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LeuCeaMia

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  1. Tank You
    LeuCeaMia reacted to Walter_Sobchak in The Armored Warfare Disappointment Thread   
    Ok, I have to make a small correction.  The engine that was intended for the ROKIT was the AVCR-1790, not the AVDS-1790-9A.  These two engines are easy to confuse since they are both 1200HP and are essentially the same with the exception that the AVCR-1790 had variable compression pistons while the AVDS-1790 had conventional pistons.  The AVCR 1790 was the earlier engine, it was an attempt by Teledyne Continental to use the variable ratio piston tech they had developed for the AVCR-1100 and AVCR-1360 engines for the MBT-70 and General Motors XM-1 prototypes.  Anyhow, the Teledyne engineers messed up the design and the AVCR-1790 had issues.  Not long after the AVCR-1790 suffered it's fate, Teledyne was able to get 1200HP out of a conventional piston AVDS-1790 engine by introducing improved turbo-charging and after-cooling.  The AVDS-1790-9 1200HP engine is currently in service in the Merkava III and also in the Namer APC (the engine is still in production for this vehicle.)  
  2. Tank You
    LeuCeaMia reacted to EnsignExpendable in The Soviet Tank Thread: Transversely Mounted 1000hp Engines   
    https://twitter.com/worldoftanks_ru/status/653541895348572160
     
    Dmitriy Rogozin: UVZ turned the T-90 into a robot, now we need WoT players, not tankers!
    WoT:

  3. Tank You
    LeuCeaMia reacted to EnsignExpendable in Ukrainian Civil War Thread: All Quiet on the Sturgeon Front   
    Remember, he is renting it for 200 times less than the market price for 49 years for the purpose of "building and maintaining waterfront objects".
  4. Tank You
    LeuCeaMia reacted to Jeeps_Guns_Tanks in The M4 Sherman Tank Epic Information Thread.. (work in progress)   
    Hey guys, here's the first part of my new section in the Sherman doc, on Marine use of the Sherman. 
     
    I'm going to update the main post tonight. I've update every section in the doc with more info and cleaned it all up. I think I'll wait to finish the Marine section before I send it to Walt for the version on his awesome site. 
     
    Sherman use by the United States Marines:
      Most people have the idea the Marines used the M4A2, and only the M4A2, and list things like it was a diesel like Navy landing craft used as the reason the marines chose the tank.  The real reason they got A2, was that’s what was available when they asked, there wasn’t much choice involved, and they should feel lucky the army didn’t dump Lee’s on them. At various times the Marines also used M4A1s, and M4A3, all with the 75mm gun.
     


     
      Tarawa, November 20-23rd 1943: The first Marine use of the Sherman was on Tarawa. The tanks were M4A2 small hatch tanks, these tanks were issued with no training, and the crews of the I Marine Amphibious Corps Tanks Battalion had sixty days in the states to learn how to use their tanks. Then the island they ended up pre landing had no place for them to drive the tanks to train on them. So they went into combat with no real training with the Marines they were going to fight with. The tanks had no waterproofing, and no deep wading trunks, and could only drive through 40 inches of water. They also had the same problem the Army had in Europe, the tanks radios were not on the same frequency as the infantry units below the battalion level. They could talk to aircraft though. Oh, and only sent one company to support the landings.  C Company of the 2nd Marine tank Battalion had 15 tanks.   All the tanks had names starting in the letter C.  HQ for the tank battalion was almost entirely killed off and their radios lost during the landing so each platoon fought its own war.
     
      1st platoon reinforced with two HQ tanks drove in on the reef and lost three of six tanks to shell craters and swamping. There were scouts sent ahead, but the markers they placed in many cases floated away, and most of the scouts were killed by enemy fire.  The three surviving Shermans were named, Cecilia, a command tank. It linked up with China Gal, and they try and find a way inland. They had trouble getting inland, having to avoid many dead and wounded marines. The seawall, wrecked LVTs and other obstacles prevented the tanks from moving freely as well. While trying to find a way in Chicago took on water and shorted out.
     
