Jeeps_Guns_Tanks

You want to squeeze that with the Jews, eh? ccc
"Battle of Arracourt" is, afaik, a recent invention of certain US authors in  desperate attempt to portray US tank units in a positive light. Likely part of a plan to sell books. Nobody, US army nor Wehrmacht called it so and the events are part of what is called "Lorraine campaign" in US historical literature.

We're trying, but that one dude just wont leave.

He knows full well he generalized to "Germans" to avoid confronting the fact that the Nazis were perhaps the most mendacious nation to have ever blighted the face of planet earth.
 
What's most amusing is that he sees this as some deft maneuver which he performed on us, instead of an amateur mistake that we're going to absolutely gobble him up for.
 
When we finally do drive him off the forum with his little rat tail between his legs, he'll tell himself he chose to leave because he got bored, but lying to himself won't help then, either.

This is also humble Nazi reporting... On 29th April 1945 Karl Körner from SS S.Pz.Abt 503 was awarded a Knight's cross for destruction of over 100 tanks in the past week including an encounter in which he claimed destruction of 39 tanks in  matter of several minutes (that was supposed to be part of an encounter in which his platoon of three Königstigers allegedly destroyed 11 IS-2 and 120-150 T-34 at once, i.e. roughly 3 brigades destroyed with 3 tanks). 
 
Not John Rambo, not even Topper Harley could do this. With all seriousness the only person ever walking this Earth capable of something like that is Chuck Norris and he's the only one. 
 
 

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.

Literally no one here cares what you would call it.
 
It was a bad design.
 
(Don't think I didn't notice the horrendous false dichotomy you threw in there - "it was a choice between being reliable and being combat effective". Bullshit that does not deserve to be addressed, like 80% of everything you say.)

As we discussed previously, the design itself was poor because it was known that the available materials were not up to the task. Spielberger says that a higher-strength steel was intended for the gears, but after this was "unexpectedly" replaced no alterations in the design were made (and depending on when this replacement occurred, alterations may have been impossible).
The report was from  Hauptmann Noak, commander of s.H.Pz.Jg.Abt.654, and was written on 24 July 1944, before the final drive improvements, to be fair.

Why yes, I do. Lets open it up. Nothing to suggest the incident in October 28th was anything but an above-average batch. Final drive complaints come back when fighting with the 654th picks back up in November.
 

I doubt it is possible to compare slope driving tests between each other due to difference in soil composition, weather etc.
 
M26 was rated to climb 27° gradient which isn't much but here the test states it was able to climb 35°, surprisingly more when usually it was less than the rating. Probably the conditions in the particular test were good (soil offering good traction mainly). I think that the value is very difficult to use for any comparison except for the situation when one has the tanks at the same time on the same place, unfortunately the article doesn't give values measured for the other tanks in the test.

I thought more about the limitation in track width, however it is noit specified in the article whether standard or extended tracks were used on the Sherman. 

The transmission is also excellent! 

Just my guessing but it might be an average speed including necessary breaks while the pure average speed might be taken only from time spent driving. 

Definitely unexpected results! Interesting assertion about the reduction gear preventing the Pershing's torque converter from slipping and that the Soviets found it performed well on slopes. In Marine Corps Tank Battles in Korea, Gilbert says, "The M26 was a powerful vehicle, but as the tank crews soon discovered, if it stopped on a steep gradient the transmission would slip, and it was difficult or impossible to get it moving again. Help was needed and Eugene Viveiros, who, with one of the Headquarters Platoon [Sherman] blade tanks, attached himself to the 3rd Platoon, was ready to supply it. He was called upon 'to pat them on the butt end with the blade of the 'dozer tank to shove 'em up and get 'em going again. Once they got traction, then they were all right,' Viveiros explained." Although at least some Army Pershings arrived in Korea in need of repairs or overhaul, these USMC tanks were in decent working order (despite a shipborne flooding mishap en route), so this wasn't a maintenance issue: in a discussion on the state of Korean Pershings over on TankNet Ken Estes said, "...the USMC [Pershings] were drawn from depots, with no miles...all the USMC WWII flame tanks and postwar M26s went from storage through the depot line before being shipped to the units."
 
