I prefer WWII battle rifles.......

[polishshooter]

Now don't get me wrong, PS, I USED to put a LOT of miles on my Killer Rabbit, and two Golfs, as well as an old Diesel Jetta with like 200k on it when I bought it, and I put another 100k on it too, plus an aircooled Vanagon my wife liked...


I guess I never figured out why they could make decent little CARS that would run forever, but could never make their TANKS run more than 150 yds without an overhaul and a new transmission AFTER the putting the thrown track back on...

Maybe if they used that little VW pancake aircooled engine on the Tigers, it would have worked! (Heck, it wouldn't have been much MORE underpowered than it actually WAS, anyway...)

[Pistolenschutze]

Well, at least Deutche Panzeren ran on diesel fuel, Polish, and didn't flash into a gigantic pyrotechnic display with a mere "flick of your Bic" like a certain notoriously ill-designed, gasoline-driven Allied tank tended to do . . . or would that be a mere "flick of your Ronson?" Hmmm, come to think of it, it was Rudolph Diesel--good German lad that he was--who invented the diesel engine in the first place.

[polishshooter]

And then Lt. Nimitz PERFECTED for use in US Submarines between the wars...a little known fact!

[Pistolenschutze]

Originally Posted by polishshooter

And then Lt. Nimitz PERFECTED for use in US Submarines between the wars...a little known fact!

And then the Germans came up with the Type XXI U-boat and the schnorkel that made true submarines a reality, Polish, not to mention a torpedo that actually ran as designed.

[polishshooter]

Yep, they figured out a practical use for the schnorkle after they first fitted it to the worthless too heavy Tiger IIs that (OOPS! ) just HAPPENED to be too heavy for 95% of the BRIDGES in Europe..... Good thing they canned THAT idea, I could just see the "diving opportunities' offered for exploring all the broken down Tigers in the middle of the Rhine, if they'd get THAT far....

[Pistolenschutze]

Originally Posted by polishshooter

Yep, they figured out a practical use for the schnorkle after they first fitted it to the worthless too heavy Tiger IIs that (OOPS! ) just HAPPENED to be too heavy for 95% of the BRIDGES in Europe.....

Well, the Tiger IIs did make nice armored fly swatters, Polish, and by the time the Germans got them into full production, they needed fly swatters more than they needed tanks anyway. You see, there these little gadflies--some call them Sherman tanks, others called them "Ronsons"--that kept buzzing around everywhere, annoying everyone, though not doing much damage, you understand, since they only shot spitwads and tended to burst into flame at the slightest provocaton, but annoying the Panzertruppen nonetheless. The Tiger IIs were quite efficient fly swatters. Of course, when you have enough flies they can become overpowering, at which time the Germans brought out the bug spray, sometimes known as the Panther Tank.

[polishshooter]

And you accuse ME of hyperbole....

[Pistolenschutze]

Originally Posted by polishshooter

And you accuse ME of hyperbole....

Hyperbole? Moi, Polish, sweet, innocent moi? Surely you jest. How could you suggest that I--the very epitome of Germanic-like staidness, propriety, and pragmatism--would deign to indulge in something so utterly plebian as a hyperbolical statement? Why, that would be almost as absurd as suggesting that the M4 tank was heavily armored, fireproof and had a main gun that could penetrate German tank armor!

[polishshooter]

Hey, PS?

The M4A3e8 76mm(wet) WAS all that and more..

....but there ya'go agin, IGNORING other models except your "mythical" early M4, IGNORING how a GOOD tank actually EVOLVES into BETTER models and "lives forever,", while the Tiger like the "dinosaurs" quickly go extinct and maybe eventually are worth more as scrap or fossil fuel....

[Pistolenschutze]

Originally Posted by polishshooter

. . . a GOOD tank actually EVOLVES into BETTER models and "lives forever, . . .

Lives forever????? Hmmm, why is it then that the M4 was discarded as the primary U.S. battle tank immediately after WWII (1946 to be precise), despite the enormous military cutbacks and budgetary constraints following WWII and the thousands of M4s still in inventory? Most of the M4 rust buckets--88mm holes and scorch marks included--were sold off as surplus to third-world countries, used for training purposes only, or recycled into refrigerators. The reason is very simple: during the latter phase of WWII the M4 was unequivocally shown to be woefully inadequate against even the German medium-class Panther tank. Despite the budget crunch of the post-war years, production of the M26 Pershing (which had a decent, 90mm, main gun and a useful thickness of armor) went forward anyway, to be quickly followed up, by about 1950, with the M48 Patton MBT. Indeed, when the U.S. went into Korea in 1950, the M4 was virtually nowhere to be found on the battlefield despite the thousands that had been built only 5 years earlier. In the immediate post-war years it became patently obvious that our next enemy was likely to be the Soviets or their minions, and Lord help us if we had nothing better than an M4 to fight Russian T-34s, Stalins, and T-55s.

