The Military Thread

P-38?

Late, but...

@Fluffy McChicken:

Actually, post-war the British school of armour design emphasised firepower and armour at the cost of speed^note though the Challenger 2 is very quick off-road - for example, Chobham armour is a British invention. Thus far it (both the armour and modern British tank design) seems to have been very successful.

@pagad

The reasons the Americans gave for rejecting the Firefly were sound enough - complicating supply situation, the relatively poor accuracy of APDS, and the simple fact that the British faced most of Germany's big cats around Caen. Panthers and Tigers were rare at the best of times, doubly so in American sectors.

That might have had something to do with it - the German Army was falling apart by 1944 and even the fearsome kitty cats were being crewed by teenagers with, in some cases, only a few hours training. Germany's fuel situation really hit it hard by then, helped a lot by Allied bombing. What I suspect could have happened is that by 1944 German tankers were going into battle expecting to die, and so were consequently filled with gratitude whenever their tank bounced a hit or scored a kill - whilst Allied tankers were expecting victory and life, and so were more let down whenever their tanks failed.

Leaving aside the unreliability of SS claims in general and Wittmann's in particular - didn't he claim about 20 tank kills for V-B? - Wittman's ambush was successful because of surprise and mistakes on the British's part. I suspect he could have achieved the same results in a Panzer IV. Or, as Schneider notes, had he actually planned his ambush, he could have destroyed the whole column.

edited 11th Jul '14 6:53:46 AM by Achaemenid

edited 11th Jul '14 6:58:40 AM by GeekCodeRed

Yeah but it would have fallen into Seasonal Rot if we had kept it around.

Better to let it leave on a high note.

Besides, if America wanted a relatively small tank with a relatively big gun we should have just borrowed the T-34-85 from the Russians. Best tank of the whole damn war

edited 11th Jul '14 9:20:52 AM by LeGarcon

Nah the T25 already sufficed as essentially a Sherman with a lower silhouette but a 90mm gun and just a smidgen heavier (because of the gun; it was still the same as its predecessors by being approximately the same weight as a Sherman with the 76mm). The T26 eventually became the M26, and it's heavier but of course had more armor. T25 + T26 combo would essentially be the American Panther+Tiger combo.

But the Tank Destroyer doctrine persisted among some of the generals so the Pershings "barely" participated.

edited 11th Jul '14 9:31:43 AM by entropy13

They didn't really get to the front in time. Neither did the Centurion.

Pershing was pretty unreliable too. Actually getting them into service would likely have proved more trouble that it was worth.

Did somebody say Pershing?

Merits of the tank aside, I can't not link to this. The one and only encounter between a King Tiger and a Pershing, which was actually one of the two Super Pershings. Looks like the German tank crew was killed by its own inexperience - the Tiger both missed its first shot and then drove up a pile of rubble towards the American tank, exposing the lower glacis to a killshot.

It is also probably not true. Not even Belton Cooper mentions it. Nearest Tiger II unit was fighting Ivan seventy miles away. No photos of the incident or aftermath either, and no mention in 3AD's reports about destroying any tanks at Dessau. Both Zaloga and Hunnicutt say the Super Pershing fired its gun in anger only once, along the Weser River, and destroyed an unidentified German armored vehicle. Irvin's book only calls it a "Tiger" - and even that is doubtful.

If a tank was engaged at Dessau, I suspect it will have been a Panther, a Tiger, or even a humble Pz IV, later misidentified.

edited 11th Jul '14 2:46:02 PM by Achaemenid

Bah, how annnoying. That's what I get for being naive about sources.

edited 11th Jul '14 3:09:53 PM by pagad

Whoops, bureaucracy at it's finest. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-28268638

So did anyone show up to get their draft cards?

Also, random thought: Is there a draft exemption for military vets? You know, "I've already done my part" and all? I guess if it was bad enough that folks in the post-military age group were getting drafted, they'd be getting called up as experienced vets anyways.

So, unrelated thought, is there an aviation equivalent to a Technical? You know, the civilian vehicles (usually pickup trucks) hastily converted into military vehicles by mouting a machine gun on them? I guess someone in history has used freight haulers as improvised bombers.

edited 11th Jul '14 6:01:55 PM by AFP

Officers can still be called out of retirement, unless they resign their commissions, I believe. So counties used to put older soldiers (I mean like over 40-50) into the reserves.