Any idea what "average technical speed" means? Too bad the off-road test was cancelled; didn't General Fedorenko know that people would be arguing about these things on the Internet 80 years later??

Soviet evaluation of Pershing in summer 1945 gives some light to the previously discussed terrain speed of Panther and Pershing. The result didn't favour Panther... 
http://www.tankarchives.ca/2018/03/pershing-heavy-by-necessity.html
 
This is the measured average speed in comparison with other tanks on the same terrain track. Pershing was the fastest of them in this test mainly thanks to its torque converter. 
 
T26E3 - 18,9 km/h
T-44 - 17,5 km/h
M4A4 - 16,5 km/h
Panther - 15,8 km/h
IS-3 - 14,6 km/h
 
Fuel consumption on the same track however showed that the torque converter made it also very thirsty, basically same as Panther. 
IS-3 - 373 l/100 km
T-44 - 378 l/100 km
M4A4 - 503 l/100 km
T26E3 - 585 l/ 100 km
Panther - 595 l/100 km

I think it has to do with the drive sprockets meshing with the end connectors, which are also the guide teeth. You'd need an all new incompatible concept of track link design to fill both those functions while also being wider.
Such a concept is the track with central guide teeth used on the HVSS Shermans.

That entire site of yours is an absolute goldmine. I even got my profile pic from there.

If it doesn't count as spam, there are some pictures of the spaced-out suspension on a hybrid M4 here.

Not being a pro at all, just building some paper stuff for fun from time to time. 
 
Here a couple of 1:35 (T-30 and LT vz.38) and a couple of 1:50 (T-50 and P-26/40). 

 

If only any of their vehicles had had a turret ring worth talking about, something decent could have emerged before war's end.

Some of the French 40s and 50s prototypes had pneumatic roadwheels, and I wonder if that was influence from the German 'expertise' they agglomerated post war. They did after all, also build some interleaved suspensions at this time - as well as desperately tried to get the HL 230 family to work to spec.

So here's a question: is it better, without using interleaving or whatever, to have a few big road wheels or lots of little ones in terms of MMP? Here I'm going to ignore things like travel and have no spacing between the roadwheels.
 
For a 5m track contact length, 40t vehicle with the other specs kept the same (track width 0.6m, track pitch 0.15m), you find that ground pressure rises quickly and then tails off as the size of the road wheels decreases. This rapidly leads into diminishing returns: 25 axles with 20cm roadwheels gets you an MMP of 95KPa, 50 and 10cm road wheels gets you 67, and 100 axles with 5cm road wheels gets you 48.

If you restrict things further to sane territory (12-4 axles), on the other hand, you get the following:
12 axles/0.42m roadwheels: 137 KPa 11 axles/0.45m roadwheels: 143 KPa 10 axles/0.5m roadwheels:  150 KPa 9 axles/0.56m roadwheels:  159 KPa 8 axles/0.63m roadwheels: 168 KPa 7 axles/0.71m roadwheels: 180 KPa 6 axles/0.83m roadwheels: 194 KPa 5 axles/1.00m roadwheels: 213 KPa 4 axles/1.25m roadwheels: 238 KPa So in this part of the range the relationship is more or less linear. It's also clear that the easiest way to improve ground pressure, mutatis mutandis, is to pack as many wheels as possible onto a given length of track.
 
 

Now you've done it, this one post will give Delete enough evidence, he will never grow out of his Nazi Tank obsession. Thus never get laid, and never reproduce, or was that your plan all along???

Now you've done it, this one post will give Delete enough evidence, he will never grow out of his Nazi Tank obsession. Thus never get laid, and never reproduce, or was that your plan all along???

