Jeeps_Guns_Tanks

I dug out The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, and have started it again.

Thomas E. Ricks pointed out in his book called 'The Generals' that post Korea, where the army really had some problems, and much of it leadership problems, went 'corporate'. Specifically Former CEO of GM, William Whyte wrote a book called 'The Organization Man', a book about the greatness of the American Corporation, and his book and ideas became very big with the Army. With it came the micromanagement the US Army took into Vietnam and is even worse about now, and they left behind relieving senior officers for anything less than a public scandal.

Open beta is here, no more wipes!

I like turtles!

I worked for a tech company for about 13 years, and for most of them, the Q/A (software testing) department got about two thirds of its staff from Germany as paid interns from various German colleges. The company put them up in apartments close to the office, paid them enough to live on and have some fun, and kept them in house for six months. I was in the support department, and we sat in the cube block right next to the QA section. The company also had offices in Germany and France, and we often hosted our support counterparts from Germany and France. I worked with one French and one Germany guy for over ten years, seeing them about three times a year, but doing conference calls once a week. So for having never gone to Germany myself, I've met more than my fair share of young German dudes. My cubicle was kind of an office land mark. When I started the job, I was just ending my boo stage, but had not discovered how truly great the Sherman tank was. I even had a copy of Deathtraps in my cube, along with a bunch of 1/18 scale 21stCentury toys tanks and airplanes in my cube. I had a Panther, Tiger, Sherman, and M48A3 for tanks, plus, a Corsair and P-38 and a bunch of other toys in there, so they would always come by and look the stuff over. None had any interest in the German tanks or any nationalist feelings for Germany at all. None knew anything about the German Army, or Air force of WWII, and had nothing kind to say at all about Nazi Germany. They all liked FPS Shooters though, and we would all get together once a week for a night of BF Vietnam or BF2. Most of them were fascinated with guns, and between the Americans in the Q/A department, and a few of us in support we had pretty big range of guns. I had a lot of range time paid for by German interns, and put a lot of rounds through my guns letting them shoot. Some had served in the German military, but none had been really shot guns. A number of them liked it enough to go multiple times. Most went back with a changed view on American gun ownership. Not a single boo in the crowd, it’s why Boos like HansZulu are so special, since he claims to be a genuine real life German, German, from Germany.

Great photos Tied, but I think this one is captioned wrong. That's no M4A3 105, it's just an M4A3 75mm wet hull Sherman, the ultimate final production 75mm Sherman, you can just make out the oval loaders hatch. The all-around vision cupola is a give away as well. This tank was most likely made by Fisher; it is not a CDA tank (Chrysler), the only ones to make the 105 tanks, because it has non 'fancy' sprockets. The gun also looks like a M3 75mm gun, since it has a clear taper and flare at the end. Also, I'm not 100% sure on this, but I don't think the Marines got 105 tanks until post war.

The public test server has been very fun, I hope the Atago is going to be on sale when the game comes out, cause that thing is sweet!

Yeah, they were saying a failure every 240 shots under testing conditions. I wonder how much it will cost if they have to tear out the new electromagnet cats and funky recover gear and put the proven stuff in…

Foxtrot Alfa has had a few stories on how unreliable the new cats are. I wonder how many F-35s and F-18s are going to go swimming.

I have no information on that, anything you want to post would be great! Great stuff, If you don't mind, I'll throw them into the word doc after they are the way you want them and credit you for the section. And man, I feel shamed now, you have source notes!

I'm at 150 plus real battles, so no problem there. The changes in the upcoming version sound interesting. How much longer to open beta do you guys think we have?

So this weekend looks interesting on Ships. Is it me or is the Furutaka like the worst cruiser ever? And has it confirmed once open beta starts you won't lose progress again?

Thanks for the SIG!! More with Shermans doing cool stuff would be cool. X6 times bigger! But still a midget!

Yeah, Estes isn't thinking about the audience, this is not focused for people at some armor convention with real historians; it's aimed at the dumbasses that he has to deal with all the time, the WOT community. The 5/1 myth is alive and well in the WOT community. If Ken was a regular on the WOT forums, he wouldn’t have made some of the complaints, though he was right about the venue.

