The Armored Vehicle Thread

I don't get the way the Germans were so keen to over-engineer things. So many choices in their tanks and aircraft where it would have been much better to dial back on the clever and work on simplicity and reliability.

Because they're dumb

Probably, but I suspect specifics in the Nazi psyche to be partly to blame, and the leadership partly to blame.

The biggest reason was Hitler. That cock interfered so much in German weapons programs that he couldn't have done more damage to them if he was actually a British or American plant. He screwed up their chances of getting fleet carriers, heavy bombers (in conjunction with Udet who was another cock), meaningful numbers of jet interceptor aircraft in time to do actual damage to the British and American bomber fleets, proper general purpose modern medium tanks (like the one I referred to earlier, which would have mauled anything the Allies had up to the maximum range of its 88mm cannon) and to cap it all off he screwed around with the Mpi 43 so much they ended up having to call it the Stu G 44 to appease him.

The biggest mistake he made though was not mobilizing the female population of Germany to anywhere near the same extent the remaining Allied nations did, which at a stroke cut the available working population in half. We all know the consequences of that idiocy for the folks in the captured nations.

And no one could tell him to piss off out of the adults' business because he was the Fuhrer.

I once heard that the Allies actually stopped trying to assassinate Hitler around the middle of the war because they realized he was doing infinitely more damage to Germany alive than dead.

Yep. That's why they cancelled Operation Foxley. The BBC did a really good drama doc on the thing in which historians said that the op could have worked.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Foxley

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/killing_hitler_01.shtml

Lol. We made a tank thread to not flood the other threads with tank stuff. :P

Yer, that's true. But since one of the main reasons why German tank procurement, and other mil-spec procurement decisions, were so screwed up was the character of their boss. It's fair play, I think.

Anyways, no one like my idea?

What is this tank? What was its name/Wa Preuf designation?

The hypothetical one I came up with with my first post on this thread. Which wouldn't have had any of those numbers attached to it.

Only if it has a nice name. Something simple and common.

Like Jeffery.

You realize that the 88 had inferior anti-armor performance to the L/70 used on the Panther, and that both were pretty poor general-purpose guns generally?

Also, the 88's great reputation comes not from any innate quality of the gun itself, but because of Germany's quickness in realizing that AA guns could be used in an anti-armor role.

I like the name Löwe, which is German for Lion. It would be a good fit, I think.

Jeffery Löwe sounds nice.

Why do they call the classification of modern/post-WW 2 tanks "main battle tank"? What's the point? It's just a fancy way of saying "medium tank", right?

Because it's the only tank nowadays. We don't have light, medium and, heavy ones we just got the one and a bunch of smaller and cuddlier support vehicles.

There's still some light tanks.

To combine the two, how about the Scorpion 90?

These little guys have quite the record. Not the best armored, nor the hardest hitting but it has a reputation for taking on a lot and winning when it really shouldn't have.

There are some light tanks still yes. Main battle tanks pretty much replace all variants of tanks from light up to super heavy. If we were to apply the old classification to them would be heavy or super heavy tanks of some sort. They pack large powerful guns and are hefty vehicles with seriously tough armor.

I like those vehicles both are rather neat.

edited 11th Dec '14 4:20:35 PM by TuefelHundenIV

re: Eland 90: yeah, nice little armored car, reminiscent of the French Panhard AML series or the American 90mm-armed Commando.

re: Scorpion 90: somewhat similar. All indications I've been able to find is that the 90mm gun looks like a Cockerill Mk3M-A1.

A Researcher's Guide to 90mm

Researching 90mm guns will very quickly lead down the path of confusion; took me forever looking through Jane's handbooks to figure this one out. There are a lot of different 90mm-caliber guns, and all of them fire different projectiles. Very rarely are they anything like interchangeable. These are the main modern lines of ammunition you'll see:

• Low-pressure French GIAT 90mm may be the most common. These equip the AML armored cars you see everywhere, and the abovementioned Eland Mk. 7. This is a low-pressure, low-velocity gun; for antitank, it relies on a HEAT shell with 300mm to 350mm nominal armor penetration. If a tank is armed with an F1, F2, or F3 gun, it's one of these.

• High-pressure French GIAT 90mm is only to be used with the French 90mm F4 gun, which to the best of my knowledge is only found on the ERC 90 Sagaie armored car. (The F4 gun can use earlier marks of ammunition, by the way.) The difference is that the F4 gun can also throw an APFSDS round with decent hitting power: enough to deal with older Sov tanks, but not against upgraded T-72s.

• Low-pressure Cockerill 90mm is the other big brand out on the market; naturally, it's not compatible with the French guns, although performance-wise it's very similar to the F1, F2, and F3 guns. The main Cockerill low-pressure guns are the Mark 1, Mark 2, and Mark 3. As with the low-pressure French guns, it relies on HEAT shells to deal damage—but.
  • There's an upgrade available for the Cockerill Mark 3, the Cockerill Mark 3M-A1, that lets it fire a somewhat anemic APFSDS round by changing around the muzzle brake so it won't interfere with sabot separation. Performance isn't spectacular, but the retrofit can be applied to just about any armored vehicle mounting a low-pressure Cockerill 90mm (the different marks usually indicate changes to the muzzle brake). This is also what the Scorpion 90 seems to be mounting.

• The king of modern 90mm is the high-pressure Cockerill 90mm gun: the KEnerga Mark 8. This is the 90mm with the super-high penetrative performance firing APFSDS; it also happens to be comparatively rare. Most vehicles that carry it are big six-wheeled armored cars; I would have thought it'd have been a perfect upgun for the old Scorpion tanks, but evidently not.

• Atop of that, there are the many, many marks of regional 90mm ammunition. In most cases, they're designed to be fitted to either Cockerill guns or French GIAT guns. Information on them is rather lacking; there are even rumors floating around of an experimental Soviet 90mm at some point. One unique one is the Swedish 90mm fitted to the Ikv 91 tank destroyer: it's a low-pressure gun firing HEAT ammo, but the 90mm-3A HEAT shells are reportedly very, very deadly, able to deal with ERA.

Finally, there are the old 90mm marks. Remember the 90mm guns the US Pattons used to carry before the introduction of the L7? Turns out many countries still have older Pattons in their arsenals, and still have old HVAP ammo for them. These types of ammo are in limited circulation; the American 90mm is not compatible with the Cockerill or the GIAT guns, and the guns are to be found mostly on tanks or M-36 Jackson tank destroyers. But if it turned out that, say, Taiwan developed a superhot APFSDS round to go with the old 90mm, I would not be surprised at all.

Hard numbers for the guns' performance is difficult to find, but these calculations are the closest we'll get.

edited 11th Dec '14 6:49:27 PM by SabresEdge

I once heard that the Allies actually stopped trying to assassinate Hitler around the middle of the war because they realized he was doing infinitely more damage to Germany alive than dead.

Hitler's interference in the Me-262's development is overplayed. Him wanting it to also function as a fighter bomber was not nearly as detrimental as the fact that the engines had a tendency to burst into flames or explode, which would have been a deal breaker no matter what kind of plane it was supposed to be. It's like getting mad at someone who left a faucet running on the Titanic.

And as far as I can tell, a Main Battle Tank is either a Medium Tank that hits like a Heavy tank, or a Heavy tank that moves like a Medium tank. Take your pick.

Its a really fast heavy.

I suppose you could make the case that tanks from the Warsaw Pact design school are heavy mediums.

Interesting fact: a King Tiger weighs roughly as much an Abrams, whilst a Panther weighs roughly as much as a T-72.