Gonzalo, so good to see you made it out of your difficulties. Dig in, you’ll see a comment I made among the many tributes assuming you were toast, as it were. I said something along the lines of Gonzalo is out there reading his many eulogies here and elsewhere like Tom Sawyer in Mark Twain’s book, up there in the rafters listening in on his own funeral. How many get to do THAT? Be well young man, and especially, careful. Excellent to have you back.
“For the record, A-10’s commercial name is Thunderbolt. “Warthog” appeared later in circumstances unknown to me.”
I did Naval Air as a LOX and seat mechanic in an A6E Intruder squadron, I discovered planes tend to develop their own following and culture and new names are developed. The EA6B Prowler for instance became widely referred to around the deck and Air Boss platform as a Queer because it was a four-seat A6, stretched. The S-3A by Lockheed, a sub-hunter complete with a MAD boom had the name Viking. What did we do but rename it, for our purposes, “Hoover” because of the sounds of its engines when they goosed the throttles. Low sound of “woooooooooOOO! Damnedest thing you ever heard. Not as weird as the TU95 Bear in flight, but different from the usual shrieks out there. Another, competing reason for the name Hoover was those engines were hanging off the wing, they were a good one to stay away from maneuvering around while they were turning. Getting sucked in, not good. I know the Air Force guys used to call the B-52 “BUFF” for Big Ugly Fat Fuckers”. Nicknames, everything gets a nickname in the culture in which it exists. What was better than Tomcat, heh..
I can definitely relate to the “BUFF” nickname. Living in southern England, a few years ago I was out for a stroll when suddenly I heard a scary noise overhead. I looked up and saw this immense black monster hanging in the sky above me.
It was bloody terrifying. I am sure that a White Swan (which is actually bigger and heavier, but very graceful) would have been awe-inspiring, but perhaps not so scary.
IF militaries had more sense than they do, they would adapt the nickname as the name of the device because they are unusually easy to remember. By way of example the Japanese Zero fighter is a nickname. No doubt it comes from the image of the sun on the airplane. The Japanese calling themselves the land of the rising sun is actually kind of a dig at China. China, to the west of Japan, is the area where the sun sets.
In my fading WW2 memory, the Thunderbolt was a propeller driven aircraft. I did grow up in the occupied Netherlands and we used to watch armadas of allied bombers come over on their way to Germany. These slow moving, heavy planes were accompanied by fast moving planes, darting around them, searching for German anti-aircraft batteries. We recognized the British Spitfire, the American Mustangs and Thunderbolts according to our elders. Reading your mail again I now notice that you refer to a “commercial” name. May be the military name was used again. Please correct me if I am wrong. This goes back to 1943/1944. BV
Let us not forget the fact, that the use of the A-10 with its ammunition of depleted uranium has the effect of many contaminated areas (in Iraq, Yugoslavia but also in shooting ranges in the west) , where people suffer and will suffer for centuries. There is a good documentary of the German Film maker Frieder Wagner (german with subtitles) about these dirty nuclear weapons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djv8UyrrC34
If you need to make a law punishing your own troops if they citizens Western weapons, then the weapons almost certainly are worthless. There are reports of many Javelins having expired batteries and ammunition. Apparently, according to a Ukrainian POW, only 1 in 4 actually work and often times the munitions explode before impact or dont explode at all. It explains why every day I see photos on Telegram of abandoned Javelins and NLAWS in the trenches of Ukrainian positions captured by Russian and DPR forces.
No, made by exhausted 20 hour per day zero hour contract employees at AMAZON. Shuffle shit faster was the last memo leaked from Bezos’s office. If you need to piss, piss inside the javelin itself or wear double diapers. They just have to look the part, not actually work, to get my .Gov cheque.
Not many complaints heard about the M-1 Garand or the AK-47 or the German MG 42 or the old 155 mm heavy arty! Same with the Warthog, the F-16 and the B-52; all rather low-tech and simple.
ALL That stuff just does it’s job and is cheap to operate; easy to repair.