YES

I had one of those Tamiya Catalogs, we had a friend of the family who had a little hobby shop and ordered it for me, this was probably like 87. It still had all their classic RC cars like the Frog, Hornet, Fox and Bruiser, the only RC tanks were the 1/16 Gepard and Leopards. They had just come out with their 1/350 ship line, I got their 1/350 New Jersey, the modern version for Christmas, but they had a big line of ships in that scale, Bismarck, Yamato, king GV, etc. They had a ton of 1/35 kits in the catalog and a bunch of dioramas, like a huge burned out factory in Russian diorama. This was well before their push on 1/48 armor. Sadly they still sell most of those 80s kits without updates.

Alternate name: The Peacock Mantis Shrimp kicks crab ass.

Nah, by that time I was a 12 or 13 year old Tamiya snob. Though I did build some Hasagawa planes, and a few ventures into the 1/24 scale airfix kits. I didn't get into tanks until a bit later but really only built Tamiya Armor. When I started back up in the like in 05, I built a pait of Tamiya kits, an M4 Ic firefly in 1/48 and an M26 Pershing in 1/35. Both very nice kits, though the Sherman kit lacks sponson bottoms. The M26 had spring loaded suspension and was a very nice kit, but still had molded closed periscopes. What got me back into the whole thing was going a little nuts and dropping like 800 bucks to build this. http://vid44.photobucket.com/albums/f47/gtora2/100_2218.mp4 A Tamiya full option 1/16 scale M26 Pershing and all the crap to build it. I hadn’t built a model since I was 14 or so when I bought this back in 05. After building this, I had dug out all my old model building stuff, and much of it was in good shape so I picked up the new plastic kits. This was the finished 1/35 M26 This is the Firefly. Both went together flawlessly and were easy fun builds. I moved onto Dragon Shermans, and they are harder to build, but look better when done than Tamiya Shermans.

Oh yeah, the old Sschool Monogram 1/48s were almost built yourself a toy, more than a "scale" model heh.

I was kind of bored and testing my Sherman identification chops going through Armored Attack 1945, and calling out the model, and a rough idea of when it was produced, and who produced it, in some rare cases. So when I got back to my desk I decided to see just how many flaws I could find in the WOT Sherman models. I don't know if this will make it into the Sherman Doc, but I figured it would be fine for the thread at least. Plus it's a shameless bump. The T5, US, M4. Well for starters, it’s got the fancy sprockets, I’m pretty sure only CDA used, and they never produced M4A1 tanks. Also, the second turret choice is wrong, they never put the T23 turret on small hatch M4A1s. They could have made the improved turret, a late model 75mm turret, with loaders hatch, and this would have made a more accurate model, and these turrets even got the M1A1 gun in post war modifications. The 105 gun was never mounted in a T23 turret, so that’s a glaring flaw. The 105 was also never mounted on a small hatch hull. The hull is a very production hull, since it has un-welded shut direct view ports for the driver and co-driver, but mid production suspension with the bolt on roller and skid. Other than those flaws, it’s a pretty model, and if you put the stock turret on, with the 75mm gun, it’s a decent sample of a late early production M4 tank. The T6, US, M4A3E8 This is a very old model in the game and it’s pretty ugly, it’s also decent for how ugly it is. The major flaw is having the 75mm and 105mm guns available in the T23 turret. They also could have made the stock turret the early T23 turret with the two large hatches, the all around vision copula for the commander and the old split commanders hatch for the loader. Then the improved version of the T23 turret should be the updated turret, and it should have the all around vision copula, and the oval loaders hatch. I hope they give the model an update or at least give it a cleaned up version of the Fury model. It’s still one of my favorite tanks in game. They could put together a pretty nice E8 from parts of all the updated models they’ve done. The T6, US, M4A3E8 Fury. A pretty good 76 E8. The only big flaws if you can even call them that since WOT isn’t WWII exclusive, but Fury was, so here goes. The ventilator between the front hull hatches has a cover. WWII Shermans did not have these covers. It has post war torsion bar engine hatch springs. I don’t think these made it into WWII either but I’m not 100% sure. The tracks were only used on post war E8 tanks. The T5, US, M4A3E2 Jumbo This model is nearly perfect now they that they updated it, that is if you keep it stock. As soon as you add the T23 turret or the M1A2 gun, it’s a fantasy tank. Also, the 105 was never put on the tank, but I have it on good authority it wouldn’t take much effort to mount. The T5, US, M4A2E4 This is another old and ugly model. The main flaw I can tell from the only photo I can see is it has to many fuel filler caps. Maybe one day this tank will get an update using the hull and turret from the Brit M4A2 tank model. It should be a really easy one to do. The T5, British, Sherman III This model suffers many of the same flaws as the US M4 model. The hull is more accurate, with the correct early suspension to go with the very early production M4A2 hull since it has all three hull machine guns and direct vision ports for the driver and co-driver. With the stock turret in place and the M3 75mm gun this is a very pretty model of a tank that may have fought at El Alamein. It does have a fancy sprocket, but there may have been an early Sherman producer other than CDA to use them, I’m just not positive. I’ll have to go study some more Son of a Sherman and the minutia site. This hull type never got the later T23 turret, and the Brits did not take many deliveries on 76mm tanks that had it. The ones they did take, they shunted off to the MED or gave them to the Poles and French. They could have handled this the same way the M4 could be fixed, eliminate the T23 turret. The T6, British, Firefly IC hybrid. As far as I can tell this model is nearly perfect, but only when configured in the final configuration with the final 17 pounder, and the improved turret. The stock turret, was rarely used with this hull, since this model uses the Hybrid M4 hull that uses a large hatch cast front portion and welded rear hull. The Brits really liked this version of the M4 for Firefly conversion since they already had a loaders hatch, so they didn’t have to cut one in, saving time. Plus of course the larger hull hatches were always nice. So in the when set up with the IC turret and 17 pounder gun, this model is one of the prettiest and most accurate in the game and the most accurate of the Shermans. Edit. Looking at this model again, there is a twist, it's using a recycled early turret with cheek armor welded on and the cut in hatch, but not the right one. I'll have to recheck this too...