     
      China Gal and Cecelia manage to find a way inland, and found nothing but Japanese troops, and when  a Japanese tank, a Type 95 Ha-Go, wheeled into view, it got of the first hit, and got very lucky, its 37mm round hit Cecelia in the main gun and wrecked it. The rifling was damaged, and the breach was open so fragments bounced around the turret and scared the hell out of the crew, but no one was hurt. China Gal blasted the Japanese tank. Cecelia raced back to the beach to check out the damage, and then later hooked back up with China Gal, the company commander jumped from the tank with the disabled gun into China Gal.  They spent the rest of the day working with the gyrenes blasting Japanese pill boxes, Cecelia using just her machine guns. They worked between Red-1 and Red-2 the rest of the day.
     
      2nd Platoon first tank off LCM sank up to turret killing it. The next to LCMs tried another spot, and first LCM took damage and sunk on a reef, blocking the, the second managed to back a little way out before taking fire and sinking as well. The tank in this LCM managed to get out, and onto to the reef, only to drown in hidden shell hole moments later.
     
      The rest of the 2nd platoon made it ashore on beach Red-3 and moved across Red-2 to hook up with their infantry. These tanks were ordered to support an infantry assault across the islands airfield, and ended up out in front of the marine grunts. One took a bunch of fire and tried to back up and fell into a shell crater and rolled over.  The other was damaged by a Japanese soldier with a magnetic mine, and then shot up by a hidden AT gun.  They were in the fight for 20 minutes or less. I suspect since the tanks names didn’t make it into the book I’m using as a reference that no one from either crew lived to tell the tale.
     
     
      3rd Platoon re-enforced with one HQ tank managed to get all four tanks ashore, and had less trouble doing so than the other two platoons. Their Good fortune ended their though. Cannonball, a command tank with the platoon leader aboard, Condor, Charlie and Command and Colorado were the names of the five M4A2s that made it ashore. The commander on Red-3 ordered the tanks to move out ahead of the infantry, with no men in close support, and for the tanks to kill anything they found.
    In under an hour, Condor was knocked out, how it was knocked various in the reports, some claim a US Navy dive bomber took it out, but photos of the wrecked tank make it look like an AT gun or infantry close assault took it out. Cannonball took some damage from and AT gun, and in trying to get out of its line of fire managed to fall into a ditch filled with Japanese fuel drums. Apparently fire from a Navy fighter ignited the fuel, but the crew got out.  The survivors from both crews were trapped behind enemy lines for a while. Charlie got taken out at close range by an AT gun. The Jap AT gun put multiple rounds through the tanks side. Commando lived up to its name, ranging far ahead of the Marine lines and racking up two AT guns, and five pillboxes before enemy fire knocked it out.  Colorado had a gasoline bomb thrown on it, but the driver raced back to the beach and drove into the surf, putting out the fire.
     
     
      By nightfall, only Colorado, China Gal and Cecelia were operational, and China Gal and Cecelia tied into the Marine lings on Red-1 and Red-2, and Colorado did the same on Red-3. Things were all messed up, lots of ships had just dumped whatever cargo was easiest into the LVTs and other boats moving things into shore and there was a lot of trouble getting the things the tankers were going to need. The most important being main gun rounds for the tanks M3 75mm guns. Late that night heavy Japanese machine gun fire rained down on the base of the pier that they were using to bring in supplies. Colorado was sent to help, and shut the Japanese machine guns down soon after.
     
     
      Things had gone poorly for the Marine tankers, but not just them, the attack was so disorganized due to much higher than expected casualties, the Marines only had a small toehold on the island, and a Japanese counter attack during the night would very likely have rolled the Marines right back into the water. Luck was on the Marines side the Japs were even more screwed up and couldn't manage one.
     
    Day 2:
     
      The Marines started trying to bring in more troops at dawn. These troops were met by a hail of machine gun fire from the Red-1/Red-2 junction. Cecelia, still without a working main gun was dispatched to engage the Japanese machine gun positions at the junction. The tank was only in action for a short time before it slid into a shell crater and its electrical system shorted out. The tank was at a steep enough angle the turret could not be rotated with the manual traverse, and had to be abandoned. I’m not sure if it was shock from the impact when it slid into the shell crater, or if there was water in the hole deep enough to flood the tank.
     
