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Author Topic: How did you last die?  (Read 2245240 times)

Madman198237

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Re: How did you last die?
« Reply #20010 on: February 12, 2018, 04:28:21 pm »

Fundamental flaws?

You mean things like “They can’t drive through buildings without knocking the entire crew”?
Nah, light tanks don't have the structural strength and horsepower to carry large enough cannons.  If a light tank shoots a WW2 heavy tank, or a modern tank, nothing happens.  Might as well be blowing kisses at it.

No, no no no, and no. The problem is that they were designed for a role better filled for other things (scouting and anti-infantry work), but then deployed in antitank roles, to which they were unsuited, NOT because they couldn't carry a big enough gun, but because they simply DIDN'T carry a big enough gun, because it wasn't necessary for their role. Rather like the Shermans or Panzer IVs not packing really good AT armament, because something ELSE was supposed to fulfill the role of killing the nastier enemy tanks.

If you wanted to, you could weld a 128mm flak gun (see: Maus tank, Jagdtiger for examples of the gun) to the top of a light tank. It might flip the thing, but it probably wouldn't rip it in half or anything so dramatic. However, you just compromised its ability to scout, move extra-super-fast, or be dropped from a plane, the three things light tanks could do that a medium couldn't usually do.
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SOLDIER First

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Re: How did you last die?
« Reply #20011 on: February 12, 2018, 04:45:27 pm »

you can drop a medium tank from a plane if you aren’t a coward
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Mathel

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Re: How did you last die?
« Reply #20012 on: February 12, 2018, 04:45:42 pm »

Fundamental flaws?

You mean things like “They can’t drive through buildings without knocking the entire crew”?
Nah, light tanks don't have the structural strength and horsepower to carry large enough cannons.  If a light tank shoots a WW2 heavy tank, or a modern tank, nothing happens.  Might as well be blowing kisses at it.

What projectiles are you shooting? If piercing shots, then sure. But if you fired a small HEAT shot from a small cannon and hit a WW2 heavy tank, (a KV?), you would probably pierce through it's armor. And a HESH could kills the crew. Neither of these actually need a large cannon.

 Then again, a larger tank means not just thicker armor and higher caliber cannon, but also longer cannon. So the heavy tank probably has more range.

With modern tanks, the light tank has no chance at all.
A) The modern tank is going to detect it first and shoot at it with computer assisted aiming.
B) Modern tanks have reactive plates on top of layered armor. The reactive plates would deflect the first hit to any spot with HEAT, while a layer of fabric (such as kevlar) would protect the crew from shrapnel created by a HESH.
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Re: How did you last die?
« Reply #20013 on: February 12, 2018, 05:01:44 pm »

you can drop a medium tank from a plane if you aren’t a coward

Everything is air-droppable at least once.
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scourge728

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Re: How did you last die?
« Reply #20014 on: February 12, 2018, 05:02:49 pm »

I sometimes wish airplanes had never been used in war, because then https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1000_Ratte and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1500_Monster might have been not target practice and instead a possible threat (albeit, one that you would need to build custom transport and tracks for) Fun fact: Google Searching "that really big tank germany wanted to make" first result is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1000_Ratte

Culise

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Re: How did you last die?
« Reply #20015 on: February 12, 2018, 05:21:51 pm »

The role of the light tank still exists in the modern day; it simply isn't filled by something called a tank and, odds are, isn't even tracked.  Light Armored Vehicles such as the LAV-25 probably spring immediately to mind, and armored personnel carriers are also available to be used in similar roles, such as BTRs and the M1127.  Interestingly, the LAV-25 also includes an AT variant that essentially was a strapped-on TOW-2 launcher; structural considerations aren't quite as important when you fire missiles instead of cannon shot.  Such a vehicle may also be purpose-built to fit a massive gun, possibly if the design team is compensating for something; a variant of the older French Panhard AML-245s was developed with a 90mm door-knocker in spite of being a 4x4 armored car and have been credited with kills against Soviet export-model (read: cheap) T-54s, albeit ones operated by the poorly-trained Syrian and Egyptian armies. 

The problem wasn't that a light tank was being sent in to fight a heavy tank; it's that when a heavy tank came knocking, you had to take it down with what you had.  The problems the Sherman had against Panthers are traditionally a bit overstated (especially post-refit with the deployment of Fireflies and Easy 8s to fill the gap), but it's worth noting that most German forces didn't even have Panthers; they made do with Panzer 4s or older.  This is the sort of pattern that AT weaponry on LAVs is designed to fill: the LAV-25 and its TOWs aside, most AT-ability they have isn't designed to go toe-to-toe with modern MBTs, but rather take on other lighter armored vehicles up to and including obsolete MBTs that haven't been phased out. 

