What the Hell is the Point of Interleaved Road Wheels?

[Sturgeon]

1 hour ago, delete013 said:

I think in all of the discussions on this forum a track might have broken on my tiger.

 

Oh this whole thing has been just delightful. Let's do a quick mid-season recap, shall we?

It started with Beer making an observation (which he's actually rather well qualified to support, not that you'd know because you don't actually pay any attention at all to who you're talking to), and you claimed his observation was conjecture, and packaged this with an amusingly ignorant oversight (which any eleven year old tank game enthusiast would know, let alone someone who preens and struts about as if he were a german tank expert) about the Pz.38(t) n.A. Specifically, you didn't know it existed, and I really couldn't ask for a better symbolic prelude to this entire escapade. This pattern repeats with virtually every post you make, and it's frankly this remarkable consistency of complete ignorance that is the whole reason we keep you around rather than banning you out of contempt.

 

 

Make no mistake, although it's pathetic and perverse to see a human being act like a cornered beast, it remains a lot of fun to corner beasts, all the same.

A couple of posts are exchanged in which Beer continues to act extremely sober and measured in his engagement with, if not the nitwit of the century, then perhaps the nitwit of the decade (sadly, you're a couple years too early to escape being in a bracket with Brock, but I admire your tenacity), and then in very short order you drop the absolute bombshell of the thread when you claim that the Allies were worse at maneuver warfare. All of the back and forth about flotation and suspension systems pales in comparison to the magnitude of the stupidity of this statement. To focus on anything else in the thread at the expense of this would be like, well, autistically focusing on engreebled tank suspension systems at the expense of the greater maneuver war of World War II. Which, coincidentally, is an error both you and the Nazis committed.

Down the rabbit hole we go! The rabbit smirks, seeing how readily everyone follows! If he zags left, they zag left; if he goes under the branch, they go under the branch. He self-satisfies with how easily he can manipulate everyone else. Truly, a master of manipulation is he! A nice enough sounding theory. One problem: He's not being chased by other rabbits, but by terriers. What happens when they catch him?

It is unimportant to recount every dart of the rabbit, every puff of dust. It's unimportant to list off every idiotic thing you said, but it must be noted that there were a lot. You demonstrated an absolutely impressive ignorance of just about every topic from mechanical engineering, to history, to basic logic. But, idiots are a dime a dozen, and you, my dear rabbit, are special. You are not only ignorant, but you use it offensively, often throwing out comments about how you don't know and that makes you better somehow. A boar fights with his tusks. A bear with his claws and teeth. An idiot...

 

Indeed, you are a rare and endangered rabbit, which can run and kick and fight for hours, and give a tremendous amount of joy to any terrier. Especially when they finally shake you to death. Or until they lose interest and you are simply shot and buried, whichever comes first.

[delete013]

15 minutes ago, Beer said:

My source is book of Vladimír Francev and Charles Ch. Kliment. 

Thanks, I hope I find time to read it. It is quite a privilege to have such books in native language. 

[delete013]

26 minutes ago, Sturgeon said:

 

Oh this whole thing has been just delightful. Let's do a quick mid-season recap, shall we?

It started with Beer making an observation (which he's actually rather well qualified to support, not that you'd know because you don't actually pay any attention at all to who you're talking to), and you claiming his observation was a conjecture, and packaging this with an amusingly ignorant oversight (which any eleven year old tank game enthusiast would know, let alone someone who preens and struts about as if he were a german tank expert) about the Pz.38(t) n.A. Specifically, you didn't know it existed, and I really couldn't ask for a better symbolic prelude to this entire escapade. This pattern repeats with virtually every post you make, and it's frankly this remarkable consistency of complete ignorance that is the whole reason we keep you around rather than banning you out of contempt.

 

 

Make no mistake, although it's pathetic and perverse to see a human being act like a cornered beast, it remains a lot of fun to corner beasts, all the same.

