Priory_of_Sion

Was there any proposals to increase firepower of the S tank or was Sweden betting on all of the Soviet MBTs being on mainland Europe and decided that the 105 was good enough?

A dozen Su-24s will obviously change the balance of power between Argentina and the UK & Allies. Checkmate limeys. 

Wilhelm had sideburns, not a beard goddammit. Does Germany have any idea about facial hair terminology? 

That was not bad, not bad at all. This is coming from someone who listens to stuff like this: 

Female vocalists are usually misses for me, but the Pierces have really smooth vocals that just feels right. 

Plums are the superior fruit. Kiwis are close 2nd.

I really enjoyed the movie "John Carter (of Mars)" and maintain that it is a far superior science fiction flick than the contemporary movie "Dances with Smurfs" (Avatar) in terms of acting, plot and not being a hypocritical anti-corporate, environmentalist, anti-American screed.

My wife, who is an even bigger sci-fi fan than I particularly like Woola, the dog monster who very closely resembles one of our Akitas.

With that said, I'm looking at the complete Edgar Rice Burroughs single-volume set on the bookshelf and I'm ready to take the plunge.

The John Carter movie was also suppose to be a documentary according to Richard Hoagland, who is in the same boat as Mike Sparks. The more you know.

I own that book. It was in one of those give a book, take a book piles. It is rather fantastical with implausible theories covering a dozen or so scenarios. It's in my "two move" boxes of books that are lingering at my folks' place as we pare down stuff at my new place.

If I recall, the most plausible one was if the Japanese had foregone the sneak-attack on Pearl Harbor and engaged the American Fleet as it steamed east to relieve the Phillipines, sinking the American battle fleet in the open sea where they'd be irrecoverable.

There would have to be a bunch of circumstances for the Japanese to win such a battle outright.

Got two books over the holidays. One on Napoleon(older book), the other is more of a pop history book on strange WWII factoids and stories. Decent so far.

Actually, I have toyed around with the idea of making a "Truth about the Sherman Tank" video.  The organization I work at includes the local cable access channel, so I have plenty of access to video production equipment.  There is an M4A3 on display outside an American legion a few miles from my house that would make a nice shooting location. 

I vote that Walter is the lead investigator/narrator if the project goes ahead. 

I am willing to assist in doing this. I can edit and proofread scripts.

That would be helpful. Maybe we can better organize this in 2015. 

Is there anyone willing to make a video that could be produced that addresses the misconceptions about the M4? I'd be more than willing to provide information to help out. I think a major reason why there is so much Sherman-hate is because there are videos on it that people don't have to read and making a video could be much more informative to someone would can't read past a 2nd grade level. It would also make responding just a video. I don't make videos though. 

I believe it was the lack of knowledge of armored warfare by the American populace that started the "M4 is bad" narrative. 

Tanks, before WWII, were armored landships that could pulverize anything in its sights and remain invulnerable. News reports were horribly inaccurate at describing these machines and would regularly use hyperbole in describing their might.

Here is an except from the Australian Morning Bulletin which can be representative of American newspapers.

 GERMANS PRAISE SHERMAN TANKS

LONDON, June 17.-The Stockholm correspondent of "Aftonbladets" says: "A message from Berlin says that General Guderian. Hitler's foremost Panzer expert, is so impressed with the American Sherman tank, that he has created a special regiment of captured Shermans to experiment as to the best means of combating them.German experts praise the Shermans without reserve.'

Since the M4 wasn't what the public thought what a tank should be, it was criticized for being weakly armed and armored once information about their destruction was disseminated overtime.

Death Traps by B. Cooper and associated TV programs have helped spread the narrative as well to a much wider audience nowadays. 

We should know better though. Here's a quick run down.

