dieseltaylor
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Posts posted by dieseltaylor
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When I became U.S. citizen with American passport I travel around the world. My first trip was actually a business trip with U.S. Air Force. I went to England. I did not speak English when I came to U.S., and I learn American-English. When we went to England I thought well English is English. After my arrival I heard very strange English. It was British-English. I had very hard time to understand them. But the British do speak English. Customs are almost the same, except British cows give tea instead of milk. Also they're driving on the wrong side of the road! And they do serve warm beer; it's ridiculous. I noticed, after my experience in U.S., that there was not warm reception for you, as a stranger, when you walk into their pubs. Later I complain about that to my friends in Wyoming. And they said, "Viktor, Brits love cowboys." I said, "Really?" Next trip I had cowboy hat, cowboy boots. I show up in their pubs; they look at me with astoundment. "Are you cowboy?" I say, "Yup." My vocabulary was very limited: Yup and Nope. But I did notice that they accept American cowboy with respect. And not only in England, in Europe and other countries as well. So I do advise my friends, who are traveling abroad, wear cowboy hat, cowboy boots, and act as a cowboy. American cowboys belong to the world!
: } .....,,,...
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I don't recall it saying but I got the impression it was longish. If my memeory is not playing me false I do believe a respondent mentioned an 88 at 200 metres not being spotted. In that case it was not firing!
I cannot recall if it was deserted but certainly the camouflage was excellent. I will see if I can locate those excerpts sometime.
Congratulations on your success with the Pak43 - very encouraging. Out of curiosity was it against the AI or a human.
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+ Does anybody get the feeling that this game was designed by tank fans?
Haha! No. Bocage Tanks!
If anyone cares to read the US Intelligence Bulletins for NA there are AFAIR examples of 88's being hidden to the extent that only the barrel was visible ...... in one case quoted a single 88 was not spotted for a day though it was firing.
Regarding the 40mm I actually worked with a guy who was on a Bofors in Italy. Not much action but in the mountains they would use the Bofors on individual enemy MG nests as they outranged them and were pretty accurate.
I suspect that this was especially for Hannomags : )40-mm LAA guns firing AP were also used successfully on a few occasions, 40-mm AP was fired as aimed single rounds not bursts. In 1942 its Forward Area Sights Mks 1 - 3 were modified to make them suitable for engaging armoured vehicles.Actually 600yards was a good range for an ATG like the 6pdr as proximity increased its chances of penetration and allowed for slight angles that might increase effective armour. Obviously much depended on the tank and the tactical situation. The British ATG's were trained to choose the most dangerous target which would be stationary tanks as opposed to moving tanks.
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Some German ideas
(7) Signal Rockets. — Signal rockets shot into open hatches with a Very pistol may set the tank afire. c. Explosives (1) Hand Grenades. — Hand grenades detonated in the muzzle of the cannon (see figs. 9 and 10) yield excellent results. GERMANY TANK HUNTING 27 (2) Blasting Slab. — A slab of explosive weighing 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds), when placed on top of a tank, has about the same strength as a concentrated charge of seven hand grenades and can give the crew a severe shock. Two such concentrated charges can damage the turret hatch considerably, and for a short time leave the crew unable to fight because of the powerful concussion. Two or three such charges combined into a multiple charge, and tied on a curved board to be slid over the ground (like a ski) , can damage the tracks so severely that they will soon break under use. Machine-gun and cannon barrels can be destroyed by two 1-kilogram charges tied together, hung like a saddle over the top of the barrel, and detonated. (A cannon barrel will be so bent that an attempt to fire the gun will completely destroy it.) (3) Concentrated Charges. — The bodies of seven stick grenades are tied together securely with wire. Only the middle grenade is fitted with the usual handle, which has an internal igniter. This charge is ineffective against the armor or tracks of heavy tanks. But when it is exploded on top of the tank, its concus- sion is so great that the crew is knocked out temporarily. The concentrated charge of 3 kilograms, which is found ready for use in the infantry engineer platoon, infantry engineer platoon motorized, engineer companies, and engineer battalions, will pierce about 60 mm of armor. It is best to place the charge over the engine or the driver's seat. The crew will be wounded by small fragments of the inner walls spattering off. Moreover, the concussion is unbearable. A combination of several 3 -kilogram charges is even more effective. The throwing radius for a concentrated charge is 10 to 15 yards. When throwing the charge, the soldier must consider the length of the fuze (about V2 inch burns in 1 second). The thrower aims at the tracks or at the belly of an approaching tank. -
Pages 4-6
In this operation (see fig. 1) the enemy attacked with his infantry and was successful in getting some of his infantry onto A Company's position. In the rear of the position, A Company had half-track vehicles. These were immediately used to launch a counterattack: the .3O-caliber gun mounted on the half-track provided fire, and the track itself was employed to run over the enemy's personnel and his light machine-gun positions. The use of these half-tracks in a counterattack to regain a position proved highly effective.Obviously this illustrates a US attack. The principle seems the same.
