Priory_of_Sion

Iunno, man - much as I agree that the pendulum has probably swung a bit too far in the "hurr durr, is shit" direction, the Panther is still pretty dire. The drivetrain issues are well attested as far as I know, to the extent that the Germans themselves shipped them in by rail whenever possible. So I don't think you can just wave your hand and say the French report was a clerical error. And the ergonomics were certainly not perfect beyond just the gunner's sights. A few lowlights:
- The commander's hatch is bulky yet tiny.
- The commander's position is cramped overall.
- The turret crew has very few vision devices overall (one fixed for the loader and that's your lot).
- Everyone in the turret beyond the commander would burn in the event of a fire thanks to tiny and few hatches.
- The gun is awkward to load.
- The radio operator's position is remarkably cramped and uncomfortable.
- Driving is a fiddly and requires a well-trained crewman (without also considering the need to baby the transmission).
- The transmission is completely inaccessible short of pulling the turret.
- The suspension and wheels are generally a pain in the ass to clean, repair or service.
 
All in all the Panther was the inverse of the (successful) early and mid-war German designs - great when looking at the hard stats (gun penetration, armour, engine power etc) but lacking on many of the soft factors. Which is just the worst possible thing from the T-34 to have copied.
 
I think the final, most damning thing I could say about the Panther is that it accomplishes more or less exactly what the T-44 does... all while being bigger, 10 tonnes heavier and less reliable.
 
Edit: something I forgot to mention in my previous posts that I think contributed to the Panther's woes: the engine. The Maybach V12s that power the Panther are bulky beasts and remarkably tall (nearly 1.2m). Add in the extra height from the torsion bars and drive shaft going to the front, and I think that the 1.35m hull height is about as compact as you can make it. Just to give an idea of how much the engine alone added to the weight - if you replace the HL230 with the HL120 TRM from the Pz IV but keep everything else the same ITO other component sizes, armour thickness, armour angles etc, the calculated weight of the bare hull drops by 3.4mt (or ~27%).
 
Again, the mix of decisions that constrained the design more or less doomed it to be very big and very heavy.

I don’t feel so good

https://www.amazon.com/hz/reviews-render/mobile-media-feed/B06XGMWCN7?physicalId=41qL7TadtHL&imageExtension=jpg&reviewId=R16U5OVZJSRXYR
 
this one is a good insight into sparky’s brain: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/review/0195173384/R3K3ZORNBY4OQ0?ref=pf_vv_at_pdctrvw_srp

Ed Francis has recently started a fantastic Youtube channel going over British vehicle design and development called Armoured Archives. He has plenty of unseen gems in his videos, including this bad boy:
 

 
I'll let his work speak for itself: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCIgjPAYn253oyWLsYgiHDw

That sounds like not really usefull test in the first place, i was under impression that there should be plenty of data about T-55 in US. Hell, T-84s with Drozd APS were sold to US, why bother to test T-55s?

Overrated: Patton

https://twitter.com/dex_eve/status/1231756610000678915
 

Houthis shot down KSA Tornado

 
 
 
 

TIL about the "death spears" of Australia. 
 
These spears have their relatively simple wooden tips covered in adhesive yellow gum sap with multiple embedded stone, wood, and shell chips with later post-European contact spears sometimes including glass shards as an advancement over the stone chips. 
 

Unlike most spears used by hunter-gatherers these seem to have been more specialized for use in warfare instead of a more utilitarian design that can be used for hunting game. Sure, you could kill someone with a regular spear or a wooden club, but the death spears went further and the microliths in the spear tip would imbed in flesh and cause more damage, especially if an attempt to remove the spear was tried, along with a higher probability for infection. 
 
These death spears and similar  bone-barbed "war spears" in Australia were usually ~10 feet in length and apparently noticeably bulkier than the ~8 ft spears used for hunting. Aborginal Australians also had their own form of the atlatl called the woomera which helped them fling spears ~70 yards. 
 

There has been a couple British accounts of early settlers & convicts being killed with these spears; sometimes even after the spear was removed. The archeological record suggests that these spears have been in Australia for a while, as recently a skeleton which has been found with microliths found within their bodies matching the description of a death via the death spear has been dated to 4000 years before present. Microliths have been found as late as 15000 years ago, yet it is kinda hard to establish whether these microlith chips were used for death spears.  
 
I got most of this info from Allen & Jones' "Violence and Warfare among Hunter-Gatherers" and Davidson (1934)
 
 
 

TIL about the "death spears" of Australia. 
 
These spears have their relatively simple wooden tips covered in adhesive yellow gum sap with multiple embedded stone, wood, and shell chips with later post-European contact spears sometimes including glass shards as an advancement over the stone chips. 
 

Unlike most spears used by hunter-gatherers these seem to have been more specialized for use in warfare instead of a more utilitarian design that can be used for hunting game. Sure, you could kill someone with a regular spear or a wooden club, but the death spears went further and the microliths in the spear tip would imbed in flesh and cause more damage, especially if an attempt to remove the spear was tried, along with a higher probability for infection. 
 
These death spears and similar  bone-barbed "war spears" in Australia were usually ~10 feet in length and apparently noticeably bulkier than the ~8 ft spears used for hunting. Aborginal Australians also had their own form of the atlatl called the woomera which helped them fling spears ~70 yards. 
 

There has been a couple British accounts of early settlers & convicts being killed with these spears; sometimes even after the spear was removed. The archeological record suggests that these spears have been in Australia for a while, as recently a skeleton which has been found with microliths found within their bodies matching the description of a death via the death spear has been dated to 4000 years before present. Microliths have been found as late as 15000 years ago, yet it is kinda hard to establish whether these microlith chips were used for death spears.  
 
I got most of this info from Allen & Jones' "Violence and Warfare among Hunter-Gatherers" and Davidson (1934)
 
 
 

Sherman in India with DT-56T gun from PT-76

 
 

Model Korean KAI KF-X was shown at a recent airshow 

Model Korean KAI KF-X was shown at a recent airshow 

Libyans turned the Czechoslovak RM-70 MRLS into an AA missile launcher vehicle.

 
 

Something more from Anna news.
 
2S1 on ZIL-131 "cabrio"

 
2A20 (?) on Ural 4320

 
 

Robert Mugabe now bathes in the waters of the Phlegethon 
 

I can see they believe boats have the 2nd amendment rights. 

Yes, agreed. I think the point of contention is that the Dayton shooting despite his love for socialism doesn't seem to be politically motivated unless the bar he attacked was known to be the local Republican(or etc) hang out or that the bar was his mental interpretation of capitalist hegemony or some shit like that