Not so with the modern high tech stuff! There’s a reason all your consumer high tech gear is sent with instructions of what NOT to expose it to; all of which are conditions regularly faced in a combat environment. MIL-SPEC computer chips and actuators are still very sensitive little babies!
I see no reason why Ukrainian soldiers should be allowed to complain.
Its better to have a lousy weapon to defend yourself, than having no weapon yes? If the Ukrainian soldiers had better weapons, more Russians and more civilians would die.
With lousy weapons and a ban to complain, the justified war is going to end quicker. Only crazies and neo-nazis will run to the front with lousy weapons and thus receive maybe a justified death.
“Its better to have a lousy weapon to defend yourself, than having no weapon yes?”
That depends who your opponents are.
If the opponents are “The United States of America” and their associates then having no weapon has a higher probability of you becoming dead and having a weapon renders you a combatant giving an alibi why you had a higher probability of you becoming dead.
Also if your “perceived allies” are “The United States of America” and its associates, they tend to supply you with weapons of limited utility due to obsolescence and/or your lack of training, thereby facilitating a highjer probability that you will become dead.
Actually, as revealed by Wikileaks, having an umbrella renders you a “combatant” and liable to be machine gunned for amusement by soldiers in helicopters, or blown to shreds by Hellfire missiles.
Having no visible weapon at all renders you a combatant with concealed weapons, see above.
“Actually, as revealed by Wikileaks, having an umbrella renders you a “combatant” and liable to be machine gunned for amusement by soldiers in helicopters, or blown to shreds by Hellfire missiles.”
Correct and partly why Mr. Assange is at risk of being extradited to “the United States of America” whilst he is already there for “intelligence matters”, and Mr. Kissinger’s observation on interacting with “The United States of America” where being an ally is ultimately a death sentence.
This observation of Mr. Kissinger is becoming widely understood and acted upon even in Ukraine.
Thank you for your co-operation in illustrating Mr. Kissinger’s observation – step by step.
Troops in combat have no choice as to where they are. Either they are where they are ordered to be or they are a deserter subject to a punishment that can be anything from jail time to being shot on sight. The weapon they carry is often a kind of security blanket. It is a real moral killer to have a soldier with a weapon that they don’t trust.
A lousy weapon will get you killed faster than no weapon. Not that I want the Ukrainians to have anything to shoot with.
I loved Gonzalo’s video, but, minor quibble, would disagree with his statement that you don’t need training on assault weapons or handguns. Having a weapon but not being able to hit the side of a barn with it will also get you killed faster than being unarmed.
When I was a deputy sheriff, we had to qualify every single month with our handgun and with a shotgun. 50 handgun rounds (practice/training) and fewer with the shotgun.
“Its better to have a lousy weapon to defend yourself, than having no weapon yes?”
Emphatically no. Offhand I can think of a dozen ways in which a lousy weapon is far worse than nothing. A gun, grenade, or rocket launcher that blows up in your face. A weapon whose possession emboldens you to confront the enemy, but which malfunctions leaving you exposed and defenceless. Etc. ad nauseam.
In WW2 British seamen risked their lives – and a lot of them died – to get desperately-needed equipment and supplies to the USSR via Arkhangelsk. Among the weapons sent were British Churchill tanks.
After a bit of experience, the Russian tankists began calling the Churchill “a grave for seven brothers”.
Typically, Britain started the war with the Matilda tank, which was tiny but very effective against enemy tanks of 1940. It was almost the Tiger of its day.
Then Britain spent 1941-5 designing and building dozens of new types of tank, none of which was satisfactory.
Just in time for the victory parades, they produced the Comet – which was adequate and able to trade blows with Tigers and Panthers. Followed by the even better Centurion – but that’s another story.
Incidentally, Gonzalo mentioned the extreme delicacy and fragility of Western weapons. Exactly like the German tanks and aircraft in WW2, for exactly the same reason: technological arrogance. A Tiger could wipe out a whole squadron of T34s, but if it broke down it was very difficult to tow away and fix. Also, for the cost of a Tiger Germany could have built several perfectly adequate tanks.
