PT 76

[John Kettler]

CaptainTheDark,

Are you referring to Cockburn's The Threat: Inside The Soviet Military Machine which, I believe, was based on interviewing Russian Jews who'd expatriated post Red Army service and gone to Brighton Beach, New York? My recollection is that they'd served chiefly in construction and maintenance units, not line combat formations. Believe this was because they weren't trusted politically. There was a lot of discussion of drunkenness, lousy food, thugs, the grandfather system, corners being cut, and I forget what else. Had a copy and found it dwelt on the far left side of the threat bell curve, the antithesis, if you will, of the worst case (scariest Bear) scenario. Had most of my library stolen years ago, so can't go back to that book and check to see what I missed. Believe there was something said about a suppressed truth regarding how KAL 007 was able to penetrate Soviet airspace without being detected much sooner and intercepted. As I recall the story, shortly before the KAL 007 event occurred, there'd been a massive Pacific storm which trashed the radar site's antennas, rendering the radars nonfunctional. But rather than admit this and take the heat, the truth was hidden from Moscow, leaving a gap in the homeland's radar coverage.

MikeyD and Jabble,

Am aware of the two attacks you described, but those weren't the ones I had in mind. These are.

http://grunt-redux.atspace.eu/arvn_armour41.htm

This one covers attacks on the Special Forces' camps and later tank battles. The second link is from an NVA perspective.

https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2017/05/30/armor-employment-by-vcnva-forces-i/

https://cslegion.com/vietnam/comrade-giaps-clever-nuggets-4-nva-armor/

Nothing but the M41! 

https://mikesresearch.com/2019/03/24/m41-walker-bulldog/

On a separate note, am still hunting for the account of the engagement in which the NVA tankers thought they were in an antitank minefield, and I'm still trying to sort out the what an when of ATGM use vs ARVN armor. Want to say that there was a failed or minor success AT-1 attack in 1968 and effective AT-3 attacks in 1972, a year before the Yom Kippur War.

Regards,

John Kettler

Edited April 1, 2021 by John Kettler

[John Kettler]

Quick note! Several sources I looked at did, in the most cursory way, mention the AT-1 SNAPPER was used in Vietnam, but none provided details. Some made no mention at all, starting the combat use reporting at the 1967 War and going forward from there. So far, have failed utterly to find the account which explicitly detailed that use in Vietnam and the results.

Regards,

John Kettler

 

Edited April 1, 2021 by John Kettler

[markus544]

PT-76 vs law rockets Ouch

[markus544]

Looks knocked to me...They really liked that guy it seems to me

[Andreas3]

On 4/2/2021 at 12:50 AM, John Kettler said:

Had most of my library stolen years ago, so can't go back to that book and check to see what I missed. Believe there was something said about a suppressed truth regarding how KAL 007 was able to penetrate Soviet airspace without being detected much sooner and intercepted. As I recall the story, shortly before the KAL 007 event occurred, there'd been a massive Pacific storm which trashed the radar site's antennas, rendering the radars nonfunctional. But rather than admit this and take the heat, the truth was hidden from Moscow, leaving a gap in the homeland's radar coverage.

 

Suuuuuuuuuure 

[MikeyD]

I heard that the '007' flight designation was the CIA being cheeky. During its scheduled flights KAL 007 was said to lower is front landing gear exposing a camera assembly and would take photos along the Russian coast. Its 'cover' was a commercial airline flying its regularly scheduled routes. At least that's the scuttlebutt I heard.

[Mastiff]

On 3/7/2021 at 9:23 AM, FlatEric999 said:

Wasn't the PT-76 the first combat victim of the TOW missile (in Vietnam)? I think the key advantage of the PT-76 was it could swim / float - other than that it was a fairly basic vehicle with thin armour and a modest gun (effective range 600-700m?).  They used to display one at Duxford as part of the mini-tankfest events they organised to coincide with Father's day - very dusty affairs!

This time with added dust and showing off it's 'mega hatch' to good effect:

Since comparisons have been made with the CVR-T, here are some shots of a Scorpion and a Sabre (a hybrid vehicle that mated a Scorpion chassis with the turret from a Fox armoured car to produce a Scimitar-like vehicle).

Scorpion:

Sabre:

I seen a crap load of these at Desert Storm.

