Walter_Sobchak
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Everything posted by Walter_Sobchak
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Well, he is dead now. Anyhow, you should save your anger for the ghostwriter who actually wrote the book, Mike Benninghof. As far as I know. he is mainly known for writing Role Playing Games.
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Robert Forczyk's "Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front 1941-1942: Schwerpunkt" Kindle edition only $1.99 on Amazon. Don't mind if I do.
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I picked up an english language copy of the Rolf HIlmes book earlier this year. My copy was $50, but I recently saw that there are some copies for $35 on Amazon right now. $35 is a bit of money for a book, but the HIlmes book has lots of interesting stuff in it. It's a bit dated but a lot of the information is still completely relevant.
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My dad was the program manager for the Teledyne Continental Humvee bid back when I was a kid. He was gone for over a month, stuck in Aberdeen Maryland when that competition was taking place. I remember being very upset when AM General won the contract, I was only ten years old at the time. News that the "Hummer" is being replaced makes me realize how much older I am now. I'm gonna guess that the humvee will hang around much longer than intended, much like the M113 seems to stick around, despite what the Army tries to do. At least one Israeli unit thinks highly of the Humvee.
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- wheeled deathtrap
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The Merkava, Israel's Chieftain?
Walter_Sobchak replied to Life_In_Black's topic in Mechanized Warfare
As I understand it, authors for Osprey are paid a fixed amount up front? Hopefully that means that internet piracy does not hurt the author financially (at least in the immediate sense.) -
And even more: American antitank guns were not much better than their tanks. The first “tank destroyers” used in North Africa were World War I– vintage, seventy-five-millimeter cannon mounted on half-tracks, whose quarter-inch armor was vulnerable to everything except small-arms fire. When one of the guns was fired broadside, its recoil often tipped the vehicle over. Harry Semmes, who had miraculously recovered from his head wound in the Argonne and fought under Patton in North Africa, said that in the presence of German tanks, the half-tracks had no alternative but to run like rabbits. How the hell does one fire "broadside" with gun that only has limited traverse?
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Allow me to continue: In the final analysis, tanks could be stopped only by better tanks. Planes could hurt tanks, but air superiority could never be assumed. In the Battle of the Bulge, German tanks struck with ferocious impact in weather that grounded the Allied air force. For the record, General Lesley J. McNair, who trained the American Army that fought in World War II, went to his grave denying this principle. “It is poor economy to use a $ 35,000 tank to destroy another tank when the job can be done by a gun costing a fraction as much,” he said in July 1941. Now, maybe I am a bit too sensitive, but it seems a poor choice to use the phrase "went to his grave" when talking about Lesley McNair. "Went to his grave" implies he hung on to his beliefs long after everyone else had changed their minds about an issue. McNair was killed by friendly fire during Operation Cobra in July of 1944, so he never really had much of a chance to look back and ponder tank tactics in the ETO.
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Its not a print book, it's a kindle only book.
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This paragraph is so wrong it will probably make Jeeps pull out his hair. In May 1940, with war raging in Europe, the entire U.S. Army could muster a mere 464 tanks, and these were parceled out to various infantry divisions. Only after the Nazis had demonstrated the awesome power of the armored division did the Army finally create one. The tanks produced for these divisions ranged from awful to mediocre. The M-3, known as the General Lee, was so badly made that even a near miss from enemy guns would spring rivets from its armor plate, sending them whistling around the interior of the tank like lethal bullets. Its eleven-inch track was too narrow, so it was easily mired by mud. The turret, perched on one side of the body, could not rotate a full 360 degrees, an almost unbelievable deficiency in a tank by that time. Its thirty-seven millimeter gun was a joke. The British improved the M-3 by adding a seventy-five-millimeter gun in a sponson; they named their version the General Grant. It was still quite inferior. Oh, and later he adds that: Air power and artillery also helped win tank battles for the Americans. Wittmann, for instance, perhaps the greatest German tank warrior of the war - with 119 victories on the Russian front alone - was killed in a carpet-bombing attack in August 1944.
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Holy hell, I bought it and am about a quarter of the way into it. Its terrible. I almost wonder if its a parody? It's like every bad stereotype of US WW2 tanks and Wehraboo wankery all rolled up in a blanket of poor writing and completely false facts. Lets marvel as just how wrong this paragraph is: Probably no incident in World War II demonstrated the stopping power of a superior tank as graphically as the exploit of Michael Wittmann, the commander of a Tiger tank who encountered a British armored column near Bayeux, France. Attacking alone, Wittmann and his crew knocked out the lead Sherman with his first shot and the last Sherman in the column with his second. Rumbling down the column, he proceeded to destroy nineteen Shermans, fourteen half-tracks, and fourteen Bren gun carriers in five minutes.
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Vehicles of the PLA: Now with refreshing new topic title!
Walter_Sobchak replied to Khand-e's topic in Mechanized Warfare
Interesting looking powerpack. I see they have moved away from the Russian practice of transverse mounted engines. -
My copy should be arriving in the mail next week.
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Anyone need a fully functional Chieftain?
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Watching that video, I thought about how ten years ago I had a beard and long hair and also a soviet tropical hat like the one Alex is wearing. Now I still have the beard, much less hair, and that old hat is a sweat stained mess on the top of the hat rack.
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link not working.
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At least they posed it next to some pretty flowers....
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The Soviet Tank Thread: Transversely Mounted 1000hp Engines
Walter_Sobchak replied to T___A's topic in Mechanized Warfare
IS-2 is still one of the most bad ass looking tanks ever. -
The outside would look somewhat convincing if they had a better gun barrel. It looks a bit like one of those conversions on a French infantry tank chassis.
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Surely that is some sort of demon toad. Kill it!
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If you want someplace closer to home to visit, how about Detroit?
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Bundeswehr Weasel and British Light tank Mark IV
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Least convincing Stug III vismod?
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How do you make the Rolls Royce Merlin engine even more awesome? Have it built by Continental Motors in Muskegon Michigan.
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From what I have read about Chechnya, it would not have mattered what sort of tank they had. The tactical handling of the vehicles was just plain terrible. Is if fair to say that it represented the lowest point in Russian military competence since the 1940 Finland war?