At one stage T34s were issued with big wooden mallets for when the gears got jammed. The driver simply took the mallet and gave the gearbox a good thump, and as often as not everything started working again. That is practical military design.
I think German tanks ran on petrol not diesel, Certainly Henschel in Kassel only built 1350 Tigers and they were petrol engines using Maybach V-12 and not exactly reliable.
Then again reliability is not a feature of German automotive engineering even today – they are not Japanese !
The substandard US tanks would be an entirely different rant – and I hesitate to try everyone’s patience too far! I do mention that Shermans were known to the German troops as “Tommy-cookers”, and to the British as “Ronsons”, because they lit up first time, every time.
On the bright side, I have read of at least one occasion when the Sherman’s inadequate armour turned out a blessing. A shot from a nearby 88 penetrated one side of the turret, flew straight through missing the crew, and went straight out the other side. A wholly unarmoured turret would have worked as well.
Shermans burned like a “Ronson” due to exposed ammunition in the ready rack, not the gasoline used to fuel them.
Red hot spall or splinters would easily penetrate the brass casings , igniting the propellant. They fixed it by immersing the rounds in a water bath.
This inaccurate canard of burning from poor engine fuel design seems immortal.
The military has an anticipated role for a tank, and the tank design is an effort to fulfill that role. Hitler conceptually framed a tank as a device built to take out other tanks, and the German tanks were quite good at that. The core problem was that they were too expensive. In most things Russia had a lower level of implemented technology than the rest of the participants in WW II. They made up for it with mass production. They couldn’t build better but they could build more.
Early on the British tanks were built to give ground support to infantry, as that use got displaced by blitzkrieg war, tanks in mass formations, the British tanks where ill designed. I am unsure about the utility of the common American tank, the Sherman. It was of adequate design but essentially a medium duty tank that wouldn’t do well directly against the bigger German tanks. If I remember correctly the Sherman used several automobile engines for power to speed development. Thus the fuel was gasoline instead of the much safer diesel fuel. The much praised T34, I think, was like the Sherman tank only with a somewhat better design, an improved version so to speak. They were inexpensive to build, and thus available in very large numbers.
I think I can say something about the design tradeoff of the Sherman. For a start, I believe they were made in converted automobile factories. Also they had to be light enough to ship across the Atlantic in quantity and to land from the sea. They were light, manoeuverable (for a tank), and had a turret that traversed very quickly to bring the main gun to bear. Great from the general’s point of view; less so for the crew. Although the British Firefly variant, with an enormous 17-pounder gun, could and did knock out Tigers.
As for their fighting qualities, one Waffen-SS commander said mournfully that a Panther was worth ten Shermans. “Unfortunately, the Americans always had eleven Shermans”.
‘The Churchill was not very popular in Soviet service.[52] Soviet operators disliked the 2 pdr gun of the Mk II version (also used by Matildas and Valentines shipped to the USSR),[52] and the tank was considered “sufficient” by inspectors, who warned that it was “unrefined” in terms of both design and production and would require constant maintenance in the field’. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill_tank
Even in Britain the Churchill was commonly criticised as “underpowered, undergunned, and unreliable”.
The Mark VI/Tiger needed a metric ton of techs to keep it running. As you stated, it was a beast if in the right spot of the fight but that’s a lot of manufacturing, manpower, materials for a tank that unquestionably had difficulty making it to the right point, making it through the battle, getting back to the RP due to mechanical difficulty. Kirsk suggests their reliability to be below 50%. No way do you go into battle with this kind of reliability. If you are UAF or any army, reliability is likely to result in much greater lethality/effectiveness than an unreliable wonder weapon..
You know you’re in the twilight zone, when you’re not allowed to criticize the sub-standard, garbage weapons coming from the west. It might hurt their feewings. As if the Russians don’t know already. The ‘Muricuns are pledging to stand by Ukraine to their ultimate victory. Haaahahahahaha. Not only incredibly arrogant, but oblivious to reality are they. Still, the citizens of the west fly their little blue and yellow flags, vainly thinking they make a difference. Earth to morons : please remove your heads from your asses and stop watching msm.
