Walter_Sobchak

Video about Somali tank program.

https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=CNL5i_1547031966

On 1/11/2019 at 2:14 AM, DogDodger said:

Just got through Guderian: Panzer Pioneer or Myth Maker? by Russell A. Hart. I was looking forward to reading it; the introduction says the book "seeks the real Heinz Guderian, not the man of legend." I was expecting a short but interesting insight into how Guderian inflated his accomplishments, much like Bond and Mearsheimer had done with Liddell Hart (and which Gat later attempted to redress). No less than Richard DiNardo proffered a decently glowing review of the book that concluded with, "This monograph is certainly not the definitive biography of Guderian, and I do not think the author had that goal in mind. As a corrective to one of the more mendacious memoirs of the Second World War, Hart's work clearly hits the mark." Looking good!

 

As it turns out, the book is a hot mess. It consists of surprisingly repetitious (and it's only 118pp), scantily-researched, poorly-evidenced, and thesaurus-driven prose that does little to convince the reader of the author's arguments unless the reader is fine with simply taking his word on things. (Of course, with the way things go on social media, this may not be an issue...). The third sentence in the introduction is, "Unfortunately, too many of Guderian's biographers have accepted Guderian's view of his accomplishments without sufficient critical scrutiny." In the endnote for this sentence Hart mentions seven such hagiographies, including two editions of Macksey's book on Guderian, Panzer General and Creator of the Blitzkreig. From this strong start, I thought with glee, clearly Hart will offer some hard-hitting, original research using novel sources!

 

Oh. Hart's main sources are the biographies he accused of insufficient critical scrutiny in the third sentence of his book.

 

Hart consistently makes assertions and accusations with no supporting examples, and often with even no citation. Some of this stuff I even believed going in, but if I had disagreed I would not be convinced by Hart simply saying so. E.g., people now realize Lutz had a large hand in forming the German armored forces. Hart agrees, stating. "It was Lutz more than Guderian who transformed the Mobile Troops Command into a strong, coherent branch in the late 1930s. Quietly, with much less fuss and rancor than Guderian was raising, Lutz negotiated, cajoled, listened, and compromised to push forward his command more effectively than Guderian ever could have done." What negotiations and compromises actually occurred are, like many things in the book, left to the reader's imagination.

 

Hart later says that "Guderian despised the Catholic, Slavic Poles who now [in 1939] occupied parts of his native, beloved Prussia." This is not provided with any citation or evidence. It's not that I wouldn't believe such a statement, but I would expect some evidence to accompany its presentation. Hart later says that during the French invasion, "In his private correspondence, Guderian expressed compassion for the plight of the French populace. This demonstrated that he held the 'civilized' French in much higher regard than he did the Slavic Poles." So I guess that's the evidence? Again, not that I wouldn't believe it, but that connection seems a bit of a stretch.

 

Likewise, Hart says that during the Polish invasion Guderian "earned the enmity of many a senior officer whose command prerogatives Guderian carelessly and thoughtlessly trampled over. For example, Guderian soon found himself at odds with the 3d Panzer Division commander--Freiherr Geyr von Schweppenburg--another future rising star of the armored force." What prerogatives were trampled, what odds occurred, and how those odds were resolved are not mentioned.

 

A fourth example: "Largely as a result of Guderian's insistence, these [Hummel and Wespe] were produced only in limited numbers, sufficient at best to equip a single battalion in each panzer artillery regiment during 1943-5. The lack of self-propelled guns reflected Guderian's opposition to diverting resources and production capacity to artillery weapons and his firm prewar belief that only tanks could fight other tanks effectively." This cites pp.216-22 in Panzer Leader. Unfortunately, my edition is apparently paginated differently, because there is nothing in those pages in my copy that talks about Guderian's opposition to SP arty. I did find where Guderian laid out the notes he took to his 9 March 1943 conference with Hitler et al after becoming Inspector-General of Armored Troops, which included "9.The artillery of the panzer and motorized divisions will from now on be receiving the adequate number of self-propelled gun-carriages which has been requested for the past 10 years...Tanks of latest design must be supplied for artillery observers."

 

A final example of evidenceless assertions for this post, but by no means final in the book: "[Guderian's] response to that trend [of the SS and Nazi party gaining influence and threatening taking over the army in 1944] was to more strongly identify himself and the armored troops with the national socialist worldview and agenda." No citation, no elaboration on how Guderian identified the armored troops with the Nazi worldview and agend, or even what that means, really.

