Chieftain's Q&A #13: Elbonia gets Armoured.

greetings all okay my summer holidays are over actually my daughter was visiting california for a couple of weeks and i spent my evenings and weekends with her and her dinosaurs instead of on my youtubings not apologizing just explaining however she has returned back home so i can get back to you guys now oh admin note first hello hannah yes wife is in the next room so over the questions in on looking for some q a number 13. as ever the priority for questions goes to the patrons with a few taken from other sources that i found were interesting i suspect these scenes are also getting longer and longer but we'll find out at the end of this starting off with paul tharp in quite a few realistic historic games and sound packs for games the russian d25t 122 millimeter always makes a sound upon firing this is accurate and if so why now it may come as something of a surprise to folks but it's actually not overly loud inside a tank when it shoots now believe me it's dangerously loud if you stick your head out and is a life-changing experience but when you're inside the mechanisms of the gun are actually somewhat louder than the explosion if you think about it there are several inches of extremely strong metal between your ears and the boom then the gun one or two tons of metal moving at high speed slams backwards into the recoil stroke and this massive breech block on 122 millimeter then slams open and the gun strokes forward again slamming into the stops when it returns into battery also as this happens the empty shell casing is also falling to the spent casing bin or the whole floor or whatever system is used for things in whatever tank you're in why the 122 in particular makes a sound and i have to say i've not heard it and i can't say but i'll wager it's probably just breech block and casing satan what are the three most used methods to destroy slash disable a tank well this should not be too surprising saber rounds missiles and mines the first are obvious enough if you put a big enough amount of explosives under a tank it'll pop the turret off it doesn't need to be sophisticated in either form such as explosively formed projectiles or in trigger mechanisms just got to be big and go boom and as i say the saber rounds and missiles are standard things designed for purpose admiral tiberius in the ever-evolving war between weapons and defensive systems as things sound right now what side has the advantage or is it effectively equal i think it's still leaning towards weapons so far there is little to indicate that the latest generation of penetrators cannot do what they are supposed to and nothing is ever going to be invulnerable anyway especially from the side i mean even king tigers got killed in world war ii after all there are the artillery and air delivered submunitions i mentioned in the previous q a which scared the hell out of me on the other hand active defenses are an excellent chance of reducing the danger of missiles and even laser warning receivers can at least increase survivability tanks in the future are still going to die just folks may have to work a little bit more to make it happen hugo u why do most modern tanks still not have reverse cameras mainly because most modern tanks are basically 40 years old and reverse cameras weren't the thing at the time they were built so unless somebody has specifically put into an upgrade program such as the swedish did on the leopard twos they don't have them that said the u.s at least has been futzing around with the dvrc for a while the driver's rear view camera it seems almost impossible to find a good picture of one outside of the initial announcement in 2007 however it supposedly goes into the standard us army tail light housing and for good measure is also a thermal imager it was listed as part of the tusk upgrade but this a2c appears to have one installed on the right hand side note the protective cage around the taillight and also what appears to be a little controllable flap covering the lens itself anyone who has operated m1s knows how quickly the tail lights get coated with dust so it would make sense that there would be an electronic flap which opens only when the driver engages reverse gear note also that it's next to the infantry telephone which should reduce the chances of the driver reversing over someone about to talk to the tank before he has the opportunity to actually grab the intercom handset i believe you'll find that any afv designed in recent years will have a rear view camera installed especially as multi-function display panels become more common and it's easy to put the display up don't forget how old modern afvs actually are in terms of their design and review cameras on cars are really the only standard thing in the last decade or two chase vols my top five strangest tank designs and i'm gonna keep this to things which are actually built because people can have very fertile imaginations and i've seen some interesting ones world war one is almost gimme as nobody really knew what a tank was supposed to look like in first place enter the tsar tank the skeleton tank is a good second bet i mean it's logical it makes sense but obviously the design didn't really go anywhere unfortunately after world war one people started to understand what worked so the really odd designs generally went away if you ever have the opportunity to go visit kubernetes many of the world war ii museum vehicles have relocated the patriot park but the variety of experimental designs that the soviets tried is absolutely astonishing okay sure object 279 is famous for being a bit weird but actually it just makes inherent sense same with some of the other vehicles such as object 287 or the it1 which at first blush or just odd but really do fit their design criteria and it is something of a shame that i shall likely never get inside them i'm not good enough friends with anybody in cuban even things we think are odd today like putting the driver in a turret was considered sensible enough to be tried out in multiple vehicles both by the u.s and the soviets see mbt-7 the object 416 or object 775 for examples strv103 counts the s tank it's a strange looking tank as defined by nothing has ever really built been built before or since barring the occasional test bed that looks anything like it absolutely it was fit to task but strange nevertheless the german vt-1 did kinda take it to the next level mind and i do hope to get inside that one one day though these days we think t14 is a bit strange not as if the idea is new certainly the u.s tried it out in the 1980s with tdb and the logic is certainly there it just took the commitment to try it out but in production andrew no last name david fletcher did his five bottom tanks both a british and foreign series what would be my picks as it happens the tank museum did ask me to record such a thing of course covet happened and i didn't go over there so i didn't record anything i told them i couldn't do it uh basically because it's pretty hard to beat david's list instead i gave them a counter proposal on a related premise which i do hope to film next time that i am there so watch this space joshua conti in terms of gameplay historical accuracy tactics or other differences which game do i like more world of tanks will the warships world of warplanes are war thunder as people are wondering how i'm gonna answer this one okay contrary to popular conception although i am an employee of wargaming which does the world of trilogy i am allowed to play competitor games and this is a question which is often asked so i'll answer it yet again of those listed mainly world of tanks when i feel like switching my brain off and just watching beautiful graphics and explosions warships the question did not mention armored warfare which is the sort of the third game of the genre and i played aw a lot longer than i did war thunder the latter simply didn't do anything for me at all so here's the thing people advocating for war thunder say it's more realistic it is but it's not realistic it's still an arcade game and if i want to play an arcade game i'll play world of tanks just repair preferred if i want realistic i'll play a proper simulator like steel beasts or did i just miss the infantry in war thunder which is kind of like an important part of war and it's not just tank smite i mean i played dcs for an airsim i have train sim i'll probably buy flight sim when it comes out although i don't know