The way military procurements work is that the front line troops get the latest stuff. The lower ranking troops get the hand me down weapons from the front line troops. Usually at the bottom will be the less than full time reserve units. Thus when weapons are to be shipped to a foreign power the attitude and system is all in place to give them the poorest regarded or oldest stuff.
As it happens I was involved in military procurements in the 1960’s. Of all things, at the time, our stateside army still had and was expected to use the vacuum tube walkie-talkies that were in use in WWII. In the prime of life they had a functional range of maybe a half mile. In old age the range of the device could be tested out by saying something into the device. Next you shout at the guy who was listening on his device, “Can you hear me now?” If he could the method was to walk a little further away and repeat the test. At the time a child’s toy purchased at low cost was a superior device. On the other end of it, the obsolete vehicles they were passing down to the reservists were in no way inferior to the latest thing.
I suspect that all militaries are run stupid, and that victory goes not to the better run, but to the less stupid.
Said with sarcastic tone: “Why does Ukraine get to complain ,and noone else can ? They are Nato issue aren’t they, and all Nato tends ro get the same stuff right? Do you see Turkey ,Greece , Germany , Italy complain about anything? Of course not! “
Gonzalo, the Warthog is for Ground – Support. The US has secretly decided it will not do any “US boots on the ground “ anymore. So why have ground -support planes ,right?
Why not do “boots on the ground “ anymore? Well the US keeps telling us it is now a tech army with superduper multisensors and what not , and doesn’t need many soldiers and /or need them to go into battle anymore, right?
Not mentioned publicly to the Average Joes though , is that the US is scared to have body bags on the news and of course the US Robber Barons (Oligarchs) make more money from expensive complicated crap ,right?
In regard to the Javelin story about engaging at 15 metres, I’m pretty sure that, because of the engagement profile (climb to altitude and come down on the top deck of the target), that the missiles have a MINIMUM engagement range.
I don’t know enough to say that the warhead won’t arm inside that minimum range, but there have been other reports of Javelins not working in urban combat which probably stem from the same problem.
Of course, this simply underlines Gonzalo’s point about the need for training on the complex equipment that is being provided to the Ukrainian armed forces.
Gonzalo, you’re right about the A10 vs F35, but wrong about the Javelin. The video you mention I’ve seen, and what happens is that safety mechanism was still active. Javelin will only explode if far away from launch spot not to kill friendly troops. Basically whoever fired it had a fast and inefficient training
If the Rooskies have any sense, they will get their hands on an A10 and reverse engineer it, and produce thousands of the things. The A10 may be the neglected stepchild of the US military, but Russians would just love the thing. It fits right into their fighting model.
The russian got YA-9 blueprint. The prototype that us military did not choose, and choose YA-10 to be the winner. Hence A-10 was born.
Russian like the A-9 concept and built it into the SU-25. Its buildable and rugged. In a way the concept of YA-9 might live longer than YA-10.
Gonzalo, so good to see you made it out of your difficulties. Dig in, you’ll see a comment I made among the many tributes assuming you were toast, as it were. I said something along the lines of Gonzalo is out there reading his many eulogies here and elsewhere like Tom Sawyer in Mark Twain’s book, up there in the rafters listening in on his own funeral. How many get to do THAT? Be well young man, and especially, careful. Excellent to have you back.
For the record, A-10’s commercial name is Thunderbolt. “Warthog” appeared later in circumstances unknown to me.
And I reaaally want to see an american plane named Groundhog. Based on its sterling performance, I nominate the F-35.
“For the record, A-10’s commercial name is Thunderbolt. “Warthog” appeared later in circumstances unknown to me.”
