Jeeps_Guns_Tanks

Other than the incredibly successful pincer movement the Nazi’s got themselves into when they went to war on 2-3 fronts, against 2 pier level (Russia and Britain) and one superior (USA) opponents? Successful insomuch that the person on the inside of the pincer is suppose to lose, right? 
 
But I’m sure you’re not talking about that, you’re talking about tactical maneuver, in which case I will remind you of: Arracourt, Stalingrad, Leningrad-Novgorod, Riga, Ruweisat ridge (part of first battle of El Alamein), the Falaise / Mons / Colmar pockets... the Nazi’s we’re outmaneuvered again and again, on all fronts, while they couldn’t do the same back due to highly immobile vehicles, many of which were using the inter leveled wheels. I would argue that their most maneuverable vehicles were the panzer 2, 3, and 4 (and derived vehicles) which didn’t have that overly complicated and maintenance intensive wheel system.

There is not enough known to me about what was the decisive factor. From a book I read the Kummersdorf comission allegedly recommended Pz.38(t) n.A. but Waffenamt selected Luchs. There could have been a lot of reasons for that (performance, lobbing, planning of supplier workload, Kniekamp's preference of his suspension design etc. etc.). We will likely never know. We only know that Luchs as a program failed. 
  
 
The only Škoda AFV design used by Germany was pre-war Pz.35(t). All those other Czechoslovak vehicles used by Heer or SS were designs of ČKD (BMM per Germans). Škoda was co-producer of ČKD vehicles but it was mainly occupied with various artilery. The only other Škoda design which made it to production during WW2 was the T21 medium tank. This tank was produced under a licence in Hungary as 40M Turán (with Hungarian armament) and the chassis was used for 43M Zríniy assault gun. Other Škoda WW2 AFV designs didn't make it past paper (WoT players know T25 tank but the only actually existing thing of it was the gun with the autoloader, the rest was only on paper). 
  
 
Based on various sources I read it was decided by the AFV comission on 4th October 1944 that all new light tracked vehicles will be built on 38 (d) chassis. 38 (d) was a modification of 38 (t) n.A. done by Alket and using Tatra air-cooled diesel engine instead of petrol ČKD/BMM ones (in fact two of five Pz.38(t) n.A. prototypes already had Tatra diesel). I don't think that it was because of Czech light tanks. It was IMHO because interleaved wheels where wrong idea especially from production and mainteanance point of view and also because of the ever planned optimization of the AFV production - to have high level of standardization and to use best the Czechoslovak factories which were largely unaffected by Allied strategic bombing (the first successful air raid on Škoda happened only in December 1944 and there were only two others following in April 1945, when it was irrelevant already, and ČKD/BMM was bombed (hard) only once at the end of March 1945). 
 
I think that it can be confirmed for example by the development of the never materialized successor of Sd.Kfz.251, the APC Kätzchen. The original design K1 by Auto-Union had Kniekamp's suspension. Later Auto-Union was ordered to test ČKD suspension as well (K2 prototype wa built). In the end the whole project was transefered to ČKD for redesign (and use of the diesel engine) but only a wooden mockup was built before the war ended. That happened despite the fact that in APC use the relative discomfort of the ČKD suspension was a signifficant drawback.  
 
For your information Surin's ČKD/BMM suspension was considered as one of three options also for the E-50 and 75. The final decision about which suspesnion would be used was never done. 

A lot of conjecture here on your part. Afaik, Pz.38 was kept in production due to the great need for armoured vehicles. You might have noticed that most numerous German tanks in 1940 were still Pz2s or earlier and were not considered adequate at the time. The chassis was evidently decent enough to enter the usual German vehicle lifespan cycle. But as a weapon platform.
 
The key to understanding Luchs is its off road mobility, the principal improvement over previous Pz2 at which Pz.38 was no better. Here comes in one of the advantages of overlapping wheels, the ability to traverse rough ground at high speeds, needed for a recce vehicle.

Sorry but you shall educate yourself a little bit because Pz.38(t) n.A. is different vehicle than Pz.38(t) just like Luchs is not the same vehicle as usual Pz.II. The "Neue Art" Pz.38(t) is what later became the chassis for Jagdpanzer 38(t). Even the chassis is not completely same as of Pz.38(t) albeit it looks same. The "Neue Art" had much larger and twice stronger engine (from V-8-H aka ST vz.39 medium tank) than the original Pz.38(t) while having only some 1,7-1,8 t more. It reached up to 75 km/h during testing in Kummersdorf. The power to weight ratio was 21,1 Hp/t while Luchs had only 15,2 Hp/t. Unlike the original Pz.38(t) the "n.A." was fully welded. It was better armoured than Luchs while having slightly lesser weight (up to 50 mm on gun mantlet) and it had much stronger armament (37 mm A19 gun - again different gun than in the original Pz.38(t). It had even reasonably better ground pressure than Luchs with its Kniekamp suspension (0,06MPa for the "n.A." and 0,08 MPa for Luchs) and could climb much higher obstacle (1,08 m for "n.A." and 0,6 m for Luchs). Luchs had an advantage of having more comfortable torsion bar suspension, better ground clearance and more crew space in the turret (likely because of the tiny gun it had), that is true but in the end history tells that Luchs ended as a failure. 
 