about the pricing on that one i prefer dangerous waters over cold waters i like sims i find war thunder is neither fish nor foul it's not a pure arcade game and certainly not a pure simulator so overall i guess the whole argument is for ford versus holden horses for courses i'm not interested in the shouting match in the comments below by the way either over which of the two competitors is better it is a statement of my own personal preference not equality so some people consider games like steel beasts to be too hardcore and not enough fun well there's probably a reason that steel beast has so few players regardless of how good it is okay cost probably also has something to do with it it gets well but then again the deluxe pack for microsoft flight sim is coming in at about 120 dollars maybe you got to get the 120 dollar version for the cessna 172. the steam gauge version i think oh well commissar carl did gis in world war ii prefer to work with tds or sp artillery over tanks due to either ease of communication or familiarity how did tanks and infantry communicate before tank telephones and infantry radios and has tank infantry communication gotten better since the end of world war ii or are radios and tank telephones about the best we can do now allow me to pull out this book by harry ide the infantry's armor and i shall read the appropriate paragraph uh that he has here it's in a section for normandy let's see uh in the first armor after troops first hours after troops moved inland operational planning was scanned commanders on the scene made up the plans to do it as had been the case on the beach communications between the infantry and the tank initially were of the mouth-to-ear variety this method had one major drawback that had audrey become apparent to tankers on other fronts it was insanely dangerous under fire the risk meant that often communication simply did not occur when things got hot oral communication was also rather haphazard in part because a tank crews could not see well through their periscopes and the infantry had to get the crew's attention amidst the roar of battle in the tank's engine riflemen guiding tanks sometimes had to get in front and jump up and down to get the crew's attention tankers eventually figured out that the does often did not understand how blind they were when buttoned up and tried to teach them as a side note harry has made it a policy in his books that he refers to the infringement as doze so it comes from doughboy and that was the official term for what we now were called crunchies uh used by the us army back in world war ii so where today we would say gonna coax troops in a fire command in world war ii you would instruct the gunner to engage doze d-o-u-g-h okay now part of the problem is that it used to be the case that tank and infantry radios did not talk to each other for whatever reason i don't know i'm not in signals and this was actually the case across most armies one solution that was found was to send a tank from each company to an infantry battalion's headquarters the folks in the radio tent for the infantry battalion would then yell instructions or requests received from the infantryman up front over to the guys who were sitting on the tank who would then relay forward on a tank radio net to the tanks that were up front next to the infantry obviously this is a little bit inconvenient and remember we're talking about the us army enormity which is the most radio equipped military in the world at the time watch my tracer is an extremely valid tactic and frankly one i've used myself in one idea i had basically no idea what i was shooting at but the infantry with me were very definitely shooting at it so i figured it was worth a couple of 120 millimeter rounds it is worth noting that the discussion inside the tank just before then was along the lines of what was that bang oh i think it's a fuel truck uh fuel tank blowing on that burning truck that we just went past hang on a second driver stop everyone's out of the humvee behind us and they're shooting in all four directions i think something's up driver spin left 90 garner traverse left this wants investigation basically we had no idea what's going on we actually happened to look in the right direction there are actually a couple of pages on the topic of infantry coordination in his book and remember the topic of the book is the independent tank battalions which were intended to be assigned to infantry divisions and some units were permanently attached to the division sometimes they were just rotated around the ones that were permanently attached well they had better communication the eventual solution was to install the field telephones and wire them to the tank intercom system and then later to give them walkie-talkies the scr300 which is a backpack i should add it's not to be confused with the uh the handy talky the scr 516 which we think of today when we say walkie-talkie today of course all the radios do actually talk to each other so when part of a mixed platoon of tanks and humvee infantry i could still talk to the dismants directly when they weren't too busy to talk there are still issues of battlefield tracking though so equipping vehicles with blue force tracker is easy enough there is one model here but there's a little antenna that would go there i had one on my tank and so you know the idea behind this is that they will easily show up on the map display this little icon for your for your vehicle but getting the system to show up for infantrymen reliably is a little bit less simple not least it's a bit annoying for the infantryman in the squad who's wearing the thing this goes there were experiments back maybe 20 years ago 21st century soldier or something that i was called can't recall off top of my head was like it saw a big ipad on your wrist i don't know if they sorted this out yet caleb engelhardt why did armored cars take an overall back seat in u.s service what exactly made t27 unsuitable for u.s service okay t27 and the competitor t28 were developed to replace the m8 greyhound which was something of an expedient vehicle based off of a truck chassis it was not a purpose-designed off-road armored fighting vehicle chassis both t27 and t28 proved to be better vehicles in the m8 and t28 was better than t27 so t27 died which is the short answer to the question now if you want to go a little bit further into the details if you look at the situation for reconnaissance the t28 later to be named the m38 or wolfhound by the british is a six by six with a 37 millimeter gun in late 1944. now granted there was a gun motor carriage t66 i think it was with a 75 but we're talking about the m38 here also being produced for the cavalry units at about this time is the m24 general chaffee-like tank with a 75-mm gun and tracks the latter can go basically anywhere that the m38 could go and more it may not have been as fast on the road as an m38 but it likely was faster off-road so what really was the tactical purpose to the us army and all its resources of the m38 which could not be filled by m24 and this generally proved to be the case for the us throughout the cold war it is notable for being one of the few militaries to not bother with making a wheeled apc the v100s being more of an internal security vehicle through the cold war wheeled vehicles were cheaper easier to maintain perhaps better for conflicts less intense in world war three easier to build bridges for could normally float and all the other various reasons why countries tended to buy them but they were not the tactical equal to tracks the u.s didn't care it was the industrial and economic powerhouse it could just throw additional resources and problems put more engineers into the field to build more bridges for bradleys accept the slower speed of the m113 across the massively open plains of germany or korea in order to engage the increased ability to go anywhere that was satire by the way there just did not seem to be any need for the tactical niche of wheeled afvs in the u.s military until after the deployment of leg infantry to defend saudi arabia in 91 or 1990 more accurately where they realized that they were basically just speed bumps and so you have the idea to create striker units to give them air deployable troops a bit more mobility and survivability yes m113s can be transported by air or even self-transportable if you look at the aerogevin but spare track the extra fuel and so on all those things that you need to keep