Since we got to the topic of the fortiffication cast elements in another topic I'm giving here what thickness of what in which resistance class was used and what those were supposed to withstand (by mid 1930' technology). I'm listing only what could be hit from enemy side. 
 
As mentioned elsewhere the known requirement for the steel was 550-700 MPa tensile stregth and ductility 14-17%. Per recent analysis of one cupola the hardness was 177 HV 30, i.e. 169 HB. The required compressive strength of the concrete was 450 kg/cm2, i.e. 44 MPa. Early object had less, some only around 30 MPa, later had often more, usually around 50 MPa. 
 
Light objects vz.36 were meant for frontal MG fire, vz.37 mostly for side fire but rarely also for frontal fire MG. Only one light object vz.37 for AT gun was built before Münich in Bratislava. Heavy objects mostly only for side direct fire and for indirect fire excluding cupolas and turrets which were to be used for frontal fire too (never installed). 
 
Light objects vz.36: To withstand 75 mm artillery 
- frontal walls: 50-60 cm of reinforced concrete 
- roof: 40-50 cm of reinforced concrete
- firing ports: 3 cm armoured steel shutter (I think that when this was designed Germany didn't have yet 75 mm AP shells) 
 
Light objects vz.37: To withstand 105 mm artillery or up to 155 mm in reinforced variant (quite numerous)
- frontal walls: 80 (120 reinforced variant) cm of reinforced concrete + 1 meter of stone wall + earth berm
 
Heavy objects (classes 1-III for isolated objects, IV for fortresses with more objects connected via underground network):
 
Class 1: To withstand frontal fire of 155 mm artillery
- frontal walls - 120 cm of reinforced concrete + 3 meters of stone wall + earth berm
- roof - 100 cm of reinforced concrete
 
Class 2: To withstand frontal fire of 180 mm artillery
- frontal walls - 175 cm of reinforced concrete + 3 meters of stone wall + earth berm
- roof - 150 cm of reinforced concrete
- armoured cupolas (usually observation with LMG) - 15 cm of steel 
 
Class I: To withstand frontal fire of 210 mm artillery
- frontal walls - 175 cm of reinforced concrete + 3 meters of stone wall + earth berm
- roof - 150 cm of reinforced concrete
- armoured cupolas (usually observation with LMG) - 15 cm of steel 
 
Class II: To withstand frontal fire of 280 mm artillery (most numerous variant), however the test object allegedly survived a direct hit of 305 mm on the roof
- frontal walls - 225 cm of reinforced concrete + 4 meters of stone wall + earth berm
- roof - 200 cm of reinforced concrete
- armoured cupolas (usually observation with LMG) - 20 cm of steel 
 
Class III: To withstand frontal fire of 305 mm artillery 
- frontal walls - 275 cm of reinforced concrete + 4 meters of stone wall + earth berm
- roof - 250 cm of reinforced concrete
- armoured cupolas (observation with LMG, single or twin HMG) - 30 cm of steel 
 
Class IV: To withstand frontal fire of 420 mm artillery 
- frontal walls - 350 cm of reinforced concrete + 4 meters of stone wall + earth berm
- roof - 350 cm of reinforced concrete
- armoured cupolas (observation with LMG, single or twin HMG) - 30 cm of steel (deeper and placed upon steel base)
- artillery retractable turret - 30-35 cm of steel for the movable part and up to 45 cm for solid armour around (never installed)
 

A bit about the God of War. With Czechoslovak artillery it was exactly opposite than with the airforce. The artillery was very strong and had many very potent weapons, nearly all of them were local design and production. The guns were also widely exported. The field army had some 80 artillery regiments with over 2200 pieces (not counting any fortification guns or auxilliary units). As with most of other weapons large part of them (plus huge ammo stocks - and actually also hundreds of thousands Sudeten Deutsche soldaten) sadly presented a massive gift for the Wehrmacht. A bitter aftermath of Münich. 
 
