2nd Bat
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Post by 2nd Bat on May 26, 2015 15:25:14 GMT -5
I was home for the Long Memorial Weekend and saw a flyer for what I think is an annual event at the Paul Allen owned Flying Heritage Collection at Paine Field in Everett. Paul Allen is the co founder of Microsoft and one of the world richest men. Fortunately for us in the Pacific Northwest he has a passion for Sports (He owns the Portland Trailblazers and the Seattle Seahawks and he loved Rock and Roll with a Special fascination for Jimmy Hendrick. He created a fabulous music museum in his honor at the Seattle Center. Less well known was his interest in WW2 from when he was a child.
The story goes that he had aircraft models of a wide assortment of WW2 aircraft suspended from his bedroom ceiling. (didn't we all) but once a Multi Billionnaire decided to attempt to won flying restorations or full sized replica of each of those aircraft. His museum features a wide assortment of famous and less well known aircraft from that era. His displays are amazing with many aircraft I have never seen in person. He has a couple FW190s both the lng nosed version and snub nised variety. He has several Russian aircraft that I knew of but had never seen. He has a German COMET jet fighter and an ME 262 and Heinkel jet fighter. in addition he has replica V1 and a V2 rocket and all the more familiar famous fighters and light bombers of the day. For the Japanese there is a Zero an Oscar and others.
Fascinating planes that all fly or are being made to fly. His interest has expanded to ground warfare and that was the focus of yesterdays event. He had a good though not extra ordinary collection of vehicles on hand. Some of my friends from the Military Vehicle Club were on hand to supplement his display. On hand was a pre war M3 Stuart, an M18 Hellcat an early war M4 Sherman a Soviet T34 and for the Germans no less than 3 88 AT / AA guns, an 8 ton German Primemover half track a HETZER and a Kettengrad motorcycle and our Friend Schmitty had his Kublewagon and a cool remore control miniature tank battle set up.
It was a fun event and very well attended
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Post by volkssturm on May 26, 2015 16:26:41 GMT -5
It's GOOD to be a billionaire!!!!! Just think what you could do with a paltry two or three billion. You could set up your own "Airsoft Military Reservation" with bunkers, trenches, vehicles etc. It boggles the mind. Having some day dreaming here. Did some back of the envelope calculations: I figure we'd need 600-1,000 acres of moderately rough land, not too far from an urban area. So, probably 5 - 7 million (California prices. Sometimes it sucks to live here). Improvements: road net, operations center, camping, dining, sanitary facilities, $1.5 million. Ruined French village, farmhouses, outbuildings, $1 million. Trenches, bunkers, fighting positions, $300,000. Vehicles, some jeeps, kubelwagens, Deuce'n'halfs, maybe a couple Opel Blitzes, a couple halftracks for each side, a couple replica tanks. Say, $2 million. Rental weapons and uniforms, $1 million. So what have we got? $12.8 million? Think we can crowd fund that?
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2nd Bat
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Post by 2nd Bat on May 26, 2015 18:10:15 GMT -5
A thought that has drifted me off to sleep many a night.
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2nd Bat
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Post by 2nd Bat on May 26, 2015 19:47:29 GMT -5
Seeing the vehicles in person and close up is interesting. The German Hetzer though by no means large is much bigger than I thought it was. The Soviet T34 is much much smaller than I thought it would be.
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Dracul
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Post by Dracul on May 26, 2015 21:53:57 GMT -5
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stuka
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Post by stuka on May 26, 2015 23:30:08 GMT -5
In that second picture, what is that tank? Also I hope for the sake of London I hope the V1s and V2s don't fly =P
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2nd Bat
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Post by 2nd Bat on May 27, 2015 12:51:14 GMT -5
In spite of the tan paint job. the vehicle in the second picture behind the 88mm AT gun is a Post war (50s era) US Army SP Howitzer. Probably a 155mm or eight inch gun. It was a short lived design that was replaced by the M109 SP gun which featured an enclosed turret but with a much lower profile. The M109 family of SP guns are still use by the US Army but this impressively large and imposing vehicle has been obsolete for many many decades. The tan paintjob is probably left over from its use by some middle east country. If by chance you are asking about the armored vehicle in the distance that is a beautifully restored WW2 M18 Hellcat (Late WW2) Tank Destroyer.