attract vehicle in the field and running also has to be transported by air as well so it just simply makes less sense triviabot if the tc gets injured or knocked out what happens in an american tank the gunner takes over he may pull the tc down and move into tc's position or maybe just sit there where he is may be situationally dependent if he does move to the tc slot he switch the the gunners control switches as he wants them and then he uses the tc's control handle to aim and shoot although in my case i could actually reach the gunner switches from the tc's position anyway so it wasn't an issue in a british tank as i understand it the loader is the next senior man in the crew so he would take over plus he's already sticking his head out the hatch anyway so nobody needs to move anywhere s face wants to know if the japanese lunge mine was ever successfully used now if you're not familiar with it it's basically a shaped charge on the end of a stick i am unaware of any us tanks killed by the mine and neither have i encountered any test reports on defenses against it so sorry i can't be more helpful john chase if a tank is using a ranging machine gun does it not run the risk of giving a heads up to the focus on the receiving end that a bigger bullet may be on the way i don't think so the first problem is telling the difference between a ranging machine gun hitting you on any other kind of machine gun which might hit your tank the second problem is that the ranging gun doesn't necessarily have to hit you to be effective as long as the strike can be observed the main gun can simply be aimed off and finally the difference in time between the strike and then the gunner pushing the big button is such that i don't think it's likely that the target will be able to react quickly enough to make a difference anyway spacman n benedict wagner the real striker of life and others have all asked something along the lines of this following question i am the commander-in-chief of the armored corps of the newly formed neutral country of albonia in 1946 i am given the task of equipping the force with a tank destroyer a medium tank a light tank an spg an apc and an aaa vehicle but i'm a traitor and loyal to another country so i choose the worst possible options for individual models of vehicles also i am only allowed to buy production vehicles not put any concepts into production on the upside you can choose from all the various factions and countries of world war ii including the axis with a lot of the vehicles left sitting around and with albonia being a rich country cost is no problem an interesting question and i must wonder what is it about albonia which so drives disloyalty i am aware that my colleague over an infantry branch shares my leanings presumably towards pneumonia nebonia are there others further i thought the main national product of elbodia was mud so i'm actually not quite sure how we're going to afford this but anyway maybe breaking the bank is part of the plan certainly it is for my infantry counterpart however my small arms colleague has some advantages firstly rifles are not exactly big ticket items which attract casual attention you can get away with some things which are a bit obscure which i cannot and i would assume that if i said get lots of king tigers someone somewhere is going to go they broke down a lot further it seemed that almost every country has its own domestic small arms industry at the time whilst tank manufacturing tend to be a little bit more restrictive further to a large extent a rifle is a rifle without any particular additional factors to consider a tank however can have the correct design vary widely depending on the nature of the country in question is elbonia a mountainous country in the alps is it heavily wooded with water obstacles like up in scandinavia maybe it's a breakaway part of the steps with large open planes there's a transnistria with no strategic depth at all all these factors will have an effect on what makes a good tank for the nation and also conversely a bad tank for the nation i am assuming an educated population which can use the machines well enough and maintain them however absent this data some general thoughts now the first one is that uh if you'll recall my infantry counterpart was able to mix and match this weapon with that caliber i you know with the tank i think that's a bit too easy so i'm not going to do that and then again we can't be too obvious about this if we pick a vehicle from the losing side it has to be very clearly a good vehicle but if we pick one from the winning side it runs the risk of actually being a good vehicle so what we want are vehicles which to the uninitiated or at least vaguely initiated seem reasonable so we'll start with the small stuff spaa guns which is an immediate issue because i actually couldn't find any truly bad ones which entered widespread service even if i wanted to mix and match so for example let's say i stuck the 21k 45 millimeter a gun onto a wheeled mount this a gun was a converted anti-tank gun which did not have a timed fuse it required a direct hit on the aircraft unfortunately by the end of the war the soviets had discarded its thoughts if i was to choose it one would ask why did you deliberately select something awful same with say the the zpu-4 model 1930 which is basically four maximum machine guns in the back of a truck obviously outdated now on the other hand if you went the other way and you picked the vehicle with a big fake off cannon and put it onto a tiny overloaded chassis it could still be dangerous to any aircraft which happened to fly overhead you start to see some other problem so there are two likely candidates that i might propose the centaur a and the m8 with the m45 the centaur a has the problem of having two guns which are actually somewhat capable but the vehicle it is based on has the liberty engine is unreliable underpowered the suspension has not been upgraded to the same level as cromwell was it is in service with the british army so one of the major victorious powers and it even has a whole bunch sold to greece after the war so it's obviously a good vehicle the m8 with the m45 has its own set of problems the caliber 50 seems to be the smallest caliber dedicated aaa mount that i can find in service and having four of them does make it quite dangerous against troops however the vehicle though it has a great reputation in world war ii is still fundamentally a truck chassis of inferior mobility compared to most afvs and the caliber 50 is starting to be of limited range and effectiveness against modern aircraft or just because i want to make life difficult for the emis who have to maintain the thing i'm going to have to go for the heavier tracked vehicle the problem of truly bad things not having been accepted for production is going to be my ongoing bug bear for this challenge by the way the spg is next on the list and again there is something of a lack of vehicles to choose from the choice here i think is going to be canadian or japanese the canadian entrant will be sexton and this seems very sellable to the uninitiated it's on a great chassis and the 25 pounder gun has a great reputation that said however it's only an 88 millimeter gun so it has much less bang at the other end the type 4 hat tool was also very very close to making requirements as a big heavy vehicle with a ridiculously low rate of fire and limited firing arc and angle but only four of them were made not five as the initial question said was a requirement this leaves us with the whole row a 15 centimeter gun which seems impressive enough until one realizes that it has an elevation limit of only 30 degrees requiring the construction of ramps to have any sort of useful range or arc of fire the diesel engine can be sold on the basis of great fuel efficiency but of course would introduce an entirely new type of fuel to the supply line also being a large gun on a fairly small chassis very little ammunition can be carried thus necessitating the procurement of an ammunition supply vehicle as well so that also should suck up some more manpower fuel and you know whatever whatever the currency is iclouds and apc is going to be even more difficult to come up with as they were basically known in service uh i think it's going to be between canada and germany there is a good argument for the 251 half track now this vehicle is operationally quite capable and doubtless the incredible amount of variance combined with the