[LukeFF]

On 4/1/2021 at 3:50 PM, John Kettler said:

Had most of my library stolen years ago, so can't go back to that book and check to see what I missed. Believe there was something said about a suppressed truth regarding how KAL 007 was able to penetrate Soviet airspace without being detected much sooner and intercepted. As I recall the story, shortly before the KAL 007 event occurred, there'd been a massive Pacific storm which trashed the radar site's antennas, rendering the radars nonfunctional. But rather than admit this and take the heat, the truth was hidden from Moscow, leaving a gap in the homeland's radar coverage.

John, just stop already. You just make more of a fool of yourself every time you post something like this.

[John Kettler]

markus44,

The accounts I've read said that the M72 wasn't very effective vs the PT-76 because the flotation chambers acted as spaced armor against the relatively weak warhead. Believe much the same thing happened during WW II when US troops tried to kill the Ka-Mi amphibious tank frontally, only to be defeated by the big bolt-on flotation chamber. My recollection is that the only sure kill frontally by the LAW was a direct hit on the low, small conical turret. By contrast, the M19 106 mm recoilless rifle was a sure kill, since the ammunition grossly overmatched the PT-76's protection. 

LukeFF,

Rather than jump on me, how about you go find the book I referenced and see what Cockburn wrote? May've misattributed the author, but the story is burned into my memory. As for deliberately not reporting a serious deficiency or even lying to Moscow, go look at Kursk, where the Russians LOST (as in didn't know its location) an entire division for hours. Believe an assistant chief of staff for the owning Army was quietly sent to go find that unit. This was with the STAVKA emissary in the CP! That one was in Zamulin's phenomenal Destroying The Myth. Zamulin also reported severe losses being totally buried and not reported to Stalin himself, who was closely following the Kursk battle. Red Army commanders flat out lied to Stalin himself about the combat state of their units.

You also need to understand what Russian military personnel call the vertical stroke. This is a system in which a defect, failure or screwup further down the chain of command cascades vertically upward. This creates tremendous pressure not to report problems, for that blights the owning officer's career and that of his superiors. Going along to get along is the rule.

And just look at all the non-reporting and other matters that led led to Mathias Rust flying with impunity from Finland all the way to Red Square. This was a textbook case of the vertical stroke at work afterwards, for both the head of Air Defense and the mighty Minister of Defense himself were sacked, but so were some 150 lower ranking officers. The heaviest air defense system on the planet was penetrated and operated in for almost seven hours by a young idealist with 50 hours' flying time under his belt in a single-engine Cessna with added fuel stowage. Rust would've landed on Red Square, but there were too many people, so instead he wound up landing on a road near Lenin's tomb. His single act, intended to promote peace, made the Russian military the laughingstock of the world.

https://lflank.wordpress.com/2015/02/20/mathias-rust-and-his-flight-to-moscow/

The US has had similar problems, with an ongoing one being sexual abuse of female cadets at the service academies, abuse of women aboard ship and in various Army, Marine and Air Force units. Speaking of Marines, back when the V-22 Osprey was in development, the Corps was found to be gun decking the flight test logs to make the tilt rotor seem far safer than it was. The US Army rigged the survivability tests for the Bradley and got caught by Congressmen, resulting not only in a scandal but highly undesirable lampooning in a black comedy about the Bradley's development starring Kelsey Grammer. That film was called The Pentagon Wars.

https://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/18/us/tests-of-bradley-armored-vehicle-criticized.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon_Wars

With things like the above as context, it seems to me entirely possible, especially if the radar antennas are already iced up, thus high drag, that a powerful storm coming in at full force straight off the Pacific could indeed wreck those radars, especially if maintenance corners had been cut on them, something we know went on in the Soviet armed forces. Knowing what I know of the Soviet military, militaries in general and how organizations behave, the scenario wouldn't shock me. 

Before closing, would note that for seven years, the US Navy had a massive cheating scandal in its Nuclear Power Systems Program.

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-navys-nuclear-cheating-scandal-is-worse-than-you-think-d0557a91f13

while the Air Force had a a huge scandal in proficiency testing of Minuteman missile crews and a senior missile officer who got drunk in Moscow!

https://news.yahoo.com/34-missile-launch-officers-implicated-nuclear-cheating-scandal-042221654.html 

 

Regards,

John Kettler

 

Edited April 6, 2021 by John Kettler