 

Hart can't seem to decide how well Guderian performs as far as politics and influencing others. He variously describes him as having "political naiveté" (p.90), being "a consummate political operator" (p.92) who "continuously politicked" (p.93) those in Hitler's sphere, who executed a "calculated political neutrality" (p.102) after the assassination attempt on Hitler, yet who was again "a political neophyte" (p.115) who was "politically naive" (p.117). This list starts at p.90 only because that's when I bothered to start keeping track. It exists throughout the book.

 

I generally like historical scholarship and biographies to take a decently even-handed approach, but Hart makes no attempt to hide his bias with word choice, time and again throwing out strings of adjectives full of negative connotation: "More than anything else, it was his repeated, insolent defiance of higher authority, his insatiable and threatening demands for more of everything, his inability to understand the needs of other commands or act as a team player, combined with his inability to finesse his superiors, that cost Guderian his appointment." Jeez, say how you really feel.

 

So, in sum, I was disappointed. I went into this book believing that Guderian made more of himself than he should have re: the formation of German armored forces, but Hart did little to convince me had I not already thought so. The book is not all bad (I hadn't heard of the bribes Hitler gave to senior officers, but this research is not original to Hart, who cites others' work), but it's shallow and I feel it's not very good scholarship, especially from a history professor and PhD-holder who specializes "in the history of the Second World War in the European Theater." At least it was only like $12.

 

Great review!

On 1/10/2019 at 4:01 PM, EnsignExpendable said:

It's not a real T-34. They get away with it in a really quick shot from far away, but closer up it looks terrible.

So they used to a fake T-34 to play the role of the German tank...

On 1/6/2019 at 1:32 PM, EnsignExpendable said:

Honestly, the tanks are probably the least bad thing about this movie...

 

 

Where did they get a T-34/76?  If they used a T-34/85, I would not have been surprised, those are easily available.  I didn't think there were many T-34/76 tanks around in running condition.

3 hours ago, Proyas said:

Assume the robot tank is a clean sheet design not intended for human crewmen.

A couple summers ago I had a chance to get inside an M113 and I have to say, I am not sure it was intended for human crewmen.  

4 minutes ago, Lord_James said:

 

I mean, it seems logical for the near future, the M113 being one of the cheapest chassis to make and modify, and there’s lots of space inside for electronics, sensors, and armament/ammo. But afterwards (30+ years is my safe guess), there will be custom chassis for the robot vehicles.

 

The Bradley, BMP/MT-LB, Puma, and AJAX (among a hundred others) also look like good chassis’ that can be modified relatively easy, but the M113 seems like a much cheaper and equally effective solution. 

Makes sense to me, especially since there is plenty of upgrade technology already available for the M113.  

22 minutes ago, Lord_James said:

I would think a lot of them would look like M113s, as that type of chassis is easy and cheap to make, and highly modifiable. Israel is already fooling around with a robotic M113, and I wouldn’t doubt most of the other superpowers are close behind in terms of large UGVs. 

 

 

Are you suggesting that we may be entering the era of the robot-Gavin?  I'm all for it.

Since the old MBT-70 design had no human driver in the hull, that vehicle might be a good benchmark for how low the hull of a crewless tank could be built.  Of course, with modern hull designs having the driver almost laying on his back, the height of the powerpack is probably a bigger issue in terms of hull height than accommodating the human driver.

Robot tank!

Sorry, I couldn't help myself.

As I understand it, the T-14 Armata is supposed to have a crewless option, or at least the capability to be converted into such a configuration in the future.  Although, that seems less efficient than a true robot tank since there is still the space taken up for the crew compartment.  I suppose they could repurpose that space for a crewless version.

On 1/4/2019 at 7:05 AM, SH_MM said:

 

Best quote... showcasing a massive lack of self reflection:

 

That tread is pretty damn funny.  I guess they don't realize that here at SH we make fun of just about everything, including each other.  

The best use of some old Sherman tanks for a small army would be to keep them in a separate unit with WWII accurate markings for the purpose of renting them out to Hollywood for WWII films. 

5 minutes ago, Jeeps_Guns_Tanks said:

 

 

One advantage the Sherman has is that tranny, dif, and final drivers are not connected directly to the motor, so anything that fits and makes around 500 HP would work, but for it to work well, it needs to be making full torque and HP at no more than 2500 RPM and the lower the RPM the better. 

When I was at the Russell Military Museum in Zion Illinois a couple years ago, I was talking to the museum owner about Sherman tanks.  He said it's really easy to stall out an Isherman with the Cummins diesel when turning.  He owns one, so I expect he is talking from experience.  His rationale was that it had something to do with how the lower RPM diesel interacted with the transmission.  Not sure I understood it to be honest.