      The M4 hero of the day was China Gal, around 1100, she hooked up with a bunch of gyrene grunts and they attacked south from Red-1 towards the Green beaches. They never actually moved along the beach though, they stayed inland, behind the Japanese positions facing the beach, basically attacking from the Japanese defensive lines rear and flank. Two hours later, they had rolled up the whole western shore, opening the way for more troops to come in, and not under murderous fire. In many cases China Gal had to drive right up to the well-hidden concrete bunkers and blast them through the front slit, or rear door at point blank range to kill them. That night China Gal pulled almost all the way back to Red-1 and holed up with a few infantry around. They slept under the tank and would be back in action in the morning.
    On day two, Colorado spent the day on Red-3 trying to kill Japanese positions at the base of the Burns-Philp Pier. Several of these positions had been wiped out the day before and re occupied by the Japanese over the night. Colorado worked closely with a bulldozer, the tank would move in close and blast the machine gun position and then the dozer would cover it over with sand, whether the Japanese inside were dead or not.
     
      They worked out a system with the marine scouts who had led them in on the reef. The few that survived were used to scout targets for the tanks. The tankers made at least one of these scouts ride in the tank and show them were the action was from the inside at least once. The tank crews wanted to give the scouts an idea of how blind  they really were, so he could appreciate and take it into consideration while they scouted.
     
     
     
      The scouts worked out a system where they would get the tanks attention by beating on the hull with a spent 75mm shell,  because they rang like a bell, and could be heard inside the tank, and then using his rifle to indicate a target. He did this by aiming at the target, and then they would hold up fingers for how many yards away the Japanese soldiers were.  This worked well enough, but ringing the shell/bell on the hull put the ringer in danger of enemy fire.  Of course, once he got the tanks attention, if was the Japs shooting at the scout who had to be worried. These men would also drag dead and wounded marines from the path of the tank.
     
     
      When the progress on the Green beaches was noticed, it was decided to send in 1st Battalion 6th Marines and B Company 2nd Tank Battalion ashore there, B Company was made up of light tanks.  One of the first LVT’s in hit a mine on the reef and blew up, once again losing a lot of important communication gear. Due to the heavy presence of mines on the reef and beach, 1/6 diverted north, delaying the landings, but ultimately coming ashore as an intact fighting unit, the first of the invasion.
    The 1/6 landings went relatively well, but the light tanks of B Company had a lot of trouble. They came in on the wrong tide, and only one platoon would make it onto the reef, only to be 700 yards from shore, and high tide coming. The rest of the of B Company was diverted Red-2, landing before 1st Platoon got onto the reef.
     
      All five M3A1 light tanks from the 1st Platoon got onto the reef, but only two would make it to land, the rest drowned in hole in the reef. The rest of the company got ashore only to lose another tank in a shell crater, leaving only two running.  The light tanks laagered in an abandoned Japanese airplane revetment and their crews dug foxholes under the tanks for the night. Crews that lost their tanks, dug in with other crews, under their tanks. At night, anything that moved got shot at, so everyone made sure they had a hole by nightfall. A few more lights from B company would arrive before nightfall, but the rest still remained offshore.
     
      As night fell on the second day, it was clear the Marines were winning, but it was also clear a whole hell of a lot of Marines had been killed. One of the infantry commanders still alive, Lieutenant Colonel David Shoup, issued a report that did not mention anything about a group of Marines being cut off holding a particular section of the island in it and concluded it with “Casualties: many. Percentage dead: unknown. Combat efficiency: we are winning. Lt, Col Shoup.”
     