Face it, Polish, the M4 was, at best, an "adequate" tank, and that assumes one loosely defines "adequate" as, "it works, sorta kinda, and we're too lazy and cheap to build a better one, even if it costs us casualties."

Oh, by the way, this is the best hijack we've pulled off yet, Polish; what the heck were we originally talking about anyway?

[Ursus]

Originally Posted by polishshooter

... to succeed here we needed to speak ENGLISH and well...something a LOT of latin American Immigrants here don't seem to appreciate....

That's true. And sad

[Pistolenschutze]

Originally Posted by Ursus

That's true. And sad

It is sad, Bear. I firmly believe that a language is a critical and fascinating part of any given culture. I may be old fashioned, but it seems to me that simple courtesy and respect dictate that when one travels to a land other than his own, it is incumbent upon that traveler to do his or her best to communicate in the language of the country visited, not the other way around. Were I to travel to San Salvador, for example, I would expect to communicate as best I could in Spanish, not English. My Spanish may not be good, but I at least I would TRY. It would not be respectful of me to expect the San Salavadorans to speak English when the language of their country is Spanish.

[polishshooter]

Uh, PS? The M4 was NOT discarded by the US right after the war, in fact it did PRETTY WELL against the NKA and Chicom T-34/85s in Korea! It was in our inventory until well into the 50s....

And you AGAIN forget about the Israeli "Super Shermans" on the Golan heights smashing T-54/55s in the 1980's and still in reserve in the 90's, and maybe even TODAY.


The M4 was a TREMENDOUS tank, the MOST mechanically reliable tank of the war, the most easily produced, one MOST easily modified and "improved,"ONE of the most mobile, at least on hard ground and ROADS, but even THAT "caveat" got solved after the HVSS, just the redisign of the glacis plate angle in '44 added the effectiveness of an additional 2" of frontal armor with no extra weight (while the germans were STILL building the TIger with a VERTICAL glacis!)


You WILL face the music someday once I get all that post war propaganda German-loving/alibiing "it was only numbers" crap out of your head...

The M4 series of tanks was the BEST tank of the war, that affected the outcome of the war more than ANY other (POSSIBLY tied with the T-34, but with NO other...)


Go ahead, PS, EMBRACE it, let the warm feeling of FINALLY "getting it" just wash over you ...the revelation WILL come someday, why fight it so MUCH?


And you ARE regressing...do you listen to ANYTHING I've said?

You will find very FEW "M4 hulks" with 88mm holes in it! THAT is one of the BIGGEST myths of WWII!!! Just STOP it!

The Germans did NOT use the "88mmAA" gun as much as MOST people think in the AT role, and virtually NEVER in the "artillery" role, (DESPITE what MOST veterans claim...you can forgive them, to them EVERY explosion was an "88," it had GREAT but wholly UNDESERVED reputation...).they did NOT produce an 88mm towed AT gun until LATE in the war, and the few they DID produce went right to the Eastern Front, and the 88mm as a TANK gun in WWII is generally regarded as a FAILURE. Too long and heavy for the Tigers ALREADY anemically slow turret to revolve quickly, Too long in the breech and too slow to reload, plus limited ammo storage, in the Tiger's SMALL turret! In the limited role (BUT in the "defensive" warfare they were forced into in the west, WOULD have been a KILLER, but was just another FOOTNOTE due the WASTED time, energy, and manpower that went into the TIGERS)JagdPANTHER it showed promise, the fixed mount negated the traversing problem the German's never fixed, and more ammo could be carried, and there was AMPLE room in the "box."

I will repeat the FACTS ONE MORE TIME. REPEAT AFTER ME. MOST M4s that were NOT knocked out by panzerfausts, were knocked out by 75mms, MOSTLY from the German's GREAT, probably the BEST of the war, TOWED AT gun! And from TANKS and AFVs, it was in order the short 75 of the Hetzer, followed by the LONG 75s of the Mk IV, and FINALLY the long 75 of the Panther! (WHY would you perpetuate THAT myth OTHER than your "German Propaghanda Disease" and the demonic worship of the God-AWFUL Tiger by people that really DON'T understand armored warfare???? Or else IS it Freudian???? )


You WERE showing promise, I caught some stumbling efforts on your part to FINALLY mention the PANTHER (the ONLY late war German design that was any GOOD!) but you couldn't resist (It's OK, bad habits formed over YEARS are tough to drop COMPLETELY) stuttering BACK to the Tiger....