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(7) the night fighting stresses noise discipline, not fire support by light armor etc. It is frankly an afterthought about a secondary normative point (be quieter at night), not related to our subject.
The Germans were being quiet during the day also according to troops in North Africa contained in US reports. AFAIR it is noted in "Tanks in Tunisia"
[My problem with it as an example of use of SPWs as fire support in front line fighting is, where is the fighting? I see a description of outgoing recon by fire to support a rapid offensive movement. Perhaps the observer just could not see any defenders or their fire, but there were both, directly in the German's path and at the moments he is describing, not earlier - we don't know. At any rate there is no description of any fire directed back at the tanks, other vehicles, or accompanying infantry./QUOTE]
Do you at one time work for the tobacco industry? : )
In any event there is an implication that US troops were in the area. We can also REASONABLY assume that in the event that some resistance had occurred the Germans would have used all available firepower from the vehicles. This was textbook usage.
However I am pleased to support your conclusions in the final paragraph
Incidentally if you search the UK Google, and possibly the US, for "St. Denisiere" you can read a small excerpt from one Balkoski's books for an American view on what happened.
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Apocal - You did just take one point of a constructed argument that in isolation was silly without showing how the point was being juxtaposed for the total argument.
The point you highlight and Jason jumped on was really just taking part of a whole and then making a point that was unjustified. Of course in certain circumstances the advice is hugely sensible. If we break it down:
When you have located an antitank gun close to you, charge it while firing and destroy it."How close is close? If it was 50 yards dead in front of you and you were already at speed how many of us would think to stop or reverse? I have instances of an 88mm missing a Churchill on a causeway twice head on at small hundreds of yards ..... and we all know how slow a Churchill is. It eventually lumbered up an settled its hash.
The Germans always end up saying the commander has to make decisions and all of their tactical advice is based on the idea that there are possibilities. It may be in the single ATG example they could have gone into reaction times, how fast an ATG loads, and morale state to justify the advice but that really is not much help when action is the primary importance.
Returning to the quote it does not say you have located many ATG's charge forward - it requires commonsense - and presumably felt it unnecessary to mention not charging Pakfronts it in print.
Incidentally the halftracks are interesting as they actually had three reverse gears!
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Good post Kensal. Very nice to be able to quote the action which looks textbook. I have been reading the relevant Lone Sentry reprints.
There were 23 variants of the 251 [or 22 depending on your books] the odds would strongly suggest APC rather than " a half-track". I think we can rule out non-armoured and those without weapons.
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Apocal - I am surprised that you dismiss ASL' post so out of hand and then quote misleadingly a fragment of his post solely to highlight it against some of Jason's more considered posts.
Perhaps you might do the same for Jason dismissing the German manuals which say precisely what his new position is now. The introduction of the Kursk figures was not helpful to the discussion unless JC tied it into the fact that the Germans were following their doctrine and using the Hannomags wisely by NOT using them in a very heavily defended locality. This quote below illustrates JC having a pop and being wrong in bolstering his argument in reverse to the way he thought.
Originally Posted by JasonC
Dt - they had better, they had enough front line experience to tell the manuals writers in the rear to stuff it. Entire SS panzer divisions didn't lose only 3 SPWs in two weeks fighting through multiple layered PAK fronts by "charging" every enemy antitank gun they located.
Next you will cite French 1914 field manuals to prove how decisive the bayonet was during WW I...