Firepower: The M4's firepower was on par with the most powerful vehicles in combat in 1942. The M3 75 mm could realistically knock-out anything it came across from nearly any angle. Once heavier tanks arrived on the battlefield, some M4s were uparmed to 76 mm guns by the Americans and uparmed by the Brits to the 17 pdr. Armor penetration by these guns were adequate in their AT role which comprised of ~15% of a tank's combat role. 

Soviet Reports: 75 mm vs. Tiger    76mm(and other calibers) vs. German Armor

Chieftain's Articles: US Guns, German Armor pt.1    pt.2   US Firefly Tests+

Armor: Armor was nearing 90 mm of effective armor from thickness/cos(slope) but higher velocity German guns started to be very common and this did not bode well. However, one could expect high casualties from nearly any AFV due to the majority of hits occurring on the sides of the vehicle. Frontally, the M4 had decent protection and would bounce 75 mm rounds on occasion. M4s had decent survivability against handheld AT weapons and mines. 

Crew Safety: Small hatches and poor ammo storage meant that many M4s succumbed to fires(~80% burn rate) and might have led to the M4's dubious nicknames. However larger hatches were added to later models and better ammo storage brought burn rates in some US units around 15%. For every M4 KO'd there was on average 1 death and 1 injury. This is comparable to other tanks of the period. 

Mobility: Thin tracks on the M4 meant that it had somewhat lackluster mobility on soft terrain, but was decent on most terrain. The M4, however was a 

very strategic tank. The ability for M4s to be built in Detroit and fight on 4 different continents in large numbers in a quick amount of time shows one of the M4's true strengths. 

Reliability: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Adaptability: The M4 was shoehorned into dozens of roles and it performed each of them well. Tank Destroyer, Amphib, Howitzer, Assault Tank, SPG, Engineering Vehicle, etc. 

Postwar variants showed the M4 to be a viable weapon platform up into the 1970s with Israel. Chile had M4s in its arsenal until 2002. 

Combat Record: Arracourt? M4s routinely beat "superior" formations of Panthers. 3rd and 4th ADs had what seems to be a 3.6:1 ratio against Panthers. There are only few instances where American M4s were soundly beaten, and this can be attributed to poor tactics and not the tanks themselves. Instances of German triumphs, such as Villers Bocage and Barkmann's Corner, in the West have been called into question over their authenticity. 

There are some problems with such placement of autocannons - their recoil can create a force, that can turn a turret by some degree, screwing up accuracy. Question about vulnerability to artillery shells fragments, small arms fire, collisions with terrain are also serious for externally mounted weapons.

I did not know that recoil of an autocannon could be that impactful. All the others are sorta obvious risks, but I think you could expect minimal problems with good placement and armoring. 

"The peaceful protest by Greenpeace in the area of the Nazca lines was to demonstrate the impacts of climate change and honour the historical legacy of this town who learned to live with the environment without affecting it,"

I really don't see how desecrating ancient art achieves either of these purposes. It just seems like a very tacky way of getting attention. On the bright-side, it wasn't a stunt by History Channel to promote Ancient Aliens. 

Do the externally mounted autocannons even count as coaxial guns? I would have no objection to the mounting of such a weapon outside the turret while maintaining a smaller MG as the coaxial gun. 

I'd like to think that a 7.62 MG would be better than a heavier MG or an autocannon. Since the vehicle should have plenty of main gun rounds to sling, dealing with enemy AFVs should be done with that. The smaller caliber coax would allow for more ammo storage compared to the heavier MG rounds, and it would take up slightly less interior space. It also seems that most modern tanks have a 7.62 mm coax(coincidence? I think not!). A heavy machine gun could be valid, but I'd like a little more ammo. 

DTIC comparing 7.62 MGs-> Attribute Analysis of the Armor Machine Gun Candidates

I also have to have my lame claim to fame. Astronaut Sonny Carter was friends of my grandparents who owned a locally famous BBQ restaurant. Carter requested that he had BBQ on STS-33, and NASA was charged $3.75 per lb of meat, compared to $8+ today.