10 cm Light howitzer vz.14/19 (towed by horses). Very well known weapon used by nearly everyone in the central Europe and during WW2 by Wehrmacht and Italy. In 1938 Czechoslovakia had around 600 pieces. Wehrmacht got 400+, Slovakia 180+. Together with Polish and Austrian ones Wehrmacht later had around 1000 pieces. 

 
10 cm light howitzer vz.30 (for motorized units and so called fast divisions). Very modern weapon for its time based on export Yugoslav model but widely modified for domestic use (not always in the better way due to various compromises such as necessity to allow use of older ammo for vz.14/19). 160+ guns were available in 1938. It was later successfully used by Wehrmacht and Slovakia. The only preserved piece is in USA.  

 
10 cm light howitzer vz.38 (for mechanized units). This modern weapon was never fielded despite it was addopted but too late - the complete order (260 pieces) was canceled after Münich. As with the previous gun it was again based on successful export models F and H (Yugoslavia, Romania, Iran, Latvia, Afghanistan). Germany took 84 guns made for Latvia and sold 57 to Romania and 27 to Finland. Those 27 Finnish guns officially fired 75 thousand rounds during the war and served successfully till 1970'. The prototype of the Czechoslovak version (H3) is on display in Lešany museum near Prague together with one Finnish piece (a place sure worth visiting). 

 
15 cm heavy howitzer vz.15 (usually towed by heavy tractors). This gun was already rather obsolete by 1938 but 40+ pieces were still used. The guns were taken over by Wehrmacht and used on the western front and a half was later sold to Finland. It's on display in Lešany. 
 
 
15 cm heavy howitzer vz.14/16 (for horse traction). Well known weapon of the WW1. Czechoslovakia used some 180 pieces built after WW1 and they were used till Münich. Hundreds of these guns were used by Italy, others by Austria, Romania, Greece etc. Wehrmacht took around 100 pieces and used most of them in Austrian units which were used to the same weapon. The gun is preserved in Lešany. 

 
15 cm heavy howitzer vz.25 (for horse traction). Czechoslovak army had 340 pieces of this rather light and potent weapon (still pretty good by late 30'). Werhmacht and Slovakia successfully used them till the end of war. You can see this gun in Lešany as well. 

 
155 mm heavy howitzer vz.15/17. This well known French gun was a stop-gap solution in 1919 when the army badly needed whatever it could get to fight the so-called Hungarian Soviet Republic (which was defeated by Romanian and Czechoslovak forces and ceased to exist the same year). Czechoslovakia had 50 pieces but all of them were retired by 1937. Maybe Wehrmacht got them from some storage but there is no record about that. Anyway it used plenty of these guns from French and Polish stocks. 

 
15 cm heavy howitzer vz.37. This weapon was arguably the best of its class by late 30' but as with many other weapons of Czechoslovak production it was largely exported (series K) but not used by the Czechoslovak army itself. When the army decided to addopt this weapon used already by Turkey, Romania or Yugoslavia it was hesitating that long about its modifications (for example whether it prefers a variant for motorized or horse traction) that the first guns were delivered only after Münich. Wehrmacht took a whole batch of 110+ pieces and used them till the end of war. Some sources say that Germany originally signed an order for another production but a lobby from German companies led to its cancelation. The Czechoslovak variant of the gun is on display in Lešany museum.  

 
10 cm mountain howitzer vz.16/19. This weapon was successfully used during the WW1 and extensively modernized by Czechoslovakia in 1920'. It was being transported disassembled into three pieces and with the overall weight 1350 kg it could fire to nearly 10 km distance (the modernized version). It was widely used by Italy, Austria (later Wehrmacht) and in small numbers also by Slovakia and Greece. Czechoslovakia had 66 pieces of which 44 were modernized and dislocated mostly in the mountains of Slovakia. This gun is on display in Lešany. 

 
That's it for howitzers. I have omitted many prorotypes, some of which are on display in Lešany as well. Let's continue later with field guns.