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JasonC
Originally Posted by JasonC Dt - they had better, they had enough front line experience to tell the manuals writers in the rear to stuff it. Entire SS panzer divisions didn't lose only 3 SPWs in two weeks fighting through multiple layered PAK fronts by "charging" every enemy antitank gun they located.
Next you will cite French 1914 field manuals to prove how decisive the bayonet was during WW I...
The German doctrine is there in black and white. AND the main point is that it was up to the officer to decide when and if to use them. I am totally not surprised to find how absent they are in major combats you quoted previously.
It is not proof that they were not used in support of assaults in certain circumstances.
You yourself actually outlined the likely circumstances in one of your earlier posts. It was the use Kursk as an example and generalising that I found a stretch.
I hope all readers will now be on the lookout for examples of the rare halftracks in action : ) The best I have currently is a quad AA bouncing a Cromwell but thats not really the right sort of vehicle.
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Mistakes happen I will subscribe to but what is missing is confirmed checking by an independent. It used to be that before being published peer review was required. It seems that even this elementary precaution was not taken AND the samples had not been double-checked prior to the paper being sent in.
If we are going to live in an age of people rushing to publication then surely it is better for society that we put the onus back on the researchers to go through some mandatory checking or face the consequences.
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MI6 - more let politicians distort and pressure to fabricate a case.
Its a laugh who gets considered a war criminal. Blair comes out a millionnaire.
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or perhaps an American plane!!!!
The report seems highly believable.
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Monmouth University Chemistry Professor Tsanangurayi Tongesayi and his students, Lauren Lechner, Patrick Fedick, Christiana Brock, Arielle Le Beau and Chelsea Bray, have found that rice imported from certain countries contains high levels of lead that could pose health risks, particularly for infants and children, who are especially sensitive to lead's effects, and adults of Asian heritage who consume large amounts of rice.
Their research, which found some of the highest lead levels in baby food, was among almost 12,000 reports presented at the 245th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. Their research was also selected as the topic for a press release and a press conference and was streamed live at www.ustream.tv/channel/acslive on April 8 at 2:30 pm. The paper titled "Safety and ethics in food production and distribution: A case for lead in rice" based on the research has been accepted for publication in the JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE AND HEALTH, PART B: Pesticides, Food Contaminants, and Agricultural Waste.
http://www.monmouth.edu/newsdisplay.aspx?id=29695
BUT BUT BUT ......
(NaturalNews) A recent scientific paper that concluded imported rice was heavily contaminated with lead has been suddenly withdrawn by its author. Natural News has confirmed from the author, Monmouth University Chemistry Professor Tsanangurayi Tongesayi, that the paper is "recalled until further notice."The paper, announced with great fanfare at the American Chemical Society last week, was also accepted for publication in the Journal of Environmental Science and Health, Part B: Pesticides, Food Contaminants, and Agricultural Waste. It found that some sources of rice, including rice from China, were contaminated with as much as 12,000% more lead than allowed under current safety limits for children.
http://www.naturalnews.com/039998_imported_rice_lead_contamination_retraction.html
Quite an interesting long article on how to go wrong, the lack of checking, and the difficulties of analysis when done properly.
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Dt - they had better, they had enough front line experience to tell the manuals writers in the rear to stuff it. Entire SS panzer divisions didn't lose only 3 SPWs in two weeks fighting through multiple layered PAK fronts by "charging" every enemy antitank gun they located.
Next you will cite French 1914 field manuals to prove how decisive the bayonet was during WW I...
I would do nothing so stupid as I do realise that conglomerated figures may hide differences of use over a six year period with changing weapon systems.
I don't suppose you will recall that earlier in the thread I made the observation that in the right circumstances the local commander would decide on the benefits or otherwise of using them. I think this link vindicates my view that in appropriate circumstances they would be used as fire support etc,.
Until such time as you produce something different in from the German Army - rather like the directive on Tiger use -this seems to be the proof. And I do mean documentation not aggregated figures from the entire Eastern Front in specific chosen years designed to support your position.