     
    Day 3:
     
    At 0200 more B Company light tanks arrived off Red-2 and started to land and immediately started having problems. Of the first two lights ashore, one shorted out is electric system and was towed ashore by the other, only to be lost to enemy mortar fire. All through the night more B Company lights tried to get to shore. One platoon lost three out of five light tanks to drown out electrical system or other water related problems. By Morning they had five M3A1 tanks from two platoons ashore.1
     
      Later that morning 1st Battalion, 8th Marines attacked the Japanese positions at the base of the pier at the junction of Red-1/Red-2. They five light tanks supported the attack, and much like their larger cousins in C Company, the tankers found it hard to find anything to shoot at, so infantry scouts would often climb into the cramped tanks and lead them to the targets. When the targets turned out to be a pill box or bunker, it was found even firing point blank into the embrasures bunkers with little success. They found using 37mm canister rounds at point blank range, fired through an opening worked well enough. They lost a M3A1 to a Japanese soldier who dashed out and threw some kind of explosive onto the engine deck, blowing the engine up and setting the tank on fire. They lost another light to a mortar attack as well.
    The light tanks would be pulled out and replaced by SPM, was an lightly armored LVT with a 75mm howitzer in a small turret. These vehicles fared little better than the light tanks.      
     
      China Gal would be called upon to help an attack reach the group of trapped marines. Elements of two companies from 1st Battalion 2nd Marines had managed to push to the center of the airfield on D-day. The Japanese figured out these marines had pushed far ahead, and attacked behind them, cutting them off. These Marines attacked to the south the next day, trying to break out while the other marines tried to fight to them. The attack to save them faltered, leaving them in the nearly 200 Marines of 1/2 still trapped, now in a 200 by 50 yard area of thick bushes and underbrush, and they were low on ammo.
     
      A little after 0800 China Gal, and the 1st Battalion, 6th Marines started an attack to relieve the trapped Marines. They also had seven more light tanks from B Company who had made it to shore helping. Major Jones, the commander of 1/6 kept tight control on the tanks, not letting any get further than 50 yards in front of the advancing gyrenes. Jones improvised a way to keep in communication with the tanks and kept one light tank back at his HQ to use its radios to control the other tanks. They attacked along a very narrow front, only about 100 yards wide. Even with the improved communications with the infantry through the use of the light tanks radios, right up at the front edge were the tanks were actually fighting, the commander of China Girl still found it necessary to open his hatch to talk to the Marines outside. To make it safer, the commander of the Sherman would rotate the turret, so his hatch was to the rear, then pop the hatch and rotate the cupola, the early split hatch commanders cupola rotated, to use one of the upright hatches to shield them from fire.
     
      The tank infantry team advanced steadily, losing no more tanks, and crossing 800 yards, they relived the cut off Marines by 1100. By this point the Marines supply lines had stabilized and a good flow of supplies was making it ashore, but one thing was not. Ammo for the M3 75mm gun was not in the cargo being sent from the ships offshore. This forced the tankers to scavenge what they could from the knocked out and drowned tanks.  The two operating M4 tanks would be reduced to firing 75mm pack howitzer ammo, it didn't seat right, and they didn’t know how it was fused, but it kept the main guns in action.
         
      Back at the junction of Red-1 and Red-2, where a large Japanese bunker complex, which included the Japanese Commanders command bunker, was still holding the Marines off. At 0930 a lucky mortar round took out one of the bunkers, causing a huge secondary explosion, this allowed Colorado to move in and knock out the other bunker guarding the main one. While the fight went on, the two B Company light tanks left in the area were used as ambulances, hauling wounded Marines back to an aid station.
     
     
      As night fell, the Jap strong point with the huge bunker still stood. The M4 was used to haul supplies up to prepare for the next mornings renewed attack. Late that night at 0400 almost 400 Japanese troops rushed the Marine lines, attacking B company 1st Battalion 6th Marines, and the Marines won the fight, but it had come down to hand to hand combat.
     
    Day 4: 
     
      At 0700 on the morning of the 4th day of the battle, Navy aircraft bombed the hell out of the last of the japs holding out on the south east part of the island, a long narrow section, ending in the sea. The air attack was followed by marine artillery and naval gunfire support. One of the Pearl Harbor survivor battleships was off shore to deliver the fire. The USS Tennessee would remain offshore until December support the Marines through the mop up operation.
     
