The Military Thread

But it's still fun to ask the Loadmaster/Boomer for peanuts. For the Lulz.

Random question: Anyone knows a nickname (that isn't pejorative) which refers to people in charge of enforcing either the authority or law in a military setting? Or maybe good pointers to find some.

Doesn't have to be modern/recent.

MP: Military Police?

http://thesaurus.com/browse/military+police

edited 10th Jul '14 7:04:22 PM by chi_mangetsu

I had a Drill Sergeant who screamed "Holy Shit I see Pigs! There are pigs over there!" right in front of 20 of us privates as an MP vehicle was driving past.

Just sayin...

M Ps, Security Forces, I think Navy has Master at Arms for certain duties in addition to their Law Enforcement folks. Otherwise enforcing authority is just kind of part of the military job, which lots of folks do as a matter of course.

MP, SP, Sec. For., Security Forces etc. Did someone already mention Shore Patrol for the Navy?

The varying preferences and differences between global tank designs during World War II seems to nod in your favor: the US went for less powerful and armored but more affordable and reliable designs such as the Sherman, the Germans had a niche for designs that were costly and complex but could absorb and shrug off grievous amounts of damage, the British, French, and Italians tried to combine both US and German factors, while the Soviets wanted their tanks to deflect and redirect damage instead of German-style absorption.

Regarding the discussion on export variants of tanks, most of the M1 Abrams in foreign service have been downgraded without the signature depleted uranium armor sported by those in US service; according to The Other Wiki, the Iraqi Army possesses around a hundred or so Abrams - where they are now poses a rather unnerving question.

The US tanks in WWII were not without their own fancy tech. The Sherman had the first vertically stabilized gun in operational use, meaning they were much better at the "Shoot and Scoot" tactics that much of tank combat revolves around. They also had powered turrets that could spin 360 degrees in a matter of seconds, compared to much slower German hand-cranked turrets.

This of course all plays to their aforementioned advantage of being nimble little fuckers compared to many of their heavier opponents. They not only outnumbered the German tankers by a significant margin, they were evidently also based around the concept of Zerg Rush tactics as a refined science.

Actually...

I know it's "common knowledge" that it took four or five Shermans to knock out a Panther or a Tiger. However, it seems that was a proverb that grew out of hand rather than a statement of fact. And in France, it simply wasn't true. The US broke the Wehrmacht in France by use of maneuver, not by zerg rush or numerical superiority—the loss ratio of Shermans to the German heavies was only ever a little greater than 2-to-1, not bad when you consider the Germans were usually on the defensive.

edited 10th Jul '14 10:13:30 PM by SabresEdge

True enough. My favorite bit of anecdata about WWII tanks is that American tanks used gasoline, making them dangerously flammable compared to German diesel-powered tanks...

...except of course for the fact that the vast majority of German tanks ran on gasoline as well. The Soviets were the only ones big into diesel-powered tanks in WWII, which had more to do with each country's own automotive industries than anything to do with tank doctrine or design; the Soviets were just bigger into diesel fuel in general than most other nations.

Which leads all into the whole Soviet experiment with using dogs as suicide bombers against German tanks - the tests went well at first, with most of the animals obediently sliding under all of the vehicles provided. However, apparently the Soviets failed to account for the fact that the German tanks that the dogs were supposed to target ran on gasoline instead of diesel, the scents of which played a major role in the dog's training to home in on which tanks. Hilarity Ensues when the Red Army attempted to prove the dogs in the field.

Ah, there we go. Money quote.

Incidentally, a big thanks to Achaemenid for introducing me to The Chieftain's Hatch. So much interesting stuff there.

The "5 Shermans = 1 Panther" myth came from Belton Y. Cooper's Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II, which is a rich vein of nonsense on the Sherman, and a favourite of the "History" Channel.

US tanks and petrol:

Hilary Doyle, in one of the Operation: Think Tank videos, says that the primary fire risk in every WWII tank was ammunition propellant, and the sight of a sizzling HE shell was basically the crew's cue to get the hell out of there, rapid. IIRC, the Marines used diesel tanks, but only because they were the first available to them - not most of the common knowledge explanations like commonality with landing craft fuel or fire risks.