reputation of it being part of blitzkrieg ought to help it be sold to the guys in procurement on the other hand the crews will curse having to lubricate every individual track link the wheels are interleaved with the joys of changing an inside road wheel the vehicle is basically a tank steering mechanism with an additional wheel mechanism on top of it so the mechanics are going to hate it and the front wheels aren't powered at all which will limit mobility a bit hopefully the cruise mechanics would be too tired from staying up late fixing the thing to be combat effective however the design does have the potential to be improved witness the type 1 ho-ha or the ot810 and the flexibility means that the albonian government can save money by having all sorts of variants on a common chassis we can't have that the canadian entry is a ct correction a c-15 ta it's an armored truck it's not actually a bad vehicle per se the main issues here are the relative lack of protection and firepower and the fact that it's a 4x4 which ought to kill the mobility plus it has very little room for expansion so it can't be turned into any variants really other than maybe an ambulance there are a few thousand hanging around in europe after the victory so they'll be an easy sell as well after all again they were part of the winning team on to the tank destroyers and i don't see any competition here with jake digger the thing is just so ridiculously huge and heavy the albonian chief of engineers is going to be pulling his hair out trying to figure out tactical bridging requirements which will be necessary because the vehicle will likely overload many fixed bridges in albonia and the transportation core will likely have to buy super heavy tank transporters just for it the gun is stupidly overpowered from 1946 needs against basically anything shy of an is-3 had i picked a smaller caliber weapon with smaller munitions like hvap or sabo those would probably do the job just fine and they would have the advantage of carrying a reasonable amount of ammunition with a far better reload speed plus the 128 is a fairly unique caliber to bring into service gardeners where they're going to get the ammunition it's a case-mated vehicle and thus not very tactically flexible and it is ridiculously hard to hide then we add in on top of this the joys and maintenance requirements but it looks impressive and on parade albonia will have the best tank destroyers in the world onto the light tank this one similarly seems to have little competition by the end of the war light tanks were either starting to become competent such as the m24 or t70m or they had been generally gotten rid of the l6 might be an honorable mention but it obviously was based on a pre-war design and picking it might be suspicious thus i nominate light tank mark 8 the harry hopkins it's light it's one of the lightest tanks being produced in 1945. it's from the winning side it's in production as of only last year it can fit into a glider which actually may be a bad thing depending on how expeditionary albonia is of course the canon is useless with bug or all high explosive capability the turret is two-man affair with limited vision the running gear and steering is just plain weird it has no components in common with any other vehicle in service with lobonia and it cannot float a heavy tank was not mentioned but i'm going to consider it anyway it's part of a good balanced force besides heavy tanks were expensive and it should help break the bank after all other big powers are doing it with the is and t26 heavy tanks now in service the first thought is black prince it's descended from the line of very successful churchill infantry tanks it has a great pedigree it comes with a well-regarded 17-pounder gun it looks big bulky and mean it's british it's from the winning side it is also though it may not be entirely obvious in 1946 utterly obsolete underpowered and under armoured for the job plus it was a prototype six vehicles were made putting it over the threshold for acceptability by the rules but again people may start wondering why libonia is the only customer so i'm going to take a risk and i'm going to say that we should get is-3s obviously this is a great tank it's stunned of the world late last year when it was revealed we albonians absolutely must have it okay yeah i know they cost 350 000 rubles apiece whatever the ruble exchange rate is but look at the slopes look at the size of the gun absolutely worth every icon should be an easy sell now of course i know something that most other albonians don't it's a heavy tank but that means even more trouble for the bridging units that have to support it it's a diesel further splitting our logistical requirements uh this time up a line unit though as opposed to the artillery park where the last diesel was the interior is a bit cramped the gun has a slow rate of fire and only limited ammunition about 22 rounds oh and there are some hidden design flaws which will become obvious next year the engine mounting is poor the oil booster pump is ineffective the gearbox needs modification the turret overloads the whole roof the road wheels and final drives bad seals fixing all this is going to add some two-thirds to the unit price an additional quarter million rubles per vehicle and it still won't to fix various problems such as the structural rigidity or unreliability which in soviet service would not be fixed until the 1950s is-3m upgrade program so with any look this tank should also soak up a lot of the emi's man-hours the downside it actually is quite a nasty tank if albonia hasn't gone broke yet and if they do get to the fight they might actually prove a problem for the opposition well great reward requires great risk this now leads us to the medium tank my first thought is to go with the streets wagon m42 which is awfully cramped has an interesting power train the 75 millimeter gun is a generation out of date compared to other tanks in 1946 plus it's a little bit top-heavy and it comes from another neutral country so it's wonderfully politically wonderful however it doesn't require a tank expert to realize that there are now better tanks out there instead i shall use my crystal ball and try to find an apparently modern tank which though people don't realize it yet is on the verge of being obsolete immediately to me that tank is comet now i am aware that the tanks served in the british army until 1958 i'm aware that it has an excellent meteor engine reasonably capable suspension and steering systems the problem again is that it is impossible to find a production tank which is complete rubbish fortunately comet has flaws enough anyway have you seen me try to get into the thing comet is very definitely a world war ii tank design with lineage it goes back basically to the very start of the war it eschews any form of sloping armor the interior space is ridiculously small not least because of the huge suspension springs inside which also require disassembling the side armor plates to work on it has no fancy things like stabilizers and it's combined with basically zero upgrade potential the 77 millimeter gun is one of the smallest modern guns with a suitably small hd round it doesn't have the raw punch of the 17 pounder or indeed basically anything else that was coming on stream in 1945 the ergonomics overall are horrible and hopefully the 7.92 millimeter bees and machine gun will cause havoc with the supply system with comet as the frontline tank of the albonian army the military is equipped with what will prove to be a highly regarded paperweight in about two or three years so now that ian and myself have now thoroughly hosted albonia somebody go nab drac for the navy and bismarck for the air corps which now brings us to the gun of the month and this time we're going back in time to actually the first gun that i ever purchased it is a sig pro p2340 in 40 cal smith and wesson and it is a polymer framed pistol and the reason i picked it was i had experience with six before uh i like them they i really do like sigs uh it it feels better on my hand than glocks i like the idea of a polymer frame being a bit lighter but i wasn't entirely in the firearm state of mind at the time so remember i had only recently transferred over from ireland where basically at the time guns were bad icky things that only the army and maybe the police and even the police generally aren't armed uh would have them and so i it was kind of like my god i own a gun and