There are no known side effects from bbq in space. It won't give you the farts.

To discuss a more modern Swedish AFV, the CV90120-T. Will it find a viable user? It would seem that it a very marketable vehicle among NATO and allied countries that would like to have an airliftable 120 mm gun platform. Russia has the 2S25 and China has the ZTQ which are roughly equivalent in role.

The CV90120T needs to be on one of those match-making reality shows.

 

Well, it matters in our scheme of things; how we understand the universe is important, and classification is a major tool for accomplishing that.

Agreed, classification makes information easier to learn and be built upon other knowledge already in those fields. Some arguing about minutia might seem pointless, but it is for the greater good. 

I think it would be interesting to see if another intelligent culture(i.e. ALIENS!) would classify things in a similar manner that we do today. I think you'd have to assume so on major classifications of things, but the differences in minutia would be fascinating. The problem with that though is the slim possibility that ALIENS! would give a hoot about us. 

 

Err, no, it's impossible.

 

Convergent evolution doesn't give you genetically identical solutions to the same problem, it gives you structurally similar ones that are only similar because of identical selective pressures.

 

For example, powered flight in birds requires huge flight muscles to power the lift stroke.  To anchor those flight muscles large keels have evolved on the sternum of at least two bird groups, living birds and the fossil enanthiornithines.  However, close inspection of the skeletal ontology of those keels show that they're subtly different, and their growth was driven by different genes.  Also, the configuration of the shoulder bones in modern birds and enantiornithines was completely different.

 

That's what you would expect to see in convergent evolution; similar, but nonetheless identifiable distinct structures.  You wouldn't see the exact same set of mutations that selectively modifies scales into hollow structures evolve twice.  Mammalian hair is also a modified scale, but it's quite recognizably different from a feather or a proto-feather.

 

It is possible that ornithiscian fuzz, feathers and ptero-fuzz are analogous and not homologous; the existing fossils don't preserve enough detail to say with certainty.  However, my suspicion is that they're all the same thing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The term "reptile" doesn't mean anything, in evolutionary terms.  Specifically, the term "reptile" is paraphyletic; it doesn't include all the groups descended from the common ancestor of all the members of the group.  The last common ancestor of crocodiles and birds lived more recently than the last common ancestor of crocodiles and and lizards.  If you expand past crown reptiles, the ancestors of mammals are referred to as reptiles, but mammals are not.

And unless dinosaur phylogeny has completely been turned on its head since I last checked, sauropods and theropods are both saurischians, and thus more closely related to each other than to ornithiscians.

 

 

Bird-of-paradise tyrannosaurus isn't parsimonious; tyrannosaurus is inside the clade of animals that has feathers, but outside the clade that has fancy flight feathers with asymmetrical, locking barbules and all that.

 

There was some attempt to analyze fossilized microstructures and figure out the colors therefrom, but I don't know if the methodology was considered solid.

 

I have realized by understanding of the origins of the avemetatarsalia isn't as good as I thought it was. I am conceding that feathers were likely on all dinos. 

I've never had a conversation with people who could explain the paraphyletic status of repitles, I knew that even though I've never heard the term before. It does clear up my understanding. 

Got the cladogram wrong in my head. FORGIVE ME!

I'm not arguing that a vibrantly colored Tyrannosaur is wrong, it just implies much about the way it likely would have behaved. A olive-drab colored creature is going to behave differently than a creature that looks like its from Mardi Gras. The way it hunts, mates, and interacts with other animals is very dependent on the appearance of the animal. 

Evolution works by random mutations of DNA getting borked by transcription errors, ionizing radiation and teratogenic chemicals in such a manner that the borked DNA actually does something useful.

 

The odds of feathers evolving twice are astronomical.

Over the course of ~150 million years the chances are not too small. Also feathers would have to be evident in some of the first Triassic dinosaurs like herrerasaurus. 

