miletus12
Squadron vice admiral
To get yourself lost, just follow the signs.
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Post by miletus12 on Jan 2, 2022 23:08:23 GMT
Different nations have different "design" philosophies for military gear.
Why was the Sherman tank designed and built the way it was?Or if one prefers. The lecture is about the Sherman tank. The thing I want the viewers to take away from the lecture is that the Americans has / have / had a penchant for either developing the "best" or acquiring it. One must be cognizant of these factors. a. Americans design equipment or acquire equipment that should be "user friendly". b. Americans evolve their existent equipment far more than reinvent it. c. Americans have to be conscious of how they will use half trained and reluctant troops. d. Doctrine drives technology for the Americans. Civil war lesson learned. Reapeating rifles were developed to make American dragoon tactic works against Napoleonic anti-cavalry tactics. The Spanish American example; Lt. Parker developed the machine gun doctrine and and need from his Cuban gatling gun combat in the siege of Santiago de Cuba, specifically the combat around San Juan hill. The US army began an immediate search for a portable machine gun. e. The Americans have to design for long distance movement. Ever since the Revolutionary War, the equipment has to move hundreds or thousands of miles to reach the fight. Consequently, American armies are leaned down to the essentials to fight. The example from WWII is that the British were very lavishly equipped with dozens of different types of tanks. The Americans went with the Stuart and the Sherman and stuck with those tanks. The designs were evolved and changed to make them "reliable". f. Anywhere the Americans went they had to cross rivers and oceans. Weight would be very... very important. g. Gun, protection, mobility. The Americans went GUN over protection and mobility. The Sherman used a dual-purpose gun. This has remained the American standard despite all the anti-tank tank guns they developed postwar. If the Americans adopt a foreign tank gun (British or German) as they did, they will develop an infantry killing shell for that gun and will carry that ammunition as half of their base load. h. The armor protection scheme in an American tank is "offensive". g. It has to run for hundreds of kilometers and be fixable at first echelon. The British and Russians have different criteria. We'll discuss those presently. |
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miletus12
Squadron vice admiral
To get yourself lost, just follow the signs.
Posts: 7,470
Likes: 4,295
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Post by miletus12 on Jan 4, 2022 23:19:41 GMT
British tank design philosophy. Obviously, the British almost hit on the right formula. Then they screwed up. The mistakes made were obvious. 1. Wrong tracklaying system. The British would also dead end with the Christie, but at least that suspension system did not break; if one looked at it funny. 2. Two pounder gun. The theory of killing enemy tanks with slugs was to be proven disastrously wrong in North Africa when the Italians taught the British two new words; "effecto pronto". The squash head not only flaked off the inside face of brittle and rivetted British armor plate creating the razor blade effect of chopped up tank crews and sparks that exploded batteries and set off fires in the British ammunition propellant, but HESH proved to be dual purpose against bunkers and antitank guns and dug in infantry. A mere hole knocked in an enemy tank was not a guaranteed kill. 3. Machine gun turrets...  Note the machine gun turret? .jpg) 4. Still kept the 2 pounder gun. 5. Anyway...  by 1943, as well as being mechanically unreliable, with the machine gun turrets and wrong suspension and wrong gun, in the prototypes, the British had not gotten past ... rivets. The Crusader would grow a 57 mm slug thrower, that when tested by the Americans lacked accuracy and PUNCH beyond 500 meters when compared to the evolved French 75mm guns they used on their own medium M3s and M4s. The British troopers took to the Lee and the Sherman with gusto. Why? Far superior voice radio and intercom system. Far superior ergonomics. Far superior suspension and mobility, tactical and strategic. Far superior gun. Far superior armor. Safer. Faster. And could engage enemy tanks and anti-tank guns and enemy infantry with a mix of high explosive fragmentation grenade shells and high explosive armor piercing shells. While this was perhaps the outstanding revelation to the British about tank design, the voice radios aboard the American tanks were probably the best feature as those radios included ground to air direct talk to aircraft, which could support the tank commander as additional firepower and eyes overhead. The radios also tied back to the radio net that allowed tankers to talk to field artillery and their bodyguard infantry directly. TALKING, as in reporting what they saw, gave users of American and Canadian built tanks a huge advantage over the British made equipment. The expression was; "What was the most dangerous weapon on a Sherman? The radio system." Next we will look at the Churchill, the most famous and "effective" British made tank of WWII. |
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miletus12
Squadron vice admiral
To get yourself lost, just follow the signs.