Against early Poles and Russians they would be sensible orders and with the advent of huge numbers of ATR and ATG they would be not so clever. In extremis one might use them even against heavier positions if you had the foresight to drop artillery on the positions you wanted to nullify and then use the Hanomags to provide heavy MG direct fire as the bombardment lifted. But then that comes back to German officers making the call and in fact having some documentation on use. Talking of minimal losses in some operation does not prove otherwise.
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http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/ttt09/motorized-infantry.html
20. Support the tanks as closely as possible with all weapons, in combat inside the enemy's defensive zone. Do not forget to provide protection to your rear.21. The submachine gun of the driver should not remain on its support. It is a valuable weapon for close combat against vehicles.
22. The fire of rear vehicles ought not to be dangerous for the crews of forward vehicles that fight on foot.
23. When there is danger from mines, follow the tracks of vehicles that have just passed.
24. Every enemy antitank weapon has superiority over you because it is always ready to fire. Compensate for this superiority by rapid travel, by utilizing the terrain, making short stops to fire, and by actively concentrating your shots. When you have located an antitank gun close to you, charge it while firing and destroy it.
25. Do not give the order to alight from the vehicles until the fire from enemy antitank guns, or the terrain make it necessary, and at a time when you cannot be outflanked. Always utilize the protection afforded by your armor.
Obviously the Germans did not have the benefit of the forum gurus. : )
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That does highlight one faintly worrying omission in that the report is not dated. Also the range of firing is not given.Any looping effect of firing at long ranges will not be represented but particularly interesting on the glacis plate when the angle of incidence would be lower.
Perhaps they felt that firing at extreme ranges head on was nonsensical : )
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Yes if I had the precise figures for the Texas from Wikipedia I would have quoted those.
However the concept remains the same : )
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Excellent find. I have never seen it before.
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I've been there and it's true it's like that. However I would think that was from air bombardment. I know most, if not all, of the bombs targeting beaches like Omaha missed completely. But i think they used air to hit Point du Hoc. I wouldn't think a ship could get a shell there from that trajectory but maybe I'm wrong. Unless the terrain sloped downward towards the ocean? I don't recall that it did. This photo is from Wiki and implies there was special effort made to knock it out by air.
I have no doubt the linked accounts are true. Battleships could fire 20 miles or so in which case there is more than plenty airspace to get plunging fire. I see at least some US ships had an elevation of 45 degrees for the 16" turret.
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Kursk
the final German offensive on the eastern front.Live and learn!
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From the BBC
Reinhart, Rogoff... and Herndon: The student who caught out the profsBy Ruth Alexander BBC News This week, economists have been astonished to find that a famous academic paper often used to make the case for austerity cuts contains major errors. Another surprise is that the mistakes, by two eminent Harvard professors, were spotted by a student doing his homework.
It's 4 January 2010, the Marriott Hotel in Atlanta. At the annual meeting of the American Economic Association, Professor Carmen Reinhart and the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Ken Rogoff, are presenting a research paper called Growth in a Time of Debt.
At a time of economic crisis, their finding resonates - economic growth slows dramatically when the size of a country's debt rises above 90% of Gross Domestic Product, the overall size of the economy.
Word about this paper spread. Policymakers wanted to know more.
And so did student Thomas Herndon. His professors at the University of Massachusetts Amherst had set his graduate class an assignment - pick an economics paper and see if you can replicate the results. It's a good exercise for aspiring researchers.
Thomas chose Growth in a Time of Debt. It was getting a lot of attention, but intuitively, he says, he was dubious about its findings.
Some key figures tackling the global recession found this paper a useful addition to the debate at the heart of which is this key question: is it best to let debt increase in the hope of stimulating economic growth to get out of the slump, or is it better to cut spending and raise taxes aggressively to get public debt under control?
EU commissioner Olli Rehn and influential US Republican politician Paul Ryan have both quoted a 90% debt-to-GDP limit to support their austerity strategies.
But while US politicians were arguing over whether to inject more stimulus into the economy, the euro was creaking under the strain of forced austerity, and a new coalition government in the UK was promising to raise taxes and cut spending to get the economy under control - Thomas Herndon's homework assignment wasn't going well.
No matter how he tried, he just couldn't replicate Reinhart and Rogoff's results.