[Pistolenschutze]

Originally Posted by polishshooter

Uh, PS? The M4 was NOT discarded by the US right after the war, in fact it did PRETTY WELL against the NKA and Chicom T-34/85s in Korea! It was in our inventory until well into the 50s....

Au contraire, M. Polish. From Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M26_Pershing

"The Pershing and its derivative M46 were the only American tanks employed in Korea that were better armed than the North Korean T-34/85 (but not the only ones in the UN forces) and were credited with almost half of T-34s destroyed by the US Armored Corps."

Yes, the M4s were in Korea, Polish. I was mistaken on that, though they were being phased out as newer, more effective tanks began appearing (M48s), and the only reason they were reasonably effective at all was because they had a plentiful supply of hyper velocity ammunition available to them, which was not the case in WWII against the German Tigers and Panthers for the most part.

You still did not answer my original argument though, Polish. If the M4 tank was so good, and the doctrine used to employ it so effective, why did all that change in the years following WWII? Instead of developing the medium M48 and M60 with 90mm guns, why not tay with a light tank based on their experience with the M4? The reason is simple: the M4 had proven to be less than optimal against heavier German armor and that situation was only likely to get much worse against future potential enemies. Only the French ( ) employ a light tank today as a MBT.

[polishshooter]

Ps, you have no question to answer!

The Sherman was NEVER a "light tank!"

In fact, in 1942 when DESIGNED, it was actually a HEAVY Medium, compared to the GERMAN Medium of the time, the MkIII....

The Sherman had as MUCH armor as it could handle without extra wear and tear, but it DID have variants (the Dumbos") WITH almost twice as much armor they used to spearhead assaults, and in built up areas, but the extra armor slowed them down, AND overloaded the suspension, so they used ONLY a few of them, "BECAUSE NO MORE WERE NEEDED."

YES tanks got "Bigger" after the war, MAINLY to house the bigger guns, but ONLY after the suspension and powertrain evolved to make them as MOBILE as the Sherman! Like, ANY piece of equipment, it EVOVLES. The Sherman was about maxed out in turret ring size with the long 76, the Israelis had to modify the hull and turret pretty extensively to get it to use the NATO 105mm tube, but they DID. And used the SAME armor thickness and powerplant to use it!

The POINT is that no GERMAN tank could handle the wieght of the exttra armor or gun EITHER, which is WHY they were so mechanically unreliable, WHY they were always grossly underpowered, WHY they threw tracks, WHY they had to use that ridiculous compliated and fragile "interleaved" suspension to bear the weight!


And which is WHY the Russian pitched the JS- series HEAVY tanks after the war and went BACK to "lighter" MEDIUMS...


WHY?????


MOBILITY MOBILITY MOBILITY!!!! That is the ONLY thing that matters in "MOBILE WARFARE!" THAT is the reason the Sherman was a better tank than the Tiger and the Panther! By DEFINITION!!!

The German tanks were PILLBOXES compared to the Sherman! TOUGH pillboxes, DIFFICULT TO KNOCK OUT pillboxes, ABLE TO HOLD UP ADVANCES TEMPORARILY WHILE INFLICTING HEAVY LOSSES pillboxes, but PILLBOXES on TRACKS nonetheless!

WHEN the US got HEAVIER tanks with HEAVIER guns and HEAVIER armor, that were as MOBILE as the Sherman, OF COURSE they replaced it! That is a GIVEN right?


And YES the Breakout FROM the Pusan Perimeter was led by M26/M46 tanks, but there werew NONE in Korea until the build up of the perimeter, weeks after the war started... there were Shermans used throughout the war, and BEFORE we got them there, were what "held the line."

And for your information, the "M46" was the "improved" M26. How was it improved? Modifications to the suspension and powertrain "to make it as reliable as the M4 series it was to replace," but never did!!! It TOO suffered form the SAME fate as the TIger and the Panther! TOO heavy for the CHASSIS....hence, BREAKDOWNS!

So your contention that we COULD have fielded a BETTER tank (the Pershing) in WWII instead of the Sherman is false, too...the Pershing was NOT as mobile, OR dependable, as the Sherman, and to maintain "Mobility," we HAD to keep the Sherman until we "got it right."

The M46 was the tank that eventually replaced the Sherman, NOT the M26! In the 1950s!

[Pistolenschutze]

Originally Posted by polishshooter

The Sherman was NEVER a "light tank!"

