdy suspension, great for platform sticking dumb poo poo on. The Yugoslavians put the 122 mm gun from the ISU-122 on it for some reason. Apparently the result wasn't actually very useful to anyone.
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Dec 8, 2013 04:41
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 BIG ROCKET! The Soviets built one of these things and tested it. Then someone asked "what if the enemy shoots at the rockets?", at which point everyone shuffled around awkwardly for a bit and the project was cancelled.
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Dec 8, 2013 04:51
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Same idea, dirt cheap indirect fire artillery. Except that the whole point of a BT tank is to get into situations where there will be neither fortifications for this artillery to destroy, nor forward observers to walk that artillery on target.
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Dec 8, 2013 05:26
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Rent-A-Cop posted:I wonder how much thrust you'd need to get one of those little BT series tanks airborne. I don't think there were any rocket based attempts to launch a BT into the air. Just ramps and propellers.
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Dec 8, 2013 05:45
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Slavvy posted:That makes me wonder: how did they correct for the tank not being on level ground, back before computers and poo poo? I'm not meaning just fire a few shots and see what happens, I mean was there any more sophisticated type of system to compensate for the tank not being parked level? Few tanks had stabilizers of any kind. The Soviets had T-26es with stabilized sights, but I don't know how many. They experimented with some stabilizers for T-34s, T-34-85s, and LL Shermans, but nothing really came of it. The Americans had stabilized guns, but apparently they were so bad, the crews would often disable them so they wouldn't get in the way. The Germans started experimenting with stabilized sights (their guns were too huge to stabilize the whole thing), but didn't get far before the end of the war. As for shooting off sub-optimal terrain, you adjust your aim after missing based on the observation of your commander (or another crewman, if the commander is also the gunner). Hitting a target on the first shot was quite unlikely in an offensive operation.
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Dec 9, 2013 00:13
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Arquinsiel posted:I really need a goon summary of this drama. The wikipedia talk page for the M113 is mostly this repeated over and over. From what I heard, he wants Gavins for every job. Amphibious Gavins! Gliding Gavins! Gavins with MBT turrets! No finer vehicle exists!
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Dec 11, 2013 16:18
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The MT-LB is the ultimate platform, it has been used as a heavy tank, medium tank, light tank, AA SPG, and many more! (in movies)
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Dec 11, 2013 18:01
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Haha, yup, early artillery was sketchy as gently caress. I saw a painting of some battle (Kazan, maybe) where a bunch of guys are all recoiling in horror as the gunner approaches the fuse. His face is pretty expressive too.
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Dec 11, 2013 23:00
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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:Some artillery now is still sketchy. Here's a propaganda video from the Syrian civil war with everyone running for cover whenever they launch a shell: Well, modern artillery isn't 100% reliable either.  As for the guns, you have a guy mixing something (a magic potion!) that explodes and smells like sulfur (a sign of the devil!). Clearly, a powerful wizard.
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Dec 12, 2013 02:17
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This looks like a spaceship from a DOS 3D game where they had to make a ship look really cool with as few polygons as possible.
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Dec 12, 2013 05:04
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Lamadrid posted:How was the modern era targeting with artillery ? Before fancy laser, or even optical, rangefinders, you would kind of eyeball it. Or, you could use the markings on your sight (a stadiametric rangefinder) to look for a known height object like a person at the needed range, and estimate from that. Then you have a big table of precomputed values with the necessary settings on it to fire at that range. The faster your shell flies, the more margin of error there is for a vertical target, but dispersion for a horizontal target is also larger. Edit: if you're on the defensive, you may be lucky enough to have the time to measure out some distances to some landmarks, which helps a lot.
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Dec 12, 2013 16:19
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