      Freshly landed, 3rd Battalion 6th Marines passed through marine lines, heading for the Japanese strong point points on the east side of the Island. Colorado, China Gal and seven light tanks led the attack. They moved in a tight formation of tanks and infantry and rolled up the Japanese troops. The fight had left the Japanese, and many committed suicide. By 1310 the Marines had 3/6 had reached the eastern end of the island. The two M4A2 tanks proved to be decisive weapons at this stage, tearing through the last of the Japanese resistance in the area.
     
     
      The last area the Japanese were still holding out in, at the junction of Red-1/2, with the big bunker, the area responsible for the majority of the Marine casualties. With only the support of a pair of SPMs the Marines finally crushed these last Japanese holdouts by 1305 when the Island was reported secure.
     
     
      The cost had been one third of the landing force becoming casualties, 1696 killed and 2101 wounded.
     
      The Marines salvaged all the M4A2’s they could and took them back to the LSD Ashland, and they were rebuilt in Hawaii and used in later battles. One M4A2 remains on Tarawa, Cecelia, no matter how hard they tried she wasn't going to come out of the shell hole, and as of 1992 she was still there, a steel monument to the Marines, Sailors and Soldiers who died taking the Betio, Tarawa Atoll.
     

     
      The Marines learned a lot of hard lessons about using tanks at Tarawa, the biggest problem was communication with the supporting infantry units. Another big problem was the vulnerability of the tanks to water damage. It was also clear, the infantry units needed to train with the tanks they would be supported by in combat. The Marines of C Company had been thrown into combat with little training on the tanks, but still proved to be key players in the conquest of the island. The Marines would begin applying the lessons they learned, but not before their next use of the M4, this time M4A1s at Cape Gloucester, a swampy, jungle island in the Solomons, and not the best place for any tanks, but the M4 would prove it worth there as well.
     
           
  5. Tank You
  6. Tank You
    LeuCeaMia reacted to LoooSeR in Syrian conflict.   
    Internet continue to make jokes.
  7. Tank You
    LeuCeaMia reacted to Tied in Syrian conflict.   
  8. Tank You
    LeuCeaMia reacted to EnsignExpendable in An Effortpost on Tank Suspensions   
    The mean goons over on SA roped me into writing an effortpost, so I figured it's only fair that you freeloaders get to enjoy it too.
     