I did Naval Air as a LOX and seat mechanic in an A6E Intruder squadron, I discovered planes tend to develop their own following and culture and new names are developed. The EA6B Prowler for instance became widely referred to around the deck and Air Boss platform as a Queer because it was a four-seat A6, stretched. The S-3A by Lockheed, a sub-hunter complete with a MAD boom had the name Viking. What did we do but rename it, for our purposes, “Hoover” because of the sounds of its engines when they goosed the throttles. Low sound of “woooooooooOOO! Damnedest thing you ever heard. Not as weird as the TU95 Bear in flight, but different from the usual shrieks out there. Another, competing reason for the name Hoover was those engines were hanging off the wing, they were a good one to stay away from maneuvering around while they were turning. Getting sucked in, not good. I know the Air Force guys used to call the B-52 “BUFF” for Big Ugly Fat Fuckers”. Nicknames, everything gets a nickname in the culture in which it exists. What was better than Tomcat, heh..
I can definitely relate to the “BUFF” nickname. Living in southern England, a few years ago I was out for a stroll when suddenly I heard a scary noise overhead. I looked up and saw this immense black monster hanging in the sky above me.
It was bloody terrifying. I am sure that a White Swan (which is actually bigger and heavier, but very graceful) would have been awe-inspiring, but perhaps not so scary.
Thanks for the comment, I learned something today.
But I thought the nickname “Queer” for the Prowlers came from the gold plating used in its construction, the plane being used for EM warfare.
Of course, my source being Clancy’s Red Storm Rising, I might have been disinformed.
IF militaries had more sense than they do, they would adapt the nickname as the name of the device because they are unusually easy to remember. By way of example the Japanese Zero fighter is a nickname. No doubt it comes from the image of the sun on the airplane. The Japanese calling themselves the land of the rising sun is actually kind of a dig at China. China, to the west of Japan, is the area where the sun sets.
In my fading WW2 memory, the Thunderbolt was a propeller driven aircraft. I did grow up in the occupied Netherlands and we used to watch armadas of allied bombers come over on their way to Germany. These slow moving, heavy planes were accompanied by fast moving planes, darting around them, searching for German anti-aircraft batteries. We recognized the British Spitfire, the American Mustangs and Thunderbolts according to our elders. Reading your mail again I now notice that you refer to a “commercial” name. May be the military name was used again. Please correct me if I am wrong. This goes back to 1943/1944. BV
Let us not forget the fact, that the use of the A-10 with its ammunition of depleted uranium has the effect of many contaminated areas (in Iraq, Yugoslavia but also in shooting ranges in the west) , where people suffer and will suffer for centuries. There is a good documentary of the German Film maker Frieder Wagner (german with subtitles) about these dirty nuclear weapons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djv8UyrrC34
If you need to make a law punishing your own troops if they citizens Western weapons, then the weapons almost certainly are worthless. There are reports of many Javelins having expired batteries and ammunition. Apparently, according to a Ukrainian POW, only 1 in 4 actually work and often times the munitions explode before impact or dont explode at all. It explains why every day I see photos on Telegram of abandoned Javelins and NLAWS in the trenches of Ukrainian positions captured by Russian and DPR forces.
Javelins run to $126,000 apparently and have non-rechargeable batteries which only operate for 30 minutes when activated.
At what level these complaints arise is not self-evident – was the battery expired or did it expire once activated ?
I doubt NATO troops are permitted to criticise their weapons openly either – when did armies ever think they were supplied with effective weapons ?
“Javelins run to $126,000 apparently and have non-rechargeable batteries which only operate for 30 minutes when activated”.
Ah, made by Apple presumably.
No, made by exhausted 20 hour per day zero hour contract employees at AMAZON. Shuffle shit faster was the last memo leaked from Bezos’s office. If you need to piss, piss inside the javelin itself or wear double diapers. They just have to look the part, not actually work, to get my .Gov cheque.
Not many complaints heard about the M-1 Garand or the AK-47 or the German MG 42 or the old 155 mm heavy arty! Same with the Warthog, the F-16 and the B-52; all rather low-tech and simple.
ALL That stuff just does it’s job and is cheap to operate; easy to repair.
Not so with the modern high tech stuff! There’s a reason all your consumer high tech gear is sent with instructions of what NOT to expose it to; all of which are conditions regularly faced in a combat environment. MIL-SPEC computer chips and actuators are still very sensitive little babies!
I see no reason why Ukrainian soldiers should be allowed to complain.