it took a couple of years for me to convert from the european mentality to uh to the american mentality and it's one of those things so don't try to apply european gun laws to america don't try to apply american gun laws to europe it doesn't make sense they're different countries um that's beside any constitutional issues or anything else just doesn't make sense sociologically uh it's they call it a combat i think it's a full size they call it a compact uh one of the nice things several nice things i like about it is for starters there's no external safety there is a decocker so you simply pull down on this and you have your round chambered no problem at all common thing with sigs compared to the last semi-auto pistol i had out here the the 1911 disassembly is really really bloody easy so you just kind of pull it back pop out the slide release and that's basically it you are done you're now stripped on this strip the sig pro it came with a detachable grip now unfortunately the grip that i wanted to use the bigger grip over the intervening 20 years the rubber has deteriorated to such an extent that i can no longer use it and so i've had to replace it with the the smaller stippled grip replacement parts for these things by the way are really bloody expensive so that's why i'm still using the smaller one um it's fun to shoot i like it uh one nice thing about it is uh it's kind of flexible so i put this away i take out this one it doesn't take a whole hell of a long time at the range or wherever and this is one of those things for people to think ballistics you know fingerprinting barrels and so on is so useful an idea it doesn't take a whole hell of a lot of time to replace the barrel come on yup screw that one up and i now have a sig pro pre 2340 in 357 sig which is quite impressive in an indoor range it's quite a bang it's got a fair bit of flip but this is actually my my standard home defense weapon with a suitable ammunition uh i mean there's not much more to say about it i mean would i buy it again no they're definitely better pistols out there today but it's uh back in the year 2000 when this thing was only two years old uh as a design uh it was it's pretty much up there in terms of modern equipment christopher cox conventional artillery versus missiles or drones so apparently someone on another channel and sadly he provided no link to expand on this has opined that tube artillery is obsolescent and christopher rather objects to this and i'm inclined to rather agree with christopher on this one and that's before you get to the massive cost differential of rounds so for starters the response time of tube artillery is likely far more rapid so for example we'd have a troops in contact in afghanistan some 25 kilometers from the base rounds went downrange in maybe a minute after the call and they had a two and a half minute time of flight now when you're under fire and waiting for the opposition to be suppressed three and a half minutes is plenty long enough and i would think that waiting for a missile to show up would be rather interminable or the fight would be over your next issue is counter battery now again speed is of the essence and i suspect that even a towed artillery unit could well be gone by the time a missile gets there as for using a drone like a predator with hellfires or whatever i'm going to presume that this all requires a vaguely permissive air environment now today we're so used to being able to fly our drones over wherever we want and i think we've started taking it for granted and even in my majors course we seem to be just assuming an exercise that would have drone reconnaissance wherever we wanted now in fairness mlrs is now a counter battery asset with a slightly slower time of flight but i think that can be kind of mitigated by the fact that it simply removes the entire grid square so you'll probably still get the artillery battery even if it's on the move and mlrs is still faster than a typical missile there are plenty of fire missions that i think a missile system cannot conduct such as suppression or interdiction fire you know occasionally lob around every couple of minutes at an intersection keep a two or three minute barrage on a target while you close set up a smoke screen a modern tube artillery like the panzer habits swi thousand can do a six round time on target out of one tube the casualties and psychological shock resulting from two sequential battery sixes within a minute probably cannot be replicated by a missile unit now i'm sure some red legs watching this are going to be able to add more reasons why tube artillery is far from being on the way out but you know please link me to the original discussion on this one and i'll be very curious to hear what the supporting logic was as i say i'm not on board i may be open to be convinced but it'll take some convincing alexander h when did the army start putting fire extinguishers on the outsides of vehicles i saw them on abrams and bradley's unfortunate on this side here t-handle and i had to pull out the books actually on this one and it's not helped by the fact that the army keeps moving the things so as i say on the m1 on the outside of the hull on an m60 you'll find it on the front slope and that's the position which goes back quite a few tanks on the m4 you need to look under the bustle on the engine deck which perhaps can be a little bit tough to get at from the ground it appears also that at least some m3 mediums had it as well but i cannot see any for the m2 medium so that seems to indicate that 1940 or so is the answer to your question david salem if you think irish is hard by the way you should try welsh anyway platoon size three four or five five is most common for world war two four for most of the cold war with nato and three is not uncommon now now i seem to recall it's going back a few years various studies were done five is the least efficient number with the greatest chance of targets being engaged by multiple tanks and is most difficult to control three is the most efficient in terms of platoon firepower but i think it's a little bit flexible and the loss of a single tank for whatever reason is a serious percentage hit on the platoon's firepower and observation capabilities i.e how many eyeballs have you got out looking to find things to shoot at i think the move to three is because of budget consciousness if you must have a battalion but it can't afford 50-something tanks four tanks in a platoon makes sense to me with the possibility of two equal sized sections maneuvering in support of each other oscar larlson what is the difference between a smoothbore and rifled cannon all right this is one of those fundamental questions i probably need to address in tanks 104 but for now just accept that a smoothbore loses less power through the grooves past the projectile no force is wasted in spinning versus going forwards and is cheaper and easier to make on the downside you may have to leave a little bit of room in the shell for a tail fin for stabilization as opposed to just having a big payload in the shell for he wp or whatever so that's your five cent explanation robert henry ilston the challenger who by the way is my european counterpart working for all the tanks if you're not familiar with him he's a former world tank regiment rsm he posted a picture of a tank crew using the side skirts folded horizontally i think was a centurion as a dining table and of course i also note often sleeping accommodations what is the best not in the manual example i've seen of part of an armored vehicle not being used in a way that was intended miraculous that's being used in a way not intended now i'm a little bit limited in my experience and i suspect that every crewman will pick up little quirks for the vehicle which are likely only passed by word of mouth to other crewmen so for example if you have a block wood about a foot high you can put it under the back ramp or the bradley making it horizontal giving you a great sleeping space our dining table on the m1 well that's the front slope cafe the primary purpose of the m1's turbine engine even more so than moving the tank is to provide warmth to people standing behind it now normally these things are generally fairly harmless but there was one thing done on the m1 which turned out was not good for the tank and that was mounting a spare road wheel on the turret roof using the bolt holes which are forward of the loader's position kind of forward of the citv not only