    So, suspensions. I'm going to introduce the book as well because it's probably the most Soviet book that ever existed. It is called TANK.     What makes this book so Soviet? Well, here's the first paragraph of the introduction:   "Under the guidance of the Communist party of the Soviet Union, our people built socialism, achieved a historical victory in the Great Patriotic War, and in launched an enormous campaign for the creation of a Communist society."   The next paragraph talks about the 19th Assembly of the CPSU, then a bit about how in the Soviet Union man no longer exploits man (now it's the other way around :haw:), then a little bit about the war again, then spends another three pages stroking the party's dick about production and growth. The word "tank" does not appear in the introduction.   The historical prelude section is written by someone who is a little closer to tanks and might be a little less politically reliable, since they actually give Tsarists credit for things. I guess they have to, since foreigners are only mentioned in this section when they are amazed by Russian progress. The next chapter is a Wikipedia-grade summary of various tank designs that gives WWI designs a pretty fair evaluation, then a huge section on Soviet tank development, then a tiny section on foreign tanks in WWII mostly consisting of listing all the mistakes their designers made. The party must have recuperated since the intro since we're in for another three pages of fellatio.   Having read so far, you might think that there is very little value in this sort of book, but then the writing style does a complete 180 and the rest of the book is 100% apolitical and mostly looks like this.     Which is what we care about, so let's begin. Bonus points to anyone who can identify what the diagram above is about. Sorry in advance if my terminology isn't 100% correct, there aren't exactly a lot of tank dictionaries lying around.   The book skips over primitive unsprung suspensions of WWI and starts off with describing the difference between independent suspensions and road-arm suspensions. In the former, every wheel is independently sprung. In the latter, two or more wheels are joined together by a spring. Some suspensions have a mix of these designs. For example, here's a simple road-arm suspension used in some Vickers designs and their derivatives. The two road wheels are connected by a spring and to the hull by a lever. A weight pushing down on top of the pair of wheels is going to compress the spring that's perpendicular to the ground, bringing the wheels closer together.     Here's a more complex road-arm suspension, with four wheels per unit instead of one, also AFAIK first used by Vickers and then migrating to an enormous amount of designs from there. This suspension provides springiness through a leaf spring that you can see above the four road wheels. The two pairs of wheels don't have their own springs. The black circles in the image show where the suspension elements can turn, keeping the tank flat while hugging the terrain.     Here's another road-arm suspension, similar to the first one. In this case, the spring is made of rubber instead of metal. Otherwise, the design is very similar. Two rubber bungs on the bottom of the axles prevent the wheels from slamming into each other too hard. This design was used by French tanks and nobody else.     For some reason, volute spring suspensions are completely absent from this section. This is the best image of a Vertical Volute Spring Suspension (early Shermans) that I could find. It's kind of similar to the first image, except the spring is a volute spring, and it's vertical instead of horizontal. Later Shermans used horizontal volute springs.     Of course, as the book points out, these suspension elements are very easy to damage externally and knocking out one part of the suspension will typically take out the rest of the assembly, so independent suspensions are the way to go. The best way to do this are torsion bars. The bar is attached to a lever that holds your road wheel. As pressure is applied to the road wheel, the bar subtly twists, remaining elastic enough to reset once the pressure is off. This image is kind of weird, but the part in the center is the part on the far left, zoomed in, showing you where the lever and the opposite side's torsion bar are attached. As you can see, road wheels in a torsion bar suspension are going to be a little off on one side, unlike what you're used to on cars and such.     Now, since torsion bars are metal bars on the floor, they are going to make your tank taller. If you want a tank that's as short as possible at the expense of width, you may want to consider a Christie like suspension. Here, much like in torsion bars, the pressure is transferred inside the tank, but instead of a bar to absorb it, it's a spring in a vertical (or angled) tube. In most tanks with this kind of suspension, the springs are on the inside, but if you want to make the tank roomier on the inside, you can have them on the outside too. If you're really fancy, you can put a spring within the spring like in this diagram.     Since this is a Soviet tank book, you gotta have a huge T-34 diagram. Here it is.     The T-34 uses Christie springs, which you can see in the diagram. The road wheel configuration is a mix of the externally dampened and internally dampened "Stalingrad type" road wheels. The former have more rubber for absorbing hits from terrain, but the latter use less rubber. When you're in Stalingrad and you have to make tanks with a rubber deficit, that's the kind you want. When road wheels from other factories were available, they would go in the front and then the back to absorb most of the impact from harsh terrain features, and the steel-rimmed wheels went in the middle. The diagram shows how both types of wheels work.   Rubber can't really take too much punishment, so the KV, being a heavy tank, went with internally dampened road wheels from the very beginning, with a ring of rubber on the inside around the axle.     And finally, idlers. If you don't have big Christie type wheels, you gotta have idlers so your saggy track doesn't fall off. This diagram shows the rubber coating on an idler, and also how the rear idler can adjust to tighten the track. A loose track makes more noise, gets worn more, and is liable to slip off.     Keep those tracks tight, and you'll be zooming towards glorious victory in no time flat!     Now, the book ends and my own stuff begins. I mentioned rubber, but not what a headache it was to tank designers. In hot weather, the rubber in your tracks and wheels tends to fall apart. If you go fast enough, tires that don't have proper ventilation are going to melt too. There was a lot of pre-war panic in the USSR about the German PzIII being able to do 70 kph on tracks, but once the Soviets started building SU-76Is on the PzIII chassis they found out that the speed had to be limited to a whopping 25 kph to keep the wear to a reasonable level.
  9. Tank You
    LeuCeaMia reacted to Collimatrix in The Soviet Tank Thread: Transversely Mounted 1000hp Engines   
    Ahem, I think you mean T67 suspension:


  10. Tank You
    LeuCeaMia reacted to Donward in The Toyota Hilux Appreciation Thread   
    ISIS, how you get so many Toyota Hilux pickups?
     