Its better to have a lousy weapon to defend yourself, than having no weapon yes? If the Ukrainian soldiers had better weapons, more Russians and more civilians would die.
With lousy weapons and a ban to complain, the justified war is going to end quicker. Only crazies and neo-nazis will run to the front with lousy weapons and thus receive maybe a justified death.
“Its better to have a lousy weapon to defend yourself, than having no weapon yes?”
That depends who your opponents are.
If the opponents are “The United States of America” and their associates then having no weapon has a higher probability of you becoming dead and having a weapon renders you a combatant giving an alibi why you had a higher probability of you becoming dead.
Also if your “perceived allies” are “The United States of America” and its associates, they tend to supply you with weapons of limited utility due to obsolescence and/or your lack of training, thereby facilitating a highjer probability that you will become dead.
Actually, as revealed by Wikileaks, having an umbrella renders you a “combatant” and liable to be machine gunned for amusement by soldiers in helicopters, or blown to shreds by Hellfire missiles.
Having no visible weapon at all renders you a combatant with concealed weapons, see above.
“Actually, as revealed by Wikileaks, having an umbrella renders you a “combatant” and liable to be machine gunned for amusement by soldiers in helicopters, or blown to shreds by Hellfire missiles.”
Correct and partly why Mr. Assange is at risk of being extradited to “the United States of America” whilst he is already there for “intelligence matters”, and Mr. Kissinger’s observation on interacting with “The United States of America” where being an ally is ultimately a death sentence.
This observation of Mr. Kissinger is becoming widely understood and acted upon even in Ukraine.
Thank you for your co-operation in illustrating Mr. Kissinger’s observation – step by step.
Troops in combat have no choice as to where they are. Either they are where they are ordered to be or they are a deserter subject to a punishment that can be anything from jail time to being shot on sight. The weapon they carry is often a kind of security blanket. It is a real moral killer to have a soldier with a weapon that they don’t trust.
A lousy weapon will get you killed faster than no weapon. Not that I want the Ukrainians to have anything to shoot with.
I loved Gonzalo’s video, but, minor quibble, would disagree with his statement that you don’t need training on assault weapons or handguns. Having a weapon but not being able to hit the side of a barn with it will also get you killed faster than being unarmed.
When I was a deputy sheriff, we had to qualify every single month with our handgun and with a shotgun. 50 handgun rounds (practice/training) and fewer with the shotgun.
“Its better to have a lousy weapon to defend yourself, than having no weapon yes?”
Emphatically no. Offhand I can think of a dozen ways in which a lousy weapon is far worse than nothing. A gun, grenade, or rocket launcher that blows up in your face. A weapon whose possession emboldens you to confront the enemy, but which malfunctions leaving you exposed and defenceless. Etc. ad nauseam.
I read somewhere the helmet of a F35 pilot costs $500,000.
Gonzalo great expression “shitty and expense” – describes just about everything in the uSA related to government
Yes, but those are no ordinary helmets. You metamorphosize into Spiderman, Batman and Superman once it’s on.
I remember reading a story about one Warthog that had a whole wing shot off and went right on flying.
In WW2 British seamen risked their lives – and a lot of them died – to get desperately-needed equipment and supplies to the USSR via Arkhangelsk. Among the weapons sent were British Churchill tanks.
After a bit of experience, the Russian tankists began calling the Churchill “a grave for seven brothers”.
Typically, Britain started the war with the Matilda tank, which was tiny but very effective against enemy tanks of 1940. It was almost the Tiger of its day.
Then Britain spent 1941-5 designing and building dozens of new types of tank, none of which was satisfactory.
Just in time for the victory parades, they produced the Comet – which was adequate and able to trade blows with Tigers and Panthers. Followed by the even better Centurion – but that’s another story.
Incidentally, Gonzalo mentioned the extreme delicacy and fragility of Western weapons. Exactly like the German tanks and aircraft in WW2, for exactly the same reason: technological arrogance. A Tiger could wipe out a whole squadron of T34s, but if it broke down it was very difficult to tow away and fix. Also, for the cost of a Tiger Germany could have built several perfectly adequate tanks.