is a good place to use a road wheel it also works as a reasonable trash can you just kind of chuck the bottle or whatever it was into the road wheel and surprisingly it actually generally stayed there the problem though is that the bolt holes are designed for lifting eyes so when the tank turrets gets pulled for maintenance these bolts get undone and lifting eyes rather large ones are screwed into the hole instead uh the bolt really is just there to fill up the gap and well the eye of course is what you attach the cables to now unfortunately the thread of the lifting eye bolt and the thread of the bolts that were used by the road wheels are similar but not the same so crews that mounted the road wheel there and my crew was as guilty of it as any other because nobody told us not to do it would often damage the threading and prevent the lifting eyes from performing as advertised or at least being easily installed now eventually and i recall an article in ps monthly magazine about this the army did do the troops a solid they started issuing out bolts which not only protected the thread for the lifting eyes but also could be used to mount a road wheel and i i was having a chat with one tanker about it and he never knew this was an issue current service so perhaps there are now standard issue bolts so again i've no doubt that crewmen of all sorts of vehicles can chime in with comments about odd tricks that they picked up in the comments down below but since i didn't crew them i can't tell you what they are tn sheep gives us a philosophical question he asked bobbington in their q a a similar one but he figures i may have a different perspective what are my feelings on using or making modern parts to restore some older engines in order to bring historical vehicles to life now he's referring to the q a series that the direct that the curator of bobbington david really has been doing while at home in quarantine and david gave a fairly thorough answer and as tn sheep observed in his more expanded question they consider the historic significance of a vehicle to be very important they would be for example more winning to foots with a rebuilt or re-engined tank than one which has had the same engine in it from the day it left the factory the post-war-built panther made for the british army for example might be less of an issue for them to work on than when it was captured in 1944 that sort of thing i don't think i'm quite as hardcore on that as bob tanar i am willing to see a 1944 built engine torn apart and repaired by a modern mechanic if the bolt was screwed in place by hands in the height of world war ii maybe when he was carrying taking cover under an air raid it's an interesting talking point but i'm not sure it actually teaches anyone anything and if you can't see inside the engine and if you can't run it then the value of being able to say this engine hasn't been opened up since 1944 it seems kind of weak i mean is it sort of like saying we buried a time capsule in 1940 but we will never ever open it because if we do then we will no longer have a time capsule of 1940s stuff under there anymore what do you get out of it i'd rather that the bolt be undone the engine inspected and repaired for whatever information might be yielded and then the same bolt put right back in the same place to the same torque specifications now that said i will not advocate for a replacement of older materials with modern so for example electrical wires back in the day were often insulated by braided cloth or plastic as you'd see today functionally there'd be no particular difference between repairing a tank with plastic versus braided wiring and generally speaking nobody is going to see it it may actually even be safer but to me it would be wrong if nothing else the tank loses its reference value if you do that things get more interesting when it's not functionally equivalent so let's say you could use modern metallurgical technique to make a stronger final drive for your panther that you just happen to have in the garage especially if you keep the same straight spur gear so that visually they're identical mechanically they're identical just metallurgically they have a different composition and i think i'll be willing to cut a little bit of slack there the purpose of doing such a thing would be to have a tank in operational condition and anything breaking cannot be good for the tank overall and the historical benefit is in the tank moving for the audience i would not however advocate for any mechanical changes to the design even if it does make the tank's engine more reliable or easier to steer or you know whatever so i can see bobbington's position i'm not sure i agree with the extent that they have taken it but i certainly cannot argue that it is wrong kazuki k is back to two question one was there ever any attempt to mount a radial engine on a tank to be flat basically you rotate it 90 degrees forward with a drive shaft coming straight down instead of forwards and that way you reduce the high silhouette problem such as on the m4 now i have to say i'm not aware of any now i don't know if that's because of some automotive reason that you know radials of the time don't like to work horizontally and i will asterisk that with a note that a company in ohio has been working on modern radials capable of being mounted at all angles or is there a mechanical reason to not have been not doing so i'm going for the mechanics of the problem though if you lay a radial engine flat you've just increased the horizontal length of the hull and i do not believe you could kind of rejigger the components of the tank above and below to make up for this if you increase the length of the hull you are also increasing the volume to be protected which means the weight of the tank and also you have steering problems and whatever else further radials are air cooled so you need to have some air flow route for a flat mounted engine whatever way that engine airflow is going to work so i'm not sure it's worth the extra six or eight inches of height that you get whatever the benefit turns out to be question on comma how did messages get from the front line to artillery units in the rear what stopped enemy folks from calling fire requests on the artillery frequency on friendly positions for example okay i'm happy to say that this problem predates me i am used to encrypted frequency hopping radiums and the worst i could worry about maybe would be triangulation which does beg a question if there's any single folks out listening who can answer this it used to be the case that you would set up transmitters a few hundred meters away from the command post so that if the transmitters were triangulated the worse that happens is the loss of the antennas and you go switch to the spares these days that don't seem to be taught and the antenna tend to go up right next to the tent now i would presume that frequency hopping and encryption makes any transmissions eavesdrop proof but i am also presuming that there's a whole bunch of wattage coming out of the antenna and can you not triangulate upon that emitted energy or is that not feasible i don't know you tell me anyway i've digressed in the old days things were annoying the us army has the soi the signals operating instructions and i don't know what other countries had or what they called it but i presume they had something similar it's basically a booklet or at least a couple of pages stable together which indicates how the unit is going to talk today and it would change every day if you had a programmable encryption device on your radio it would give you the settings for that it gave you the frequencies that were being used that day we'll give you the call signs if there were code words to be used it gave you those and finally it would give you the authentication codes for the day it's effectively a password to get accepted onto the net the challenge would be given to authenticate and some would have to run down the soi to get the correct response if the person on the radio failed to authenticate procedure would generally be to ignore the caller and maybe even move to an alternate frequency which is also listed on the soi of course the reality would likely be in response to a claim failed to authenticate i'm going to ignore you there would be a stream of colorful invectives from the poor bugger on the fire who can't find the go book right now which had a chance of convincing the person on the receiving end to