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shiftysgarand
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Post by shiftysgarand on May 27, 2015 18:46:29 GMT -5
Looks like a Wespe self-propelled gun to me.
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2nd Bat
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Post by 2nd Bat on May 27, 2015 19:08:47 GMT -5
It certainly has that WESPE sort of look but much much larger. I think the US Army was enamored with the variety and look of many of the German AFVs. Also the chassis as you can see is a US M26 Persing Chassis.
Incidently when you see the people standing by the Hetzer (which was not an official nickname for the vehicle back in the day). You can see that is actually fairly tall. I always invisioned it as about 3/4 the size that it actually is.
For Airsoft I am more convinced than ever that armored vehicles for our events would have to be undersized to work with our limited range.
The German eight ton prime mover half track is HUGE!
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Post by huxy on May 29, 2015 19:03:47 GMT -5
I saw a Hetzer myself in Bastogne last year. It's much larger than I ever thought it would be!
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2nd Bat
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Post by 2nd Bat on May 29, 2015 19:24:27 GMT -5
Volks,
The reality is the largest area I have used was 100 acres and that was an event with 140 players with many sections unused and some challenges with units making contact. Mx of woods, low hills and open areas. The idea of a couple ruined villages (ala the band of brothers set) and some hedgerows planted on a smaller than reality basis has always played around in my head.
Vehicles would be the easy part in point of fact!
Disneyland for living history folks.
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2nd Bat
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Post by 2nd Bat on May 30, 2015 14:05:37 GMT -5
Tank Fest was cosponsored by a video game WORLD OF TANKs which my Son in Law plays religiously. They had a bank of monitors inside a van that allowed everyone to experience their game. I had neither the interest or patience to wait in the long line but they also had an excellent speaker hosting a round table discussion about common armor myths regarding WW2. The audience was several hundred people for each and he was mic'd and backed up with two large monitors. His presentation style was light and engaging and he was animated and extremely well informed. He is apparently a consultant for the game and according to my son in law the game very realistically factors in authentic characteristics of each tank. (Strength and weaknesses)
Here is an example of one of the discussion points.
Most of the myths I was aware of and my research had already debunked most of them but he had very specific data to back up his conclusions and I very much enjoyed his presentation. Post war in what was initially a classified study by US Army Ordinance it was determined that, throughout the war and especially in Western Europe, whichever tank fired first was usually victorious regardless of the type of tank. The German tanks although often superior in firepower and armored protection were apparently more vulnerable than the statistics would indicate.
The speaker had an interesting explanation for that conclusion. First the percentage of highly advantages German tanks was actually quite low. Tigers in spite of anecdotal suggestion were seldom encountered. To an allied tanker it seems a PZ MK iV almost always was reported as a TIGER! Also, ( and this was thought provoking and quite obvious when you think about it.). The first to fire was usually the defender and he would wait until his shot was most likely to be lethal. Added to that reality having been engaged by an enemy tank trying to kill you ( whether the round hit you or not ) your reactive shot was typically done with an elevated level of excitement.
Secondly, The standoff advantage Some German tanks enjoyed was often mitigated by the limited line of site in Western Europe so most engagements were within 800 meters. The side armor of Panthers within 1000 meters was quite vulnerable and Allied gunners knew not to engage their frontal armor. Allied superiority in numbers was the greatest single advantage the US enjoyed and this was exploited with telling results. According to the expert the Germans would have been served to have stuck with simpler designs and increased production. More MK IVs would have been more effective than the pitifully few TIGERS and their variants that were produced. As he pointed out had that been the case they still would have lost and games like WORLD OF TANKS would be far less interesting!
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stuka
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Post by stuka on May 31, 2015 1:05:02 GMT -5
World of tanks isn't the most realistic but due to it's "arcadeness" it tends to be more popular I feel. As a result they do cool stuff like this and host events here and there as well as tournaments were people do actually win money but I am not entirely sure how the tournaments go.
To clarify on the arcadeness, WoT uses a health points system meaning when you're out of health points you die. AS an example would be if you have 100 HP and the person hits your track successfully you lose 10 hp and you track is disabled, if they do this 10 times you're dead so it isn't the most realistic in that sense but I believe penetration and all that jazz is fairly realistic.