Posts: 7,470
Likes: 4,295
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Post by miletus12 on Jan 6, 2022 19:27:18 GMT
What did the Russians think of the Churchill tank?Not too much. And there is the following: Wow. That is quite an indictment. What did the Germans think? Summary: The British tank was obsolete. The characteristics are undistinguished. Guns inadequate. Armor was completely unremarkable. The German conclusions cannot be taken for objective observation. Shot traps galore. Thick armor prevented most penetrations. Tracks were crude and were metallurgically poor and were easily broken. Stones could break the tracks. Easy to mission kill, not easy to function kill. Now a walkaround. Summary and (my) opinion; the model is the Churchill VII. Ergonomics. Very poor. Comms. Unacceptable. Turret monster will grab and maim crew. Very Russian in the incredibly careless design. Gun loading is impossible from the loader position without passing around the barrel. Periscopes are impossible to use without contortions. Coax MG was not sited properly but was supposedly used as the ranging gun. No, that was not the case. Fume extractor was inadequate. Buttoned up, the tank was unacceptable as a fighting platform. Tank commander was not able to fight or even orient in the turret. What did the Americans think of the tank? Good cross-country mobility and ability to climb were very good. That was about the only good thing they found in the tank. The Sherman was a BETTER tank for observation, fighting and communication purposes. Even the driver position and bow gunner positions have problems. Side-escape out the side doors was unacceptable. Periscopes are unacceptable. Driver view was "poor". TC to driver direction was not good. Shot traps to the front and overhead. Escape? What escape? Hatches are not spring loaded. The tank brewed up twice as often as a Sherman. The tank was awful. I guess the only British types of tanks that I have seen that were worse was the Australian Sentinel or the Valiant. Maintenance on this tank was a nightmare. ================================================= The tail-end of the walkaround is the comparison to the Sherman tank. Reminding the reader that the Churchill was a British "infantry" tank, the comparison with the American "cruiser" tank which accidentally becomes the allies' main battle tank is apples to tangerines. The two tanks were not designed to the same base mission, but note what the Chieftain suggests about the two tanks as the comparison is made?
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miletus12
Squadron vice admiral
To get yourself lost, just follow the signs.
Posts: 7,470
Likes: 4,295
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Post by miletus12 on Jan 6, 2022 23:40:51 GMT
The Churchill as object lesson.Excerpts follow. British army thinking may have been stymied. Exercises such as the British experimental mechanized force show the British army was open to radical ideas. The main takeaway is that with Liddell Hart and J.F.C. Fuller and Percy Hobart, the British army had its wild-eyed theorists. What it needed, was practical men who could make sense of the theories and put the sounder principles into practice based on what was "possible". This resulted in the two development lines thinking; the exploitation tank (Which was the cruiser line of tanks.) and the "breakthrough tank. Guess what the Churchill was? Some of the rushed and incomplete features of the Churchill can be explained by the need to get treads out there in a hurry. A similar situation afflicted British fighter development after the Spitfire. Not a single Hawker aircraft and many of the Bristol designs fail to impress at all. This also explains why the Mosquito and the Lancaster, both excellent birds with SERIOUS design and construction flaws, are justifiably still trumpeted by the British as air power war winners. Because if they still work, though dodgey, they still do deserve the praise. The same can be written of the Churchill. It worked despite the bodges. So that feature can be suggested as part of the British approach to design philosophy and how they used and approached technology. To quote the Chieftain as he speaks about Fuller and the experimental armored force, "Quit bothering the CIGS and get on with the job." That is quite "American". Note that the Germans examined the Churchills from the Dieppe Raid? So, of course, the first tranche tanks were no good. On the other hand, the British had this silly tank in production, that needed to be product improved. The British made a virtue of thick armor, improved the tracks, strengthened the suspension system and changed the square safe doors in the sides to round mouseholes. They improved the gun somewhat. It was still the same basic tank, but it could climb hills and shoot down on the top of that Tiger it knocked out in the valley below. Good show! Later, when the British needed a combat engineer vehicle family that could be turned into Funnies, they found the Valentines and Churchills and the Shermans were the ONLY tanks they had capable to meet the bill. The Sherman was not surprising, the Valentine was too small, and the Churchill's thick hide, designed for the assault role, made it the British made logical choice despite the ergonomic and mechanically unreliable disaster it still was. It works, so get on with the job and convert it. The praise is hyperbolic. The Sherman with hedge-cutters, bulldozer blade, and flamethrower mod did more practically as a tactical implement; but the Churchill did do those things mentioned above, well, and it was important in that it kept British infantry casualties down in the doing. So... "Quit bothering me with the complaints, use what you have been given, and get on with the job."
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