conduct the fire mission anyway at least after checking on a map for any obvious issues luke's links in my opinion how effective would the panther 4k with the slump sloped frontal armor have been well evidently not effective enough for the germans to run with it spielberger apparently claimed that the armor alone increased the weight of the vehicle by over three quarters of a ton in order to alleviate mobility problems on the already overloaded chassis and remember this is originally a sub 20 ton vehicle which is now hitting some 27 tons it would necessitate larger tracks and was considered to move to triple with road wheels instead of the standard double one you know which you know one on each side of the center guide so now you're looking at two on one side and one on the other these larger tracks themselves added weight to the vehicle added to the steering troubles and road wheel service life was considered suspect as a result the whole idea was abandoned it is worth noting also that at the time it was being considered in late 42 early 43 it was being called the house h i suspect the term k or l is a post-war invention to prevent confusion with the h as it actually was eventually produced builder 396 for two-man turrets some had the commander be the loader and some the gunner which do i think was better i vote for commander is loaded for two reasons firstly hand off of the target will be easier you see the target no okay move right versus hop down look in the sight no don't see it hop out reacquire the target hop down adjust the sight fine tune take forever the other reason is that not all targets require a loader if it's the coaxial machine gun engagement loading the main gun simply isn't concerned in the first place so just have the gunner gun timothy foley asked a similar question gunner to the right of the gun such as the modern nato tanks or gunner to the left such as on russian vehicles well in today's russian vehicles it doesn't matter so much as their auto loaders so they may as well have somebody sitting to the left of the gun traditionally gunners will often be found on the left hand side you'll see how many world war two tanks but today of course the loader is on the left the loader on the left from modern tanks is easily enough explained by the sides of the round back when rounds were much smaller didn't really matter which hand you used to load but with today's large rounds most folks being right-handed it proved easier for them to load with the right arm for that extra push on the weight now that explains why the loader moves to the left but what had the gunner on the left before that and i suspect this is also because folks are right-handed so before powered gun elevation systems such as you find on the sherman the normal way to aim the gun in elevation is with a crank next to the gun if the gunner is to the left of the gun he uses his right arm for elevating he tried versus with the left now if you really needed extra strength to traverse it was not unheard of for a second hand crank to be found where another crewman such as the loader would be able to access it and if the gun had power traverse but manual elevation let's say a t34 for example the control handle being on the left for traverse simply isn't an issue in the first place so the gunner controlling the elevation with his right just simply makes sense joshua d quinty and yes i'm doing reasonably well thank you for asking do i think that the m551 was a good a terrible replacement for the simpler m41 walker bulldog and if the u.s had upgraded m41 as other countries did might it have been kept in service for longer second question first probably not light tanks basically fell out of us army favor so there will be little point in an upgraded light tank if the us wasn't interested in light tanks of any sort in the first place and even upgraded with let's say a 90 millimeter i'm not sure would have been up to snuff against the red soviet horde in germany the m551 wasn't a light tank and as such didn't fill the same slot as m41 m551 was an armored reconnaissance ar airborne assault vehicle designed with a different set of specifications in mind unlike m41 it was designed to be flown around the world and chucked out aircraft it was also designed to be amphibious it can be argued certainly whether or not m551 was good at the ar aav rule and its service history with the us military seems to indicate some lack of success its use is a light tank in vietnam i think was more something forced upon the us due to lack of an actual light tank m41 was gone m56 had no armor m114 just generally sucked even with the 20 millimeter cannon it's worth noting that a bunch of the vehicles sent to vietnam never had the missile systems fitted in the first place that said one may also wonder whether or not the m41 would have actually proven to be much better m41 was a little bigger the gun made a much smaller bang and it did not have the beehive round which would staple platoons of enemy infantry to the local flora sure sheridan had weak armor but it wasn't as if an m41 was going to be stopping rpgs either rw what's my take on a t95 medium tank are there any in good condition anywhere apparently not the one i've seen before benning was a test bed for the new lifting suspension system and had been heavily modified from the original configuration i'm tracking at least three as monuments on open air display and i can only imagine the condition of those ones besides they generally just have the normal m48 turrets the exception is the one in armada michigan however it got there with most of the xm66 turret it seems to have just sheet metal where the cupola might go in the end the series of tanks seems to be more of a sort of technology demonstrator series and anything which was going to result in a practical new tank the ones with the purpose-built turrets certainly did look nice though and it also meant that the us was given at least some practical experience with new technologies like optar or various new gun types robodusk why is towing something behind a tank a questionable activity after all the towing pintle is there for a reason it doesn't actually cost all that much to add and especially on administrative runs it certainly can be reasonable to bring along some extra stuff to a new unit supply point there are plenty of pictures of tanks doing it and in some cases right up to the firing line for vehicles which are conducting indirect fire missions and might want to bring a little extra ammo along of course the main reason main use for the the pintle is for a tow bar for towing things but you can fit a quarter ton trailer behind the tank if you fit the exhaust deflector the main problem is that if you're towing a trailer with one exception you can no longer reasonably neutral steer or reverse and we're not talking like an articulated 18-wheeler truck here where the driver can constantly keep an eye on the trailer in the mirror there is also the question of whether the trailer and its cargo can survive being thrown about if the tank uses its tracked off-road ability and goes off on the bumpy bits see the discussion about david fletcher on the rota trailer at the end of crusader part 1 video and also my written articles linked below and of course if you get ambushed on the way or if it turns out you don't actually have time to detour to the supply point to drop off your trailer you now have an added complication the one notable exception to these issues is the post-war mono trailer as found behind centurion and it was also tested by the us as well that was a semi-rigid affair it did not bend or hinge relative to the tank as the tank turned the only articulation was vertical so as the tank went over bumps it would go up or down that one wheel at the back would keep it up basically and it was a caster wheel it still added about 50 to the overall length of the tank though so you have to be very very careful in tight spaces such as a german village which oh by the way was the sort of place this thing was going to fight you can imagine why we never saw a successor how come more tanks didn't have automatic transmissions actually i'm not sure they were invented early enough the hydramatic as found in m5 stewards was put on sale in 1939 for automobiles and a tank likely puts a little bit more strain on things plus the system needs to be thoroughly tested before the government is going to approve it to go into really expensive things like a tank remember even