Those myths are pretty cool but I wonder why the pz4's were misidentified as tigers so often. Did they not know what a tiger looked like or were they just freaking out because I don't think they look that similar beyond flat armor, then again, when you're getting shot at all bullets are bad bullets so there is that.
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2nd Bat
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Post by 2nd Bat on May 31, 2015 13:20:09 GMT -5
A TIGER was so rare that most US Armored Forces never saw one (Even a destroyed one). A PZIV with the armored shroud around the turret and the muzzle bore evacuator at range and covered in brush could easily be mistaken for a TIGER. Keep in mind visibility out of a tank is quite poor. Add mobility, smoke, the chaos of battle and the fact that your focus is now on the next threat and you can see how the mistake could be made. We often see pictures of GIs closely examining destroyed or abandoned enemy tanks but understand these are typically rear eschelon, follow up troops. The front line troops have moved on believing they were engaged by TIGERs.
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Post by volkssturm on May 31, 2015 22:23:38 GMT -5
Steven Zaloga's book "Armored Thunderbolt" has some interesting stuff from a study done by the Army Ballistics Research Lab in Spring '45. There were very few large tank battles in Europe. Most engagments averaged nine American tanks against four German tanks. Of the engagements studied, the defenders fired first 84 percent of the time. When the defenders fired first the attackers suffered 4.3 times more casualties than the defenders. When the attackers fired first the defenders suffered 3.6 times more casualties than the attackers.
Another interesting thing: tankers usually claimed they'd been hit by the German 88. But one study showed that72 percent of the tanks in the study had been hit by the 75mm and 24 percent by the 88mm.
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2nd Bat
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Post by 2nd Bat on Jun 1, 2015 12:49:57 GMT -5
Incoming direct artillery fire was almost always attributed to the dreaded "88" even though in fact it was most often a smaller caliber.
Another myth discussed was the incredibly high destruction rate of Air to Ground attacks on Armor by the Allied Air Force. The "JABOs" were greatly feared and dramatically reduced the German armies ability to move in daylight (especially by train). This greatly impacted their ability to react to Allied advances but the number of German Tanks actually destroyed by air attack was in fact quite low.
Many of the vehicles "destroyed by airpower" were in fact mechanical breakdowns abandoned away from the front. Often these were attacked and shot up but were already out of the fight. The reliability of German tanks was deplorable compared to our M5 and M4s. Aircraft also frequently attacked already destroyed tanks and armored vehicles and claimed a lot of "kills" that in fact were already "dead". Perfectly understandable given the speed of the aircraft and chaotic conditions.
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Post by volkssturm on Jun 16, 2015 19:35:20 GMT -5
It appears that talk is now on Youtube, assuming this is the same one (how many could there be?) www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNjp_4jY8pYJust listened to it. Excellent presentation. Learned quite a bit. Never really though about how the slope of the Sherman's armor made it effectively much closer to the thickness of the Tiger's vertical frontal armor.
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2nd Bat
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Post by 2nd Bat on Jun 16, 2015 23:42:31 GMT -5
That was indeed was the presentation and though I saw it live, it was great seeing it again. I liked his myth on the Sherman as a death trap and the subsequent statistics. The fact that the real death trap for a soldier was not the tanker in the M4 Sherman but the infantryman with the M1 Garand!
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Post by volkssturm on Jun 17, 2015 12:53:20 GMT -5
Yep. There's a reason the Brits talk about "the poor bloody infantry." But pity the poor Russian, trying to bail out of a T-34. His comments about the reputation for Sherman's burning were interesting as well. Once you get a reputation, it's hard to get rid of it.
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2nd Bat
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Post by 2nd Bat on Jun 17, 2015 13:15:53 GMT -5
The realisation that in fact there were only three documented occasions of TIGER Is engaging US tanks is shocking to me. There were undoubtedly more than that but it illustrates just how rare tank to tank engagements were and especially how rare that tank was. The comparison between frontal armor (in practical terms) was inciteful as was the lack of long range accuracy of the 17 pounder. Who cares if you can penetrate if in fact you can't hit it! Getting off the first shot was the key regardless of tank type and once again defenders have a huge advantage.