I know the US military has the IRR, which is basically the Reserves, but slightly less so. You're basically on the rosters as an inactive member and they can call you back based on the Needs of the Service.

And someone has: before the USAF was dropping Arc Light over Vietnam in B-52's, their French counterparts (whom were mostly hired USAF airmen in the first place, it's a long story ) had a couple dozen C-119's being assigned into makeshift bomber roles by having cartloads of incendiary bombs pushed out of the rear ramps mid-flight in a Call-Back to the way it was done during WWI. It's said that the involvement of these aircraft helped prolong the siege of Dien Bien Phu by forcing the Viet Minh to keep their heads down throughout the battle, and that the services provided them played a good part in allowing the much smaller and less equipped French air forces in Indochina to bring enough firepower to support their ground elements for the duration of the war.

Aviation technicals have been in use ever since desperate air forces had conscripted training aircraft into combat, the Soviet use of Po-2 instruction biplanes as night bombers being an example. In more recent times, they've mostly been in use in Third World conflicts, where warring factions typically lack the funds and resources to maintain a proper modern air force. Throughout the Cold War and even up until now, mercenary airmen in African conflicts typically flew in modified Cessnas or Pipers outfitted with machine guns or rocket launchers on the wings. During the Angolan bush wars, UNITA's makeshift air force largely consisted of such planes, while Sudanese government forces used Russian cargo planes as bombers in the Second Sudanese Civil War the same way the French did in Indochina.

edited 11th Jul '14 6:29:23 PM by FluffyMcChicken

Some of the earliest "technical" were little more then cargo trucks with a MG mounted on a pedestal in the back. They added armor later to make armored vehicles.

IIRC there were armored stage coaches as well. Somewhere I read about a Gatling being mounted onto the roof of a stage coach or in wagon beds for mobility.

And of course up-gunned civilian watercraft are as old as civilian watercraft. Many a merchant ship was turned into a pirate ship or a privateer by lining up some cannons on the deck. Effectiveness varied natch. Most pirates (and probably most privateers as well, the distinction between the two being legal rather than practical) carried a rather small armament, since the heavy guns screwed up the balance and handling of a ship, and no pirate ship was ever going to stand up against a 28 gun Navy frigate no matter how many guns they stacked on the deck.

The idea was to be heavily armed enough to present the legitimate threat of sinking an unarmed or lightly armed merchant ship, and lightly armed enough to outrun the authorities.

If we go far back enough to the days of match locks. They mounted the first musket a 6foot long weapon with something like a 2inch bore on a cradle in the back of wagons so they could be hauled around the battle field.

If we include rotary-wing craft in the list, there were the Rhodesian K-Cars and G-Cars employed during the Bush War. These were Alouette IIIs with a brace of .303 machine guns or a 20mm firing out the side, operating in conjunction with the Selous Scouts on the ground. The term for the combined air/ground team (the troops often being airdropped in by a Dakota) was Fireforce, and as light infantry went they were extremely effective.

edited 11th Jul '14 10:58:46 PM by SabresEdge

The current Syrian "bomber force" - of Hips dropping improvised barrel bombs out the rear ramp - might count. The Sudanese have used Antonov An-24s and 26s as improvised bombers in their civil wars.

Don't be forgetting Tachanka! A peasant's cart or stagecoach with a Vickers in the back - maybe a couple of extra horses if you're lucky. First in a long line of reliable, easy to manufacture, and frightfully effective Russian military vehicles.

Invented by the Black Army, so if deathpigeon is lurking, then there's another achievement of anarchism to add to the typical three-card list of Chiapas, Catalonia, and Ukraine

edited 12th Jul '14 4:01:06 AM by Achaemenid

I might had asked this question before but how different is the Military Life from Civilian Life?

You probably need to narrow that down by branch, gender, and family makeup.

Then there is officer vs. enlisted.

Generically speaking pretty different. Military life is fairly regimented for starters. As gabe was pointing out it can vary even more based on your situation.

I'll try to narrow it down then, how is life different for enlisted soldiers than it is for civilians who aren't enlisted? I know you guys do more than just go out on missions and that you are a huge organization but how are civilian doctors different from military doctors for example?