If T. rex were a tank or a rifle or an airplane, this would be the correct stance. Just because many designs by one designer have a certain feature does not mean another design does. Until you have direct evidence that it did have said feature, you cannot make that assumption.

Evolution does not work this way. Traits are heritable from one type to the next. Strange as it sounds, the absence of a feature in one type that was present in its ancestors does not represent a "default" condition, it represents an active mutation.

T. rex's ancestors had feathers. T. rex had feathers, until we can prove they did not.

One does not reconstruct multituberculate mammals without fur. They are mammals; it is obvious that they had fur, unless there's reason to believe they didn't.

Cladistically speaking, birds are dinosaurs, dinosaurs are not birds. But human brains are weird and there's a lot of sludge we've accumulated over time from repeated exposure to Godzilla-esque pop culture "Terrible Lizards", and to help clean all this out, you should chant this mantra over and over until you are seeing feathered dinosaurs in your sleep:

Birds aren't dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are birds.

That does make sense. 

I'll disagree that dinosaurs are birds since the line is still blurry and dinosaurs came from archosaurs which are undoubtedly reptiles. For example, sauropods seemed to evolved before the common ancestor of theropods and ornithischians and therefore before the evolution of the feather if there was a singled feathered ancestor. 

OK, having read the relevant passage... I don't think that guy knows what he's talking about from an ontological standpoint.

 

Birds still have scales; look at their feet.  This isn't some weird evolutionary reversal; feathers are just highly modified scales, and birds still have the genes to make scales.

 

So, those tyrannosaur skin patches showing naked scales could just happen to come from the parts of the tyrannosaur that were covered in scales.

 

The one thing that is unlikely, based on what I've read and don't completely understand about the ontology, is that you can't really have feathers on top of scales.  There's some sort of genetic switch, and you can't really overlay feathers on top of scales in birds (presumably this worked the same way in dinosaurs).

I'm not sure of his point that tyrannosaurs were completely featherless, but rather the amount of feathers on the animal. To draw up a Tyrannosaur with a fuzzy underbelly would be different from a Tyrannosaur looking like a bird-of-paradise. 

Here is a quote by some dweeb paleontologist on the matter. "“There is no empirical evidence that tyrannosaurids had feathers, and artists have no business decking them out with plumage until the day comes when a tyrannosaurid is found with feathers.” He also argues that unpublished findings from imprints of tyrannosaur relatives(Albertosaurus?) indicate scaly skin. 

I do think the fuzzy tyrannosaur is the much more likely scenario, it is not definitive.  

​It is also needed to know when did feathers evolve and did they just evolve from a single common ancestor. If multiple species developed feathers at multiple points over the Mesozoic then a feathered ornithischian doesn't have to indicate that ceratopsians were feathered. Feathered sauropods would mean that feathers dated back to the Triassic were protosauropods evolved. 

I don't think there is proof that later tyrannosaurs were feathered, it is just their earlier cousins. While I think the feathers are possible, the scaly T Rex cannot be disregarded as it is possible that feathers were lost in the evolution of T Rex or that it lost feathers as it gained maturity. 

Now raptors, there is enough evidence to show that they had feathers. Deinonychus should only be known as a feathered animal, not a scaly one and can we please give it its proper name in movies?

The Manhattan Project gets all the glory(it deserves it), but the Soviets quickly developed their own atomic weapons. They had some help through espionage, but I think it might be another piece of McCarthyism to dismiss Soviet atomic scientists. 

Here is a post on the Nuclear Secrecy Blog on the early program. Good insight, but not the end-all-be-all of information on the subject. 

A Model of the First Lightning/Joe 1 bomb?

Silkworm's just a hopped-up P-15 right? Shouldn't be too hard for any modern CIWS system.

Yeah, but you always want to have a little more time to react if you're being fired upon even if the risk isn't that great. You also don't know exactly what other ASMs the enemy(which could have more advanced weaponry than North Korea) could have, and being at range would help survivability a great deal.