50 minutes ago, Proyas said:

Are there any newer tank engines that could be easily installed in a Sherman? 

I would think so.  So many different engines were used in the M4 that it's reasonable to assume that a new engine could be installed without too much trouble.  Israel put a Cummins diesel into the Sherman, although I can't find any information on which particular model of Cummins they used other than it was 460 HP.  The Cummins VTA-903T used in the Bradley family of vehicles would be my guess as to which modern engine to use in an upgrade since it's a proven performer and still in production.  Looking at the engine dimension figures, it seems pretty comparable with other Sherman engines in terms of size

VTA-903t dimensions 1148mm length, 1011mm width, 1288mm height

Ford GAA dimensions 1499mm length, 845mm width, 1214mm height

Continental R975  1092mm length, 1143mm diameter

3 hours ago, Proyas said:

Might be a dumb question, but what is the difference between a normal 90mm main gun and a low-pressure 90mm main gun?

 

Why couldn't a Sherman have a 105mm cannon? The Styker is smaller but has it. 

Low pressure equals low recoil.  Which means it can be mounted on a vehicle that is lighter than a standard main battle tank.  The disadvantage is that a low pressure gun is also low muzzle velocity, which limits it to HEAT style anti-tank rounds.  

2 hours ago, Proyas said:

Might be a dumb question, but what is the difference between a normal 90mm main gun and a low-pressure 90mm main gun?

 

Why couldn't a Sherman have a 105mm cannon? The Styker is smaller but has it. 

If I am remembering correctly, the Israeli's tried putting a 105mm L7 gun and the turret could not withstand the recoil.  So they went with the French 105mm gun instead with a special low power shell to reduce recoil.  The system on the Stryker is an external gun system which allows for a very long recoil, something that the small size of a Sherman turret would not be able to accomodate.  

As to the main question, I think one important factor is "which version of the Sherman are we starting with?"  An easy eight is going to have a lot more upgrade potential than an early M4A1 with 75mm gun turret.  

Not the best quality picture, but proof that Santa traded his sled for a M46 Patton.

3 hours ago, Lord_James said:

 

It does say this was published 1989, so the info might not have been available at that time? 

It was, they just made some mistakes.  The Teledyne Continental engine nomenclature was widely known at that point.  Heck, the basic AVDS-1790 went into service in 1960.  Hunnicutt's book on the Patton series of tanks was published in 1984, so they really don't have an excuse.  

On 12/20/2018 at 3:53 AM, delfosisyu said:

6

Not to be fussy or anything, but there are some errors in this text.  It should read "AVCR-1790 diesel engine, not "AVCT-1790."  AVCR stands for Aircooled, variable compression piston.  Also, where it says "AVCT-1790", it should say "AVDS-1790".  AVDS stands for Air-cooled Vee configuration Diesel Supercharged.  Also, while I know about the Teledyne Continental "Super M60" program, I have never heard of the "General Dynamics High Performance M60 MBT project."  General Dynamics had zero interest in upgrading the M60 and really disliked the fact that Teledyne Continental had created the Super-60 because it was considered unwelcome competition to General Dynamics Abrams tank in the time period addressed in the book.

Anyhow, the AVCR-1790 took the variable compression ratio technology developed for the ill fated AVCR-1360 engine of the MBT-70 and General Motors rejected XM-1 prototype and applied it to the older AVDS-1790 engine of the M60 series.  The introduction of VCR to the 1790 got the engine up to 1200 HP, although from what I understand, the prototype suffered a pretty serious failure during testing in South Korea.  Teledyne abandoned the AVCR-1790, replacing it with the AVDS-1790-9, which achieved 1200HP by introducing aftercoolers to the turbochargers with conventional pistons.  Incidentally, Teledyne Continental promotional materials for the Super M60 list either engine, depending on what date they were published.  The AVDS-1790-9 would go on to see service in the Israeli Merkava III and the Namer APC.

10 hours ago, whelm said:

 

 

Are those real photos of Herr Speer in a Sherman tank? 

Defying Trump, US Senate votes to end US support for Yemen war

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/defying-trump-senate-approves-yemen-resolution-181213201629972.html

Something for @Toxn

Somewhat surprisingly, I think this is one of the best of the Tank Museum Top five videos and one of the best videos that Richard "The Challenger" Cutland has done.   Probably because he is speaking about his personal experiences with these vehicles in the video.