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Toxn

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Everything posted by Toxn

  1. Toxn
    Firstly: NERA. Secondly: the spec calls for 4 independent machine guns. This thing is dangerous to infantry regardless of whether it has explosive bricks on it or not.
  2. Toxn
    We always have this question (along with the inevitable exotic ceramics availability discussion) and it never amounts to anything in the end. NERA/ERA is just too good on a protection by weight basis to bother with inert inserts.
  3. Toxn
    Including tip inserts for long rods?
  4. Toxn
    Thanks both
  5. Toxn
    Thanks. Another question: what's the maximum weight a loader is expected to routinely lift? I'm scoping out armament and this gives me a handle on cartridge/shell weights.
  6. Toxn
    @Sturgeon trying to gauge the biases of the rangers/patrol et al - rifled vs. smoothbore guns?
  7. Toxn
    Fucking triggered... ... ... {puts on 37,854 litre hat} anyway, hope y'all enjoy dimensions specified in fractions of a yard.
  8. Toxn
    How is any of this incompatible with my supposition? Surely the Occam's razor approach would dictate that, if there were plenty of other Nazi forces in the area and the Soviets were not aware of taking losses from tanks, that the losses were mostly not from Nazi tanks? How do you square pinning all these losses on this one unit? Did the rest of the army just sit back for the day, while the Soviet tankers inexplicably started blaming panzerfausts for 88mm shell hits? And how does the Soviet diary not notice that their concentration point got sniped, and that the scouting party that they sent in later in the day apparently all had T-34s?
  9. Toxn
    That's not a thesis, it's a vague wish. What do you think actually happened? The Nazi account has tigers ambushing a huge force of IS-2s and T-34s as they mass for an assault on the morning of 19 April 1945, in the area around Bellersdorf. Then, later in the day ("late afternoon"), the same force is attacked by "around 30" T-34s and then mauls that attack as well. Meanwhile, the Soviet forces in the area have them pressing an advance over the previous few days, then overrunning the position on the 19th. They don't seem to notice the Tigers operating in the area, and it doesn't slow them down at all. Now the second account is obviously true in terms of movement and casualties - you simply can't lie about your own movements and losses on an ongoing basis (such as a unit diary) without it becoming really obvious at some point. So the question becomes about how you can reconcile the contradiction of a unit taking a mauling that should have stopped their advance dead versus the unit itself neither stopping or noticing that they were the targets of special attention by an enemy heavy tank unit. As I've said, you don't seem to have laid out a coherent thesis at all here, so the following is simply my first impression. But from where I stand the most likely account is that Nazi tiger 2s were operating more or less in the area (a few got knocked out in the process, it seems), did a day's work for a heavy tank unit on the defensive, and then came home to have their exploits bundled up for propaganda purposes while the position itself got overrun.
  10. Toxn
    Okay, firstly this is slightly fetishistic and creepy. Secondly, what's your thesis here? So Korner's claims are fiction, but the 'core' of the story is real and heroic. What's the core here? That a bunch of Nazi units inflicted losses on leading Soviet units (without holding up the advance in any way) and that some of these units had Tigers? That the losses were disproportionate over and above the amount expected by a force on the defensive operating out of prepared positions? What's the actual event that you're cheering for here?
  11. Toxn
    Which is of course why Soviet forces in the area overran the position that that unit was based at and then complained about anti-tank guns and panzerfausts. It all makes perfect sense so long as you ascribe every single lost vehicle to tigers that can magically shift position by 100km.
  12. Toxn
    I can't talk to the metallurgy beyond an amateur level, but my impression is that the juice just isn't worth the squeeze when considering these ultra-expensive, ultra-high-strength steels. Even a TE of 2 versus RHA doesn't get you all that much when a) it's going to have to go over an RHA backing and lose some efficiency in the process, b) any repair work becomes a chore due to it not being easily cut, welded or otherwise worked without ruining the secret sauce and c) the TE of reactive elements is higher still. The result is, I think, that super-steels remain a niche item on armored vehicles - reserved for those few places where you absolutely cannot do it any other way.
  13. Toxn
    You're ignoring the part where critical mass founds his argument on the Soviet losses of that entire part of the front for that day, then elides his way into the two numbers being similar and that therefore Korner's account is somehow legit. Peter goes into this at length.
  14. Toxn
    I think my favourite Western front moment is when the Nazis pulled some Wimp Lo shit, got their noses bloodied in the battle of the bulge and then decided that it was a tactical victory which slowed down the allied advance.
  15. Toxn
    Fixed.
  16. Toxn
    I think "Yes, Minister" had the pithiest answer to this conundrum.
  17. Toxn
    More like killed a bunch of Germans. And encircled German armies. And darkened German skies with long-range aircraft. Reliability and availability (ie: numbers at the fight, on the move, pressing the advantage) are more or less the sina quo non of industrial warfare.
  18. Toxn
    Seconding @Beer here; Pershing and Cent both look to have bulkier, more rigid drive housings. Also seconding the point about materials: if you know the issue and have space to work with, you can make chunkier components out of pot metal and still have them work to a point. Panther was just all tapped out in terms of margins. More or less from the get-go.
  19. Toxn
    Yup. I mean, it seems plausible. But the source...
  20. Toxn
    What can one do when your tribe has hunted its prey to extinction... Guess we should start farming 'em.
  21. Toxn
    Not so much, at least not yet. My understanding is that it's mostly German, American and Scandinavian stuff for mine work and road freight. Light duty trucks seem to be mainly Japanese, but with more and more Indian and Chinese vehicles appearing.
  22. Toxn
    I'm not saying they were great at putting those lessons into practice...
  23. Toxn
    And partly because Stg-44 is overrated, right?
  24. Toxn
    That's bureaucratic cost-saving for you: penny-wise but pound-foolish. They'd have been better off melting down all the old junk and scrapping Estienne's smart idea, but how do you sell that to the higher-ups?
  25. Toxn
    Losing an entire generation will do that to you. Don't forget that the French suffered proportionately the same casualties as the Germans (2.9% of their total population, nearly all young men) and did so entirely on their own soil. And all so that they could come back to a depressed economy and a crumbling empire. I think the big lesson here is "don't fight on your own soil", which explains a lot of their planning and conduct. The other big lesson being, of course, that if you are going to fight the Germans in France, for God's sake do it close to the border and defensively.
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