synchronized gears for manual transmissions weren't necessarily a standard thing in the early war you would have to double the clutch quite a few vehicles the closest that you would come to in the pre-war era is the pre-selector such as found on matilda 2 or panzer 38t it still required pushing a pedal to change gears on demand but it was much easier to drive than a manual transmission why it was not used on mid-war production vehicles with a few exceptions i can't tell you adam schindler have i considered a video on 73 easting slash norfolk medina ridge not really there are already videos out there which include interviews with veterans and the engagement is quite well covered i'm not convinced that i can add anything of value my videos on the battle of france or river plate are kind of exceptions to my general rule of not covering battles anyway because i tried to focus more on things which weren't so well known gordonia no i have no idea what happens to the m1's turbine power output when it runs on an alternate field to standard we never run out of jp8 so we never had to find out what did change though was the smoke generator the vehicle smoke system when the standard fuel system went from diesel to jp8 the smoke generator no longer worked so it was basically disconnected charles schervange top five worst tank crew positions difficult enough certainly there are some which i personally took strong exception to such as comet's driver's position or sentinel's gunner's position but i accept that that may also be because i'm a well-fed modern lad so if i try to keep it to the problems just for the crewmen of the time i.e problems that even shortfakers would have had an issue with bow gunner on t-34 as you mentioned certainly goes up there it must be miserable being mostly blind and stuck if the tank catches fire you're basically just waiting for the round to come through the wall loader on the m4 plenty comfortable infightable but also mostly blind and stuck if the tank catches fire i i should say this is the earlier m4 without the loader's hatch gunner's position on the scrv m42 and i can't imagine the typical viking-blooded folks of scandinavia even of world war ii era fitting very well in it the gunners position on firefly and this is actually a bit of a reverse it's actually not too god-awful for me because i have a good wingspan i can more easily reach all the various controls and sights than a shorter person of world war ii vintage top of the list commander's position of an r35 or h-35 you're stupidly overworked blind uncomfortable isolated incommunicado and you have a pointless gun joshua d conti again which is fair because i basically skipped a month of q a questions why have rounds such as ap apa apc bc etc fallen out of tank use why now rely solely on apds and heat ap and abcbc rants were basically made obsolete by saber rams their sole function is to use kinetic energy to punch through armor and things like the cap will just help it bite a little bit more sabo does it all much better aphe sacrificed armor punch for post-penetration effect opinions were split in this you'll notice that the british world war ii tended to dislike this so much that they occasionally replaced the ice buzzer with more metal as armor became thicker and thicker two things happen first you can no longer afford to sacrifice that bit of punch for the explosion on the inside because he might not get into the inside to explode inside in the first place secondly as the armor got thicker this meant that as the stable penetrator went through there was a lot more metal being displaced creating much more spalling the little bits of hot metal would start to fly around inside the tank and make everybody unhappy so there was less need for a post penetration explosion to begin with a kill would happen either way heat has the advantage not really carrying what range or speed the round was fired at in order to have the same effect and it also works nicely at killing things which do not have enough armor to create good spalling effects hugo u what's the reason that the us and uk used both inches and millimeters i have not seen anything specific when it comes to weapons calibers seems that the u.s tended to use whatever the thing originally was fellowship was produced domestically it would be in imperial measurements and if it was procured abroad it would be far so the 75 millimeter on the sherman is originally the french 75 the 37 millimeter was basically derived somewhat from the german 37 millimeter the pac-36 the 40 millimeter before as well that was from sweden same with the 20 millimeter orelicon well that also came from your all millimeters the interesting exception seems to be the six pounder but that probably would have just confused the hell out of americans so i can understand that change news i can tell the british did the same thing if it were domestically produced it went by weight of shot if it came from the u.s like the m10 self-propelled mount three-inch they used the american nomenclature and if it was ultimately sourced from europe like the 75 well there you go the american 76 is the obvious exception to the rule here as it was entirely domestically produced however they had to rename the caliber to avoid confusion with the three-inch gun same with the british 77 millimeter it was a 76 millimeter gum but the name was already taken by the americans the 17-pounder was the same shell but a different cartridge size so that name wouldn't work and three inch was also already in service with the british the m10 again so 77 millimeters it had to be as you can imagine bad things happen if multiple calibers have the same name a famous instance was the 90 millimeter ammunition for the t26 e4 which ended up being misdirected to a unit which was trialling a new towed 90 millimeter anti-tank gun but that was the older shorter m3 type gun the error was noted when the tank destroyer unit called up inquiring why the ammunition didn't seem to fit that said i don't know enough about the development history of the 90 millimeter gun to know what that one was uh about why that was once metric there were some other changes so for example i had commented on the archer video that the manual for some reason gave armor thicknesses in millimeters i don't know why he had another question as well we know that t-34 and kv-1 came with something as a surprise to the germans was it the same for sherman and churchill that's actually a good question and i don't know the answer i suspect the answer is yes but that is pure suspicion if anyone else has the answer for this please put it in the comments below advance to contact o1 was there ever any thought by the us army of putting a gun shield onto the 50 cals on the sherman actually sort of there was a clam shell designed for the m18s 50 cal which could open up for anti-air work but the preferred solution for the tc's heavy machine gun on the sherman was to simply enclose it entirely in the cupola a bit like the caliber 30 couple on the m3 medium but bigger andrew m no i have not seen any aars or assessments of turkish tank crews in syria i also have never heard of a modern tank gun barrel failing from overheating i presume that this is the image to which you refer i think it more likely that gun was just heavily used and never brought it back in for a replacement a modern tank barrel is good for only a limited number of rounds now i don't know if the german 120 has the same life expectancy as the american gun or 1500 efc maybe it's less another possibility though i think a barrel split might be more likely would be some form of obstruction to the barrel there is also also incidentally a uh a fairly famous picture of an m1a2 that they forgot to take the muzzle boresight device out so the motherboard side devices you basically shove it in the end of the barrel you tighten it up and what it does is basically it's a telescope that you can aim to see what the gun is actually looking at so if you fire the gun with that still in bad things happen right i have absolutely no idea how long i've been at this i can tell you that it's a quarter to one in the morning my voice is going and i have basically run out of the questions that i'm gonna deal with this month so hopefully i'm gonna start to claw my way back into a more regular schedule so i hope you found the above interesting and informative and i'll see on the next one

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Published: Sun Jul 26 2020