I also liked the discussion about the need for five Sherman's to kill a Panther. myths are harder to kill than tanks apparently.
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Post by Rekkon on Jul 15, 2015 14:00:10 GMT -5
The Chieftain as he is known has written a lot of interesting articles for World of Tanks. As I recall, the Tiger I was out of production by D-Day, so it is not particularly surprising that the Western Allies did not encounter many of them. As for the Sherman's armor, you also need to remember that it was considerably softer than the German's, so equivalent thicknesses did not provide equivalent resistance to penetration. I recommend The Chieftain's article on the matter. Uh, no. While WoT does use a hit point system, you only lose health when something penetrates into the hull of the tank. For a track hit, this means hitting the track, penetrating the track, then also penetrating whatever armor lies behind the track. If that second penetration does not happen, and it usually does not since the suspension is reducing the penetrating value of the round, you get tracked but lose no health. An exception of course is HE which can cause damage through armor, but its ability to do this is directly proportional to the distance it detonates from the armor and hitting the suspension hampers that by increasing standoff.
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2nd Bat
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Post by 2nd Bat on Jul 15, 2015 15:06:32 GMT -5
Later in the war (especially post Normandy) the lack of key alloys for the German armament industry meant that the armor they used on their tanks (especially apparent on the Panther) was increasingly weak and brittle. There are many anecdotes of even their frontal armor cracking from a frontal hit (even from the relatively low velocity 75mm US gun.) Side armor was nearly always penetrated when receiving a hit so the first tank (regardless of quality) to hit the other usually won the engagement. To carry the argument further the first to get off the first shot usually won whether they scored a hit or not. (the "oh s#*t factor" being quite significant).
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Post by volkssturm on Jul 15, 2015 15:36:27 GMT -5
Steven Zaloga talks about this (getting the first shot)in "Armored Thunderbolt." The Army Ballistics Research Laboratory studied engagements and found that defenders fired first 84% of the time. Wen the defenders fired first the attackers suffered 4.3 times more casualties than the defenders. If the attackers first the defenders suffered 3.6 times more casualties. A British study found that in 70 percent of engagements the side that fired first won. Another study showed that the side that was ambushed had little chance of regaining the initiative and that the odds of survival fell by half every six seconds.
Of course, luck also plays a part. At the Battle of Mortain a 57mm towed AT gun took out a Panther by scoring a hit on the hull machinegun mount that penetrated the hull.
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stuka
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Post by stuka on Jul 15, 2015 20:15:23 GMT -5
Uh, no. While WoT does use a hit point system, you only lose health when something penetrates into the hull of the tank. For a track hit, this means hitting the track, penetrating the track, then also penetrating whatever armor lies behind the track. If that second penetration does not happen, and it usually does not since the suspension is reducing the penetrating value of the round, you get tracked but lose no health. An exception of course is HE which can cause damage through armor, but its ability to do this is directly proportional to the distance it detonates from the armor and hitting the suspension hampers that by increasing standoff. I haven't played WoT since warthunder ground forces came out so eh I forget I guess, the point is, you can shoot a penetrating shot that doesn't actually serve any purpose enough times and it will die because of the HP system
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Post by Rekkon on Jul 16, 2015 9:55:09 GMT -5
Later in the war (especially post Normandy) the lack of key alloys for the German armament industry meant that the armor they used on their tanks (especially apparent on the Panther) was increasingly weak and brittle. There are many anecdotes of even their frontal armor cracking from a frontal hit (even from the relatively low velocity 75mm US gun.) Side armor was nearly always penetrated when receiving a hit so the first tank (regardless of quality) to hit the other usually won the engagement. To carry the argument further the first to get off the first shot usually won whether they scored a hit or not. (the "oh s#*t factor" being quite significant). Very true. Quality issues aside, hardness and brittleness frequently go together. A harder armor will resist penetration better but will spall more when something does get through. The Chieftain's article mentions that the softer US armor may well have served to reduce US tanker casualties, as evidenced by the statistically low casualty rate per knocked out vehicle. I also seem to recall reading Tigers got better armor than the medium tanks and their quality control stayed better longer. There are remarkably few places on a tank where you can penetrate and not hit something important.
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