Yeah, it's interesting how logistics played a role in which pieces of kit saw widespread use. Lots of folks go on about how the Soviets loved the P-39 Airacobra for its 37mm cannon, perfect for plinking German tanks. Except that the US never supplied the Soviets with AP ammo for the 37mm gun. The Soviets actually employed the Airacobra almost exclusively in air-to-air (the 37mm cannon was great for knocking down German attack planes and bombers). Overall, they seemed pretty impressed with the Kobrushka.

Has anyone mentioned the mildly unsettling Russian habit of giving adorable diminuitive nicknames to very effective killing machines? "Katyusha" anyone?

Back on the logistics note, much wanking has been done about the unbeatably superior American .50BMG round which saw widespread use in American aircraft in WWII, while the Europeans and Japanese all dicked around with silly mixed armaments of cannons and light machine guns. Evidently the biggest reason the US didn't go in for autocannon in a big way was just the fact that they wanted to build a licensed copy of the Hispano 20mm gun, and could never get the domestically produced ones to work right, so we settled for a shit ton of .50s.

edited 11th Jul '14 12:33:41 AM by AFP

Actually, the reason I've read was that it was doctrinal. European fighters were mainly built for the bomber-killer role, where you need something big and powerful like the 20mm to really do damage, but that means trading away volume of fire against smaller fighters. Americans decided to optimize their fighters for killing enemy fighters instead of bombers, which meant .50cals and lots of them: you don't need as big of a shell to kill a fighter, and against a rapidly-maneuvering target what mattered was that you got as much lead in the air as possible. (The Brits went with a similar approach with their Spitfires and their eight .303 machine guns, which proved inadequate, but the reasoning was the same: fill the sky with lead.)

Besides, it wasn't as if the Americans didn't have a good 20mm-armed fighter: the P-38 Lightning.

Oddly, despite it being the same cannon that was fitted successfully to British fighters, the Americans couldn't get their version to work properly.

It looks like the P-38 included a pneumatic cocking mechanism (excluded from most fighter-mounted 20mm cannons due to weight concerns), so whenever the gun would misfire, they'd just rack it again and continue firing. Fighters without the pneumatic cocker would have to wait until the plane landed to re-cock the gun.

@Question Marc: Israeli MPs are called Mem Tzadi, which is basically the same as MP. Of course, the regular soldiers don't exactly like them, so they're also called manayek^note  "crazies" or "dicks" and other, less-than-flattering, names.

RE nicknames: Thanks for the answers, tho I was more looking for 'original' nicknames rather than abbreviations. Also, I guess the "not pejorative" criteria limits the pool a lot.

I actually kinda like the sound of that.

What I'm looking for is something that makes a good hound name, or close enough.

edited 11th Jul '14 5:09:10 AM by QuestionMarc

I'd imagine that most MP nicknames are derogatory. I haven't met a soldier (that wasn't an MP himself) that liked the MP.

Here's a couple. (NSFW LANGUAGE AND CRUDE HUMOUR)

Yeah, I honestly didn't expect that many non-derogatory names.

I can't lie, some of those are hilarious.

I'm sure it also came from frenzied testimonies from the Germans themselves regarding the effectiveness of their panzers, while Allied tankers generally greatly felt insecure with the thought of having to duel with them in the first place. Because while a single Sherman Firefly (ya know, the one with the BFG that the American ones don't) was able to know out Michael Wittman's Tiger I, the latter was able to plow through about more than five British tanks of varying types only a few days or so prior; which is quite ironic considering the fact that the order of battle for the British armour had a 1:5 ratio for each Firefly within a squadron of Shermans.

Everything that I've read points out that the Lightning was only mediocre when fighting German fighters in Europe, and that only the virtue of its long range predating the Mustang kept it going there. A German fighter ace had remarked that the P-38 was only somewhat better than the Luftwaffe's Bf-110's, and that a reasonably skilled German pilot should've been able to easily tackle one down.

Anyhow, the Pacific was where the Lightning really shined - the Germans were able to constantly upgrade and modify their aircraft while the Japanese weren't.

And That's Terrible.

It's strange how the one indisputably great tank we made during the war was an adapted American one that the Americans in turn refused to adopt themselves, despite scaring Tiger and Panther crews shitless to the point where we had to start disguising its longer barrel◊ to stop it being targeted first.