    U.S. Treasury inquires about ISIS use of Toyota vehicles 
    http://abcnews.go.com/International/us-officials-isis-toyota-trucks/story?id=34266539
     
    Toyota Hilux pickups, an overseas model similar to the Toyota Tacoma, and Toyota Land Cruisers have become fixtures in videos of the ISIS campaign in Iraq, Syria and Libya, with their truck beds loaded with heavy weapons and cabs jammed with terrorists. The Iraqi Ambassador to the United States, Lukman Faily, told ABC News that in addition to re-purposing older trucks, his government believes ISIS has acquired “hundreds” of “brand new” Toyotas in recent years.
    “This is a question we’ve been asking our neighbors,” Faily said. “How could these brand new trucks... these four wheel drives, hundreds of them -- where are they coming from?”

  11. Tank You
    LeuCeaMia reacted to LostCosmonaut in The Yakovlev VTOL Family   
    During the latter part of the Cold War, the Yakovlev design bureau came up with quite a few designs for VTOL combat aircraft. While they weren't the most successful designs, they are pretty interesting, from both a historical and technical standpoint.
     
    The first of these is the Yak-36 (Freehand);
     

     
    While the Soviets had come up with numerous other VTOL designs in the 1960s, most of them used dedicated vertically mounted engines to take off vertically. However, the Yak-36 had a more modern arrangement, with two engines that used vectored thrust for both vertical and horizontal flight. The Yak-36 was powered by a pair of R27-300 jet engines (the same engines that powered the MiG-23 'Faithless' VTOL concept). In addition to providing vertical and horizontal thurst, the engines also provided airflow for 'puffers' at the wingtips, nose, and tail, which provided control in hover and low speeds (where aerodynamic controls would not be effective).
     
    The Yak-36 suffered from various difficulties during its development, among them the engines reingesting exhaust gases. At least two of the prototypes crashed at somepoint. Though the Yak-36 was at various points displayed with underwing armaments (such as rocket pods), it was never deployed to operational units; it was solely used as a testbed.
     
    Following the Yak-36 was the more widely known Yak-38 (Forger). It entered service in the early 1980s.
     

     
    Unlike the Yak-36, the Yak-38 was fitted with lift jets (two RD-36V engines). Though these engines did an adequate job of providing vertical lift, they had the drawback of being dead weight in horizontal flight. Horizontal thrust was provided by  a single R27-300. Though the Yak-38 was capable of VTOL, it had highly limited performance; it was strictly subsonic, and had marginal payload capability.
     

    (pictured: unrestrained optimism)
     
    The Yak-38 was designed from the outset as a combat aircraft, intended to be deployed from the Soviets' Kiev class carriers. In this role, it was shit (much like your favorite anime). The first issue was reliability; many of the Forger's components proved to be horrendously unreliable, especially the lift jets. I've seen figures stating that the lift jets had an average lifetime of less than 25 hours, which leads me to suspect they were actually rebranded Jumo 004s. Engine failures were especially bad in the Yak-38 - a failure of a lift jet on one side would lead to the jet entering a fast, unrecoverable roll. The lift jets also had poor thrust in hot conditions; in many cases, the Yak-38 had to fly with only two pylons filled, rather than all four. Considering that the Yak-38 had no internal armament, this was not optimal. Interestingly, in addition to using it as a carrier aircraft, the Soviets also trialed the Yak-38 as a close air support in Afghanistan. This was less than successful; the Yak-38 was only capable of carrying a pair of 100kg bombs, markedly inferior to dedicated CAS aircraft such as the Su-25.
     
    Rumors of the Yak-38 being deployed to Colorado are false;
     

     
    Numerous variants of the Yak-38 were developed, most notably the Yak-38M, which despite having improved engines and other components, was still a dog. There was also the Yak-38U, a serious contender for the title of 'Ugliest Airplane'.
     
     
    In the late 1970s, development of a successor to the Yak-38 began. This aircraft was the Yak-41 (Freestyle).
     