I sometimes wish airplanes had never been used in war, because then https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1000_Ratte and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1500_Monster might have been not target practice and instead a possible threat (albeit, one that you would need to build custom transport and tracks for) Fun fact: Google Searching "that really big tank germany wanted to make" first result is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1000_Ratte
Problem with them is still that you also need to magic up roads and bridges that won't collapse under their weight.  These things were best used as mobile pillboxes rather than offensive weapons. 

EDIT:
you can drop a medium tank from a plane if you aren’t a coward
Hee. You see, comrade, there is no need to drop tank from plane if tank *is* plane.
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EDIT 2: And I just realized this is the "How did you last die" thread. Oopsie.
« Last Edit: February 12, 2018, 05:35:10 pm by Culise »
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EnigmaticHat

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Re: How did you last die?
« Reply #20016 on: February 12, 2018, 05:32:53 pm »

Fundamental flaws?

You mean things like “They can’t drive through buildings without knocking the entire crew”?
Nah, light tanks don't have the structural strength and horsepower to carry large enough cannons.  If a light tank shoots a WW2 heavy tank, or a modern tank, nothing happens.  Might as well be blowing kisses at it.

No, no no no, and no. The problem is that they were designed for a role better filled for other things (scouting and anti-infantry work), but then deployed in antitank roles, to which they were unsuited, NOT because they couldn't carry a big enough gun, but because they simply DIDN'T carry a big enough gun, because it wasn't necessary for their role. Rather like the Shermans or Panzer IVs not packing really good AT armament, because something ELSE was supposed to fulfill the role of killing the nastier enemy tanks.

If you wanted to, you could weld a 128mm flak gun (see: Maus tank, Jagdtiger for examples of the gun) to the top of a light tank. It might flip the thing, but it probably wouldn't rip it in half or anything so dramatic. However, you just compromised its ability to scout, move extra-super-fast, or be dropped from a plane, the three things light tanks could do that a medium couldn't usually do.
Yeah, and a 128mm flak gun wouldn't do anything at all to a modern tank.  Or most WW2 heavy tanks.  Hence my point.

If it was trivial to fit smaller tank chassis with larger guns, why did so many of them get modified into awkward, inferior anti-tank designs with immobile cannons?  I mean heck, why are various modern nations strapping ATGMs to the sides of their APCs when they could just put a MBT cannon on it and have a weapon that, you know, keeps the explosive payload INSIDE the armor.  And can fire more than once.  And turn.  And be worth anything at all in hilly terrain.

The Sherman was not a scout or an IFV.  It was our primary tank in WW2.  The same thing happened in WW2 as in WW1, which is we entered the war late and lacked the practical knowledge that the European powers had.  In this case we tested out the Sherman in Africa and found that it was superior to the German tanks, not realizing that the Germans were unwilling/unable to deploy their heavier tank variants there.

It worked out anyway tho.  The Germans were critically low on fuel because of the eastern front, which is also were a lot of their tanks were.  Meanwhile we had so much production we could drown the Germans in tanks and the Japanese in boats.  Plus we made reliable stuff that we could repair.  To put it into perspective, by the Battle of the Bulge the Germans were so low on fuel (and they were so far past the point of practical tank size) that they estimated that their armor would run out of fuel less than halfway to the objective and they would have to steal ours.  If we were fighting the Germans in video game terms (equal sized armies), hell yeah the Sherman would have been totally insufficient.  But the thing you have to understand is, WW2 tanks just broke.  I don't know why, and it depends on the faction and the year, but the reliability was awful.  Without a constant influx of spare parts a WW2 tank unit would basically defeat itself.  I don't think we even destroyed the enemy heavy tanks in the battle of the bulge, IIRC they broke down or surrendered.  It was the same story on the Eastern Front; the Russian heavy tanks were infamously durable to the point where they would have their treads destroyed and become an immobile turret until they either ran out of ammo, a tank got behind them, or a German soldier pried the hatch open.  And likewise the Russian tanks were, even by WW2 standards, horrifyingly unreliable to the point where even when the war was at its worst and the front wasn't THAT far from the factories, they would still break down on the way there.