A couple of posts are exchanged in which Beer continues to act extremely sober and measured in his engagement with, if not the nitwit of the century, then perhaps the nitwit of the decade (sadly, you're a couple years too early to escape being in a bracket with Brock, but I admire your tenacity), and then in very short order you drop the absolute bombshell of the thread when you claim that the Allies were worse at maneuver warfare. All of the back and forth about flotation and suspension systems pales in comparison to the magnitude of the stupidity of this statement. To focus on anything else in the thread at the expense of this would be like, well, autistically focusing on engreebled tank suspension systems at the expense of the greater maneuver war of World War II. Which, coincidentally, is an error both you and the Nazis committed.

Down the rabbit hole we go! The rabbit smirks, seeing how readily everyone follows! If he zags left, they zag left; if he goes under the branch, they go under the branch. He self-satisfies with how easily he can manipulate everyone else. Truly, a master of manipulation is he! A nice enough sounding theory. One problem: He's not being chased by other rabbits, but by terriers. What happens when they catch him?

It is unimportant to recount every dart of the rabbit, every puff of dust. It's unimportant to list off every idiotic thing you said, but it must be noted that there were a lot. You demonstrated an absolutely impressive ignorance of just about every topic from mechanical engineering, to history, to basic logic. But, idiots are a dime a dozen, and you, my dear rabbit, are special. You are not only ignorant, but you use it offensively, often throwing out comments about how you don't know and that makes you better somehow. A boar fights with his tusks. A bear with his claws and teeth. An idiot...

 

Indeed, you are a rare and endangered rabbit, which can run and kick and fight for hours, and give a tremendous amount of joy to any terrier. Especially when they finally shake you to death. Or until they lose interest and you are simply shot and buried, whichever comes first.

 

 

[Sheffield]

I created my account only some time ago as I did not feel the need to really engage in discussions here but, I absolutely adore how our beloved friend Delete stated he was only "trolling" and about 2 posts later went back to being completely serious about everything he says.

 

This is pure gold, a flawless comedy, i'm on the verge of tears from reading and laughing at every piece of turd his mouth shits out and i'm sure there's more to come.

[Collimatrix]

On 3/31/2021 at 7:02 PM, Beer said:

 

To my knowledge none of the known drawings shows interleaved wheels. All had standard torsion bars, some trailing, some leading. One of the drawings had one pair of torsion bars leading and the rest trailing to create space for turret basket. All had also rear drive sprocket. Even the Surin's suspension was quickly abandoned (it survived in an attempt to create cheap export tank on the basis of LT vz.38 but there was so much cheap armor around the Globe that time that it didn't get anywhere past test chassis). 

 

What was taken from German tanks was the gun mantlet in Topfblende style which in combination with the later cast IS-3 style turret looked very interesting. Generally the earlier concepts were looking a bit more German, the later took a lot of insipration from IS-3 but the vehicles were planned to be smaller, lighter, much less armoured and a lot faster and all were to be equipped with autoloader.. I will post some drawings later in the history section. 

What was the state of Czech casting foundries at the time?  IIRC, the big cat mantlets were the biggest armor castings the Germans could make.

[Beer]

7 hours ago, Collimatrix said:

What was the state of Czech casting foundries at the time?  IIRC, the big cat mantlets were the biggest armor castings the Germans could make.

 

Already before WW2 Czechoslovak industry rutinely produced heavy extremely thick armoured cast pieces, especially observation cupolas and firing posts for the fortifications. To my knowledge at least three companies were supplying them in hundreds (Steel works in Vítkovice, Třinec and Škoda in Plzeň). They had a lot of experience from working on armoured parts for Austro-Hungarian fortresses and navy (basically all heavy machinery of A-H Empire was enherited by Czechoslovakia). 