"My heart sank," he says. "I thought I had likely made a gross error. Because I'm a student the odds were I'd made the mistake, not the well-known Harvard professors."
His professors were also sure he must be doing something wrong.
"I remember I had a meeting with my professor, Michael Ash, where he basically said, 'Come on, Tom, this isn't too hard - you just gotta go sort this out.'"
So Herndon checked his work, and checked again.
By the end of the semester, when he still hadn't cracked the puzzle, his supervisors realised something was up.
"We had this puzzle that we were unable to replicate the results that Reinhart-Rogoff published," Prof Ash, says. "And that really got under our skin. That was really a mystery for us."
So Ash and his colleague Prof Robert Pollin encouraged Herndon to continue the project and to write to the Harvard professors. After some correspondence, Reinhart and Rogoff provided Thomas with the actual working spreadsheet they'd used to obtain their results.
"Everyone says seeing is believing, but I almost didn't believe my eyes," he says.
Thomas called his girlfriend over to check his eyes weren't deceiving him.
But no, he was correct - he'd spotted a basic error in the spreadsheet. The Harvard professors had accidentally only included 15 of the 20 countries under analysis in their key calculation (of average GDP growth in countries with high public debt).
Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada and Denmark were missing.
Oops.
Herndon and his professors found other issues with Growth in a Time of Debt, which had an even bigger impact on the famous result. The first was the fact that for some countries, some data was missing altogether.
Reinhart and Rogoff say that they were assembling the data series bit by bit, and at the time they presented the paper for the American Economic Association conference, good quality data on post-war Canada, Australia and New Zealand simply weren't available. Nevertheless, the omission made a substantial difference.
Thomas and his supervisors also didn't like the way that Reinhart and Rogoff averaged their data. They say one bad year for a small country like New Zealand, was blown out of proportion because it was given the same weight as, for example, the UK's nearly 20 years with high public debt.
"New Zealand's single year, 1951, at -8% growth is held up with the same weight as Britain's nearly 20 years in the high public debt category at 2.5% growth," Michael Ash says.
"I think that's a mistaken way to examine these data."
There's no black and white here, because there are also downsides to the obvious alternatives. But still, it's controversial and it, too, made a big difference.
All these results were published by Thomas Herndon and his professors on 15 April, as a draft working paper. They find that high levels of debt are still correlated with lower growth - but the most spectacular results from the Reinhart and Rogoff paper disappear. High debt is correlated with somewhat lower growth, but the relationship is much gentler and there are lots of exceptions to the rule.
Reinhart and Rogoff weren't available to be interviewed, but they did provide the BBC with a statement.
In it, they said: "We are grateful to Herndon et al. for the careful attention to our original Growth in a Time of Debt AER paper and for pointing out an important correction to Figure 2 of that paper. It is sobering that such an error slipped into one of our papers despite our best efforts to be consistently careful. We will redouble our efforts to avoid such errors in the future. We do not, however, believe this regrettable slip affects in any significant way the central message of the paper or that in our subsequent work."
Accidents do happen, and science progresses through the identification of previous mistakes. But was this a particularly expensive mistake?
"I don't think jobs were destroyed because of this but it provides an intellectual rationalisation for things that affect how people think about the world," says Daniel Hamermesh, professor of economics at Royal Holloway, University of London.
"And how people think about the world, especially politicians, eventually affects how the world works."
Discovering a spreadsheet error was never going to end the debate over austerity - and nor should it, according to Megan McArdle, special correspondent for Newsweek and The Daily Beast.
"There is other research showing that you can have these slowdowns when you get to high levels of debt," she says. "We have a very vivid [example] in Greece."
Thomas Herndon 's view is that austerity policies are counter-productive. But right now he's delighted that the first academic paper he's ever published has made such a splash.
"I feel really honoured to have made a contribution to the policy discussion," he says.
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It is really rather shaking that so much rests on such poorly constructed spreadsheets. I am remingded that 50% of the most quoted medical research is actually bogus or suspect. Checking up seems to be an inadequately rewarded whereas those who make mistakes or lie seem to get away with it.
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Agree with proposition.
ATG vs Armor... Cost/benefit?
in Combat Mission Fortress Italy
Posted
Some stuff from Tankers in Tunisia