     
    The general configuration of the Yak-41 was similar to the Yak-38, with a pair of lift jets in the fuselage and a single main engine for thrust. However, its capabilities were massively improved. While the Yak-38 was a strictly subsonic aircraft, the Yak-41 was capable of supersonic flight, setting many records for VTOL aircraft (under the fictional designation Yak-141). Additionally, it incorporated far more advanced materials in its structure (including large scale use of composites), as well as improved avionics (such as a radar set which was actually useful). Its payload capacity, in terms of weight, was roughly the same as what the Yak-38 could (theoretically) carry. However, given that the Yak-41 was a dedicated air superiority craft, this was less of a concern than the Yak-38s payload deficiency in the strike role.
     

     
    Unfortunately for the Yak-41, it began testing in the late 1980s, just as the Soviet Union was falling apart. Though some testing continued through the early 90s, the Yak-41 never entered operational service. The second nail in the Yak-41s coffin was the Soviet Union / Russian Federation's acquisition of larger aircraft carrier(s), capable of operating aircraft such as the Su-27K and MiG-29K.
     
    Interestingly, for a few years in the early 1990s, Yakovlev collaborated with Lockheed Martin on the development of the Yak-41. This has given rise to many conspiracies about the F-35B being a clone of the Yak-41. While this is obviously false, it wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility that a few bits on the JSF might have drawn inspiration from Yak's design in some way.
     
    There was one final successor to the Yak-41; the Yak-43. An even more advanced evolution, the Yak-43 could have been quite capable (had it been built). From what I can find, it dispensed with the extraneous lift jets. Power would have been provided by a modified NK-32 turbofan, the same engine that powers the Tu-160. This would have given the Yak-43 significantly improved performance and payload capacity compared to its predecessors. Additionally, the Yak-43 would have incorporated low observability features into its design, bringing it closer to being a true competitor to aircraft such as the F-35B. In any case, the aircraft remained unbuilt, and I have not heard of any efforts to revive the design.
     

     

     
     
  12. Tank You
    LeuCeaMia reacted to SuperComrade in The Yakovlev VTOL Family   
    I don't think you will get better info than what is in this book, at least in English

    http://avxhome.se/ebooks/history_military/YakovlevJumpJets.html
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    LeuCeaMia reacted to EnsignExpendable in Bears can be total assholes. And other bear related news   
    Just deal with it like we do in Mother Russia.
     

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    LeuCeaMia reacted to Alex C. in American muscle cars, 64-73, and other American cars, like race cars   
    Chrysler had a practical turbine car. I have seen one and they are amazing machines through and through. My old man worked at a gas station as a kid and he said there was one that would regularly drive by and you could hear its very distinctive sound from very far away:
     

     

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    LeuCeaMia reacted to EnsignExpendable in The rich get richer...   
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    LeuCeaMia reacted to SuperComrade in Ukrainian Civil War Thread: All Quiet on the Sturgeon Front   
    There are still golf courses left in Ukraine to steal carts from?
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    LeuCeaMia reacted to Priory_of_Sion in Syrian conflict.   
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    LeuCeaMia reacted to Tied in Syrian conflict.   
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    LeuCeaMia reacted to CrashbotUS in General AFV Thread   
    I was there during this.  Part of MND-N Tuzla.  First time I ever worked with Russian soldiers (who got a kick of me understanding Russian.) 
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    LeuCeaMia reacted to EnsignExpendable in StuG III Thread (and also other German vehicles I guess)   
    Remember the White Elephant essay? No? Well maybe you shouldn't read it immediately before you read the long-awaited* sequel.
     
    *May not actually have been awaited or even expected
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    LeuCeaMia reacted to Walter_Sobchak in StuG III Thread (and also other German vehicles I guess)   
    British tests on early model Panther tank, 1944.
     
    Basically, the Panther kept backfiring, third gear broke, and then the whole thing started on fire.  
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    LeuCeaMia reacted to Priory_of_Sion in General AFV Thread   
    You can clearly see that the Panther has influenced the Leopards since they are all ugly and named after cats. 
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