 

The mass-produced armoured cupolas for Czechoslovak interwar fortiffication had 150-300 mm thickness (per object resistance class), the weight was 20-65,5 tons (300 mm heavy cupola for twin-HMG). They were later largely removed and reused on Atlantic wall by the Germans. 

 

Due to Münich treaty this thing was never installed but parts were built by Škoda including at least one turret. The Armor of the turret was 300-350 mm, the fixed armor around the turret is 175-450 mm thick. The weight is roughly 120 tons for the retractable turret and 180 tons for the surrounding armor (there are two full-size semi-automatic 105 mm howitzers inside hence why the size). 

 

Source of the pixture is book of Eduard Stehlík: Lexikon tvrzí československého opevnění z let 1935–1938

 

 

Here is something from a recent research done with one of one of the cupolas produced in Třinec in 1937 (200 mm thickness): 

Chemical: C 0,28; Mn 1,15; Si 0,44; P 0,026; S 0,023; Cr 0,35; Cu 0,27; Al 0,01 

Ferrite-pearlite structure with measured hardness 177 HV 30 which shall be equivalent to 169 HB, i.e. rather soft. It is not much known about the original requirements, incomplete sources say the steel had to have tensile strength between 550-700 MPa and ductility 14-17%. Based on that the steel used on this cupola was probably close to the lower strength limit. 

 

Source is here.

 

 

Anyway starting with early 50' the new armory in Martin, Slovakia was producing quality cas turrets for T-34/85 and later T-55 and T-72 in thousands. 

[Collimatrix]

Ah, yeah, that's not great metallurgy for tank armor by postwar standards, but it definitely sounds like they had big enough foundries to make the parts.  I did not realize that the Czech T-72 turrets were domestically produced!

[Beer]

2 minutes ago, Collimatrix said:

Ah, yeah, that's not great metallurgy for tank armor by postwar standards, but it definitely sounds like they had big enough foundries to make the parts.  I did not realize that the Czech T-72 turrets were domestically produced!

 

Sure, the fortification parts from pre-war period don't tell the whole story. We know that the fortiffications caused a great burden on the state budget and the steel used on these massive pieces quite sure wasn't the best available but a compromise driven by cost and reuired quantity. Since a static fortiffication doesn't move it is possible to make things thicker and heavier but from cheaper steel. I guess that it was the case here as well but that's all I have for this period. 

[N-L-M]

Yeah a lack of Mo, Ni, and B limit the hardenability of the steel, particularly at the core.

Good quantity of Mn, which means impact properties should be good. More phosphorus and sulfur than would normally be recommended, but the Mn should help with that.

The Al is presumably left over from deoxidation.

A hardness of 169 BHN corresponds to around 570 MPa yield, which is indeed fairly soft and weak for armor steel, but that's somewhat typical for fortifications where weight was less of an issue than the ability to take multiple repeated hits.

[Beer]

11 minutes ago, N-L-M said:

A hardness of 169 BHN corresponds to around 570 MPa yield, which is indeed fairly soft and weak for armor steel, but that's somewhat typical for fortifications where weight was less of an issue than the ability to take multiple repeated hits.

 

Would you know what was typical for French fortification elemenets of the time? Škoda was part of Schneider group after all and France was the main ally of Czechoslovakia in 1930' and our fortiffication system in general was inspired by the French one albeit the result was somewhat different. 

 

Interestingly the tank school went completely different way than the French one. 

[Collimatrix]

16 hours ago, delete013 said:

I think in all of the discussions on this forum a track might have broken on my tiger.

[Lord_James]

1 hour ago, N-L-M said:

Yeah a lack of Mo, Ni, and B limit the hardenability of the steel, particularly at the core.

Good quantity of Mn, which means impact properties should be good. More phosphorus and sulfur than would normally be recommended, but the Mn should help with that.

Never seen boron as an alloying element, though most of the articles I find are from before 1980, so... 

 

 

Is there a passive armor thread we can move this to? 

[N-L-M]

1 hour ago, Beer said:

Would you know what was typical for French fortification elemenets of the time?