I don't remember what the cost when I started out as a kid, but I bet it was around the same price, I remember having to save up to get Tamiya stuff, Testers, Monogram and Revel were all super cheap, but only their airplane kits were decent. I was a picky kid. Capitalists...

Yeah, exactly, you can buy the same old motorized panther and tiger kits, the only difference is you can tell the molds for the sprues have aged and nothing is as sharp, and there's lots of flash and hollow spots. I think its a dirty trick for them to throw together a Sherman kit with a slightly updated turret and a horrible dated 70s hull and call it a new release. Dragon makes the best Sheman kits on the market for the price, and you end up with all kinds of Sherman spare parts that interchange on all their Sherman kits and you get cool stuff like periscopes that can be shown open or closed and can be rotated as you please. They even have the inside details on the periscopes so you can have the hatches open and not have the open box that looks stupid on all Tamiya kit hatches. I have enough Sherman spare parts I could build just about any kind of Sherman I wanted with just about any Dragon Sherman kit. Tasca makes some nice Shermans too, but they are really pricey. Tamiya has produced some very nice modern kits, but they still hawk their old shit, and don't make it super clear what you’re getting unless you know their history. Though you should know your getting a shitty kit when its only 20 bucks heh.

Tamiya has a habit of keeping very old kits in productions, and not fixing them in any way. That's the same basic Sherman kit they have had out since the late 80s early 90s, with maybe an updated turret sprue. It's really hard to tell from the pics, but I bet it has recessed weld lines on the hull, the biggest flaw in all the early Sherman kits. It stand out so much cause you just don't see war time pics of Shermans with full fenders, and if they have them at all they are dented all to hell.

Heh, yeah, I felt really bad for the crabs by the end.

I loves them so muchz! To mess with a guy I was training, who was super annoying because he never shut up, like ever, and would ask annoying personal questions, so I decided to mess with him, and talked about the Sherman for the whole 30 minute ride out to the job site with a non stop lecture on the Sherman and how great it was. It was glorious. This same asshole went on to miss 1/3 of his training period with various excuses, and then when we fired him, is now trying put in a fraudulent workman’s comp case against us. Funniest part about that, is he claimed he was injured the day after we fired him, so well after he stopped showing up. I got to talk to a PI for the insurance company for about an hour about it.