Re: reactive armor: reactive armor blocks anything once.  Great against one big shell, useless against a lot of little shells.  And modern targeting and ammo aren't super special.  As far as I know the same targeting technology that's in our tanks now was in our ships back then, its just that it was the size of a house.  Our tanks can't see through walls, they can see in the dark or fog sure but again, that tech is cold war era at worst.  As for ammo, all mainline battle tanks in every era come standard with whatever the best AT ammo is.  Its not like tank commands are going "shit that tank is firing HEAT at us!"  Its just kind of assumed, they'd probably laugh if they realized someone was firing HE/anti-infantry shells at them.  I'm sure that our shells have gotten better over time but armor has gotten better with it.  MBT exist because they either out-armor or out-range 99% of the weapons on the modern battlefield, and what's left is difficult to use things like rocket pods and ATGMs (that are generally off limits to anyone fighting a guerilla-style war).  If something like a Stryker could mount a cannon to take out something like an Abrams, we would not use Abrams tanks.
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Culise

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Re: How did you last die?
« Reply #20017 on: February 12, 2018, 05:45:52 pm »

The Sherman was not a scout or an IFV.  It was our primary tank in WW2.  The same thing happened in WW2 as in WW1, which is we entered the war late and lacked the practical knowledge that the European powers had.  In this case we tested out the Sherman in Africa and found that it was superior to the German tanks, not realizing that the Germans were unwilling/unable to deploy their heavier tank variants there.

It worked out anyway tho.
Don't underestimate the US design boards too much, there.  The US already knew in 1940 that they were going to need to plan for war with Germany and thus planned accordingly.  Regular discussion with the British and Canadians who did have that direct experience went into the Sherman design process, which is part of the reason for the full-traverse 75mm turret instead of the...interesting dual-turrets of the M3 Lees.  The entire reason the Shermans were so effective was because the US actually did take to heart the lessons taught by Germany this time around and let it percolate through American's manufacturing welterweight-status, precisely the opposite of World War 1; it wasn't just dumb luck or a random fluke.  The problem is that while they designed it to handle anything the Germans had in 1940 and 1941, the Germans were about to start designing the Panther in 1942, coincidentally around the same time the US started seriously looking at up-gunning to a 76mm or 90mm cannon.
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NullForceOmega

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Re: How did you last die?
« Reply #20018 on: February 12, 2018, 06:00:12 pm »

And modern targeting and ammo aren't super special.  As far as I know the same targeting technology that's in our tanks now was in our ships back then, its just that it was the size of a house.  Our tanks can't see through walls, they can see in the dark or fog sure but again, that tech is cold war era at worst.

Most of what you said is accurate, but this part is not.  Modern targeting systems are completely different beast than what was available WW2 era, the incorporation of gyro-stabilization (which is fairly old), digital computers (old, but not that old), laser targeting (very modern, only possible for the last thirty to forty years), GPS integration (again, only possible for around thirty years), and an extensive suite of sensor technologies including thermal, which can to an extent let you see through walls, is so far advanced from what was possible in the forties and fifties as to be nearly unimaginable.  That said, even 'modern' targeting systems (that is, those of them that civilians can see and are aware of) are thirty years old or so.
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Madman198237

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Re: How did you last die?
« Reply #20019 on: February 12, 2018, 06:02:07 pm »

Yeah, and a 128mm flak gun wouldn't do anything at all to a modern tank.  Or most WW2 heavy tanks.  Hence my point.
I'm going to leave it at "this is blatantly, horribly false". I won't be replying to the rest because this is a huge derail already.

Now, please, let's go back to our regularly scheduled dying, alright?
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AzyWng

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Re: How did you last die?
« Reply #20020 on: February 12, 2018, 06:04:15 pm »

Ok, then. Here's one:

Tried and failed to make sense of the huge derail of the "How did you last die?" thread.

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EnigmaticHat

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Re: How did you last die?
« Reply #20021 on: February 12, 2018, 06:07:29 pm »

Yeah, and a 128mm flak gun wouldn't do anything at all to a modern tank.  Or most WW2 heavy tanks.  Hence my point.
I'm going to leave it at "this is blatantly, horribly false". I won't be replying to the rest because this is a huge derail already.

Now, please, let's go back to our regularly scheduled dying, alright?
A famous (mostly in Russia) incident in WW2 involves Russian flak "tanks" shooting German tanks.  Nothing happened.

And yes, let's.
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Akura

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Re: How did you last die?
« Reply #20022 on: February 12, 2018, 06:16:06 pm »

Started up several games, only to ragequit an hour or so in when I see that I'm vastly outclassed by the other empires.

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Re: How did you last die?
« Reply #20023 on: February 12, 2018, 07:25:34 pm »

you can drop a medium tank from a plane if you aren’t a coward
you can drop a heavy tank from a zepplin if you aren't a coward
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scourge728

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Re: How did you last die?
« Reply #20024 on: February 12, 2018, 07:26:34 pm »

I love how Bay 12 gets derailed into discussions on the effectiveness of various tanks, when on most threads they get derailed into flame wars and sh*tposts
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