I don't have any solid info, but I do understand the French fortification armor at the time was also on the soft and ductile side of things, which is part of what led the Maginot cloches to be 20cm thick even just for the MG or observation units.

[delete013]

2 hours ago, Collimatrix said:

Ah, yeah, that's not great metallurgy for tank armor by postwar standards, but it definitely sounds like they had big enough foundries to make the parts.  I did not realize that the Czech T-72 turrets were domestically produced!

Has this anything to do with the question why Germans weren't casting hulls?

[Toxn]

16 hours ago, Sheffield said:

I created my account only some time ago as I did not feel the need to really engage in discussions here but, I absolutely adore how our beloved friend Delete stated he was only "trolling" and about 2 posts later went back to being completely serious about everything he says.

 

This is pure gold, a flawless comedy, i'm on the verge of tears from reading and laughing at every piece of turd his mouth shits out and i'm sure there's more to come.

In our time, us old salts have seen dumber things come crawling out of the muck and mire that is German tank discourse. But this one is still all kinds of stupid. It's sort of endearing, really: the inbred, brachycephalic version of an intellectual swamp creature.

[Sturgeon]

19 hours ago, delete013 said:

 

 

 

It amuses me to know that you actually see yourself as dangerous in this way, like you're some kind of master swordsman deftly parrying and counterattacking multiple foes at once as they surround you.

 

 

It's a cute image. But in reality:



Everybody's at the park, watching the fat retarded kid go!

[Collimatrix]

Apparently the British goofed around with interleaved road wheels, albeit because they cloned captured German half-tracks.

[LoooSeR]

1 hour ago, Collimatrix said:

Apparently the British goofed around with interleaved road wheels, albeit because they cloned captured German half-tracks.

Not really suprising, bongs doing bong stuff. 

[Toxn]

So, since I finally found a good document for MMP calculations: the one thing that interleaved roadwheels are amazing for is to allow you to cheat MMP calculations.

 

The other ways being pneumatic roadwheels and long-pitch track links.

[Toxn]

3 hours ago, Collimatrix said:

Apparently the British goofed around with interleaved road wheels, albeit because they cloned captured German half-tracks.

Aka the most complex way to produce a munitions schlepper.

[Jeeps_Guns_Tanks]

16 hours ago, Collimatrix said:

Apparently the British goofed around with interleaved road wheels, albeit because they cloned captured German half-tracks.

 

 

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???

[delete013]

9 hours ago, Jeeps_Guns_Tanks said:

 

 

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???

An honest post, we should appreciate it.

[Sturgeon]

10 hours ago, delete013 said:

An honest post, we should appreciate it.

 

Oh we're very honest. You should try it.

[Collimatrix]

On 4/6/2021 at 6:20 AM, Toxn said:

So, since I finally found a good document for MMP calculations: the one thing that interleaved roadwheels are amazing for is to allow you to cheat MMP calculations.

 

The other ways being pneumatic roadwheels and long-pitch track links.

Interesting.  The long pitch tracks I knew about, although there are practical limitations there, as the longer pitch tracks tend to be noisier and wear out faster.  The pneumatic road wheels are, I must admit, a surprise.

Do you have a link?

[Toxn]

2 hours ago, Collimatrix said:

Interesting.  The long pitch tracks I knew about, although there are practical limitations there, as the longer pitch tracks tend to be noisier and wear out faster.  The pneumatic road wheels are, I must admit, a surprise.

Do you have a link?

Sadly no - I used the 1972 MMP equations and noodled around a bit with variables. From a gaming sums perspective, what they do is introduce a new term (tire deflection) which increases effective track contact area. Even a few centimetres makes a big difference here.

 

Realistically, of course, you're right - having soft, flexible bits on road wheels seems like a recipe for issues unless the vehicle is very light to begin with (at which point MMP more or less sorts itself out).