At one stage T34s were issued with big wooden mallets for when the gears got jammed. The driver simply took the mallet and gave the gearbox a good thump, and as often as not everything started working again. That is practical military design.
You forgot to mention the substandard US tanks !
I think German tanks ran on petrol not diesel, Certainly Henschel in Kassel only built 1350 Tigers and they were petrol engines using Maybach V-12 and not exactly reliable.
Then again reliability is not a feature of German automotive engineering even today – they are not Japanese !
The substandard US tanks would be an entirely different rant – and I hesitate to try everyone’s patience too far! I do mention that Shermans were known to the German troops as “Tommy-cookers”, and to the British as “Ronsons”, because they lit up first time, every time.
On the bright side, I have read of at least one occasion when the Sherman’s inadequate armour turned out a blessing. A shot from a nearby 88 penetrated one side of the turret, flew straight through missing the crew, and went straight out the other side. A wholly unarmoured turret would have worked as well.
Shermans burned like a “Ronson” due to exposed ammunition in the ready rack, not the gasoline used to fuel them.
Red hot spall or splinters would easily penetrate the brass casings , igniting the propellant. They fixed it by immersing the rounds in a water bath.
This inaccurate canard of burning from poor engine fuel design seems immortal.
The military has an anticipated role for a tank, and the tank design is an effort to fulfill that role. Hitler conceptually framed a tank as a device built to take out other tanks, and the German tanks were quite good at that. The core problem was that they were too expensive. In most things Russia had a lower level of implemented technology than the rest of the participants in WW II. They made up for it with mass production. They couldn’t build better but they could build more.
Early on the British tanks were built to give ground support to infantry, as that use got displaced by blitzkrieg war, tanks in mass formations, the British tanks where ill designed. I am unsure about the utility of the common American tank, the Sherman. It was of adequate design but essentially a medium duty tank that wouldn’t do well directly against the bigger German tanks. If I remember correctly the Sherman used several automobile engines for power to speed development. Thus the fuel was gasoline instead of the much safer diesel fuel. The much praised T34, I think, was like the Sherman tank only with a somewhat better design, an improved version so to speak. They were inexpensive to build, and thus available in very large numbers.
I think I can say something about the design tradeoff of the Sherman. For a start, I believe they were made in converted automobile factories. Also they had to be light enough to ship across the Atlantic in quantity and to land from the sea. They were light, manoeuverable (for a tank), and had a turret that traversed very quickly to bring the main gun to bear. Great from the general’s point of view; less so for the crew. Although the British Firefly variant, with an enormous 17-pounder gun, could and did knock out Tigers.
As for their fighting qualities, one Waffen-SS commander said mournfully that a Panther was worth ten Shermans. “Unfortunately, the Americans always had eleven Shermans”.
…“a grave for seven brothers”…
Wrong tank. The Churchill was regarded as a ОК heavy tank on the KV-1/KV-1S level. The phrase you quoted referred to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3_Lee#Eastern_Europe%E2%80%94Soviet_service
I stand by my attribution. If you wish to rely on Wikipedia, be my guest.
You “stand by your attribution” because you struggle with counting, i guess. Do you know how many crew members Churchill and M3 had?
Here is my Wikipedia quotation:
‘The Churchill was not very popular in Soviet service.[52] Soviet operators disliked the 2 pdr gun of the Mk II version (also used by Matildas and Valentines shipped to the USSR),[52] and the tank was considered “sufficient” by inspectors, who warned that it was “unrefined” in terms of both design and production and would require constant maintenance in the field’. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill_tank
Even in Britain the Churchill was commonly criticised as “underpowered, undergunned, and unreliable”.
The Mark VI/Tiger needed a metric ton of techs to keep it running. As you stated, it was a beast if in the right spot of the fight but that’s a lot of manufacturing, manpower, materials for a tank that unquestionably had difficulty making it to the right point, making it through the battle, getting back to the RP due to mechanical difficulty. Kirsk suggests their reliability to be below 50%. No way