After all the Germans decided in late 1944 that future light tracked vehicles shall be built on Pz.38(t) n.A. and preferably on its diesel derivate 38 (d) chassis abandoning Kniekamp's interleaved wheels. 
 
 
 

I don't know why you think it was a nightmare to repair, replacement of springs was something that could be done at company repair workshops without much difficulty. As for taking up room inside the vehicle, the British actually praised this solution because it did not increase the height of the tank or require skirts like their own tanks had. Although the British always had a pretty complicated relationship with suspensions.

Actually I wonder, there is nothing stopping one from making a tank with both interleaved road wheels and a Christie suspension...

I know I am late here, but the loon wouldn't happen to be Ernst Kniepkamp would it? I know with the half-tracks and Panzer III he was directly the guy responsible for those elements - and the Tiger I work at Henschel was also his pet project of the time.
 
And wait, I have Forcyk's book.... and yep it is Kneipkamp. Head of all tank projects at the Wehrmacht, and had been the chief army engineer even before the Nazi takeover when it was the "Military Automotive Department". Even the tiny Kettenkrad has the interleaved wheels, and yep the patent on that is "E. Kneipkamp".

This has basically been my experience making bows, but red oak is an exotic luxury wood.

It makes no sense to compare MiG-23 with MiG-25. Those are planes of different category used for different tasks. MiG-23 replaced MiG-21 and it was much better than MiG-21 in everything with the exception of the initial MiG-23S batch with RP-22 radar and armamament from MiG-21 (and the cost) and the Arabic "monkey" export model MiG-23MS which had the RP-21 radar and armament from MiG-21. Also the other comparisons are strange... 
 
GSh-23L has muzzle velocity 715 m/s and it's much more interesting feature is its operating principle since it is one of the only two operationally used Gast-principle guns (where recoil of one barrel operates the other and gives the gun rather extreme rate of fire with a low gun weight). AFAIK only Soviet GSh-23L and GSh-30-2 work on this principle of all serially produced guns ever (although the idea comes back to WW1 Germany). When you write about cannon the MiG-27K (used by USSR and India only) with 6-barrel 30 mm is the most interesting variant IMHO because while its GSh-6-30 gun has somewhat lesser muzzle energy than GAU-8/a it weights half, has higher rate of fire and since it is gas-operated it is more efficient in short bursts. On the other hand the MiG-27 clearly wasn't the right airframe for the gun...  

R-35-300 diagrams


 
 
We had MiG-23 too (MF, ML, BN) and they were good although rather difficult to fly and maintain. They were also quite prone to bird strikes compared to other planes we had. We had a lot of accidents with them in early 90' but those were caused mainly by general lack of discipline and spares in the rather chaotic times after the fall of the iron courtain. 
 
Some points about ML from our ex-pilots
- they mostly liked it
- they said it was very difficult to fly straight and to land if automatic flight support systems failed but manageable
- automatic landing approach up to several meters upon the runway
- they trained to use in-flight parashute release to shorten the already short landing run
- two seater had shifted center of gravity and the old, weak and problematic R-27 engine and was a bitch to fly in dogfight (most of our two-seaters were destroyed in dogfight training)
- the radar was well liked, it had also look-down/shoot down capability 
- if I unerstood right they usually trained to attack the NATO planes from bellow and from the side using ground control for ideal approach (take it with a lot of salt from my side)
 
Fun fact one. They trained to approach SR-71 flying routinely like a clock at some 15 km from Czechoslovak border. The Blackbird was tracked by common DDR-Czechoslovak air control and MiG-23 started from České Budějovice, climbed to 10000 meters, accelerated to M1,8 and climbed on a parabolic curve to have the approaching Blackbird close to 12 o'lock at some 5-6000 meters higher with the approach speed of around M4,8. At this point there was a a few seconds window where it was possible to lock the radar and fire R-23, it was always only an excercise and there was never any intention to actually shoot it down but allegedly at least once the Blackbird was shortly locked by a trigger-happy pilot. The probabiliy of successful interception like that was very low and it was all about perfect timing from the ground control (allegedly the probability of successful interception was around 30% when trained with Soviet MiG-25, i.e. lower with SR-71). They say they used both automatic guidance via LASUR datalink and human ground controler command. In this scenario the armament was one R-23R and one R-23T. 
 
Fun fact two, the first Czechoslovak pilot to fly solo MiG-23 (BN ground attack variant in 1977) was pplk. Šrámek (lieutenant colonel), a pilot who in 1953 piloting a MiG-15 shot down US F-84E of Korean-veteran G. A. Brown in a two-on-two encounter which started near Pilsen, Czechoslovakia but ended over Western Germany. 
 
 
 

Grach

 
 

Shkval sight for Su-25

Kicking a dead horse, is amusing. 
 
 
 
courtesy of DeRPK-74M(M-100)

Kicking a dead horse, is amusing. 
 
 
 
courtesy of DeRPK-74M(M-100)