Officially, no it wasn't, Polish; it was a medium tank. Official classification is nothing but semantics; it has little meaning in the real world. Using official designation, the 68 ton Abrams M1A2 is classed as a "medium" tank, though it is one of the heaviest ever built by anyone. If you wish to classify a 68 ton behemouth as a medium tank, be my guest. Compared to the German tanks, the 35 ton Sherman was "light" by any reasonable standard applicable at the time. The Tiger II, for example, weighed over 60 tons, and while slow, it was nearly invulnerable to fire from an M4 main cannon. The M26 stated out as a heavy tank, but was reclasified as a medium, as were the M46 and the M48, yet both were as heavy as any in the world at the time. My point all along has been that while mobility is important, it is not the only important factor when comparing the efficacy of tank designs. A tank is, essentially, a well protected bloody GUN PLATFORM. It may be fast, it may be maneuverable, it may be the fanciest piece of engineering since the aquducts of Rome, but if it cannot protect its crew and it cannot defeat the weapons of its opponent, it is as worthless as "mammary glands on a male porcine."

[polishshooter]

THAT, PS, is the point where we disagree. Fortuneately, the US army would disagree with you TOO! Which is WHY we have the Abrams, and NOT a Leapord, or a Centurian, or a Chieftan...or a Merkava.

MANY European Armored Experts, even the ISRAELIS, think like you, just "enough" mobility, give it a GUN that can hit at two miles, even if we have to STOP to hit at anywhere HALF that range, and give it enough armor so that when it IS stopped to fire, it can "take a hit."

The US Army EVER SINCE the first Lousiana Exercises in the 30s, with the 3 solitary Christie T-3 'Combat Cars' (that EVENTUALLY became the BT series, then the T-34!) the US army Doctrine of Armored Warfare was MOBILITY. So it was ALWAYS "enough gun," and "enough armor" that still allowed the tank to reliably MOVE, quickly, and make hits at "normal" combat ranges ON THE MOVE (The M4 was the FIRST tank in the world that could do this reliably!)

We have NEVER had a "good gun" of our own on a tank! Even the 90mm tube on the M26/M46/M47/M48s was CONSTANTLY being "reevaluated" at Knox in the 50s, and 60s, then we even went to MISSILES with the 152mm smoothbore, it REALLY wasn't until we gave up and SWITCHED to the NATO 105 in the M60s that we FINALLY had a decent "modern" gun, and that is the gun that even went into the FIRST Abrams models!

OUR claim to fame has been SIGHTS, and GYROS, and OPTICS and COMPUTERS that allow us to hit on the MOVE, and in dust and darkness and smoke....

And this held us in good stead, even with the M60, against the VASTLY greater numbers of MBTs the RUSSIANS had facing us...there is no WAY we could slug it out toe-to-toe with THAT many Russian tanks on a linear battlefield, our only HOPE was "AirLand Battle", a swift, hard-hitting war of MOVEMENT that would OVERWHELM the Russian's ability to cope with a DEEP moving battlefield! It worked as a deterrent... even BEFORE we got the M1, but the M1 was the vindication, that changed ALL the rules!

WHY did it change the rules? WHY is it the "Best tank" in the WORLD???It's gun is NO BETTER than any other contemprary tank. It's armor is NO BETTER than any other contempory tank, and MAYBE a little outclassed by some newer stuff!

MOBILITY! RELIABILITY! HIT THEM WHERE THEY AIN'T, and HIT them at FULL THROTTLE!!! Incidentally, JUST like our armored division tankers did with GREAT success many times in World War !!!!!



MANY of our allies even as late as 1991, said it wouldn't work!

I remember a GREAT argument I had at dinner one night with our Sensormatic rep, in the 80s, who JUST happened to have dual citizenship. and was a Major in the IDF (in 1980 he led his BATTALION of M60s across the Golan, AFTER being flown in the Concorde back to catch up with them within 48 hours of the call up!) This was AFTER we had deployed the Abrams, but before the Merkava was operational, but it had just been rolled out. To him the MERKAVA was going to be just the berries! (and it JUST might be, for them NOW, that they probably WON'T have to face another armored force, BUT will have to fight in "built up" areas where it's good to have infantry "in your back pocket...."

He claimed the Abrams was "too weak," "not enough gun," to stand "desert fighting(!)" where tanks HAD to stop and shoot enemies at LONG range, longer than THEY could hit back, and it ONLY mattered that it could "take a hit" while thus shooting, even "mobility was overrated..."!


1991 proved him, and ALL other detractors WRONG. (and as an aside, proved that the M60 wasn'tall that bad EITHER....)

Good thing the US doesn't believe that "conventional wisdom," and NEVER did....and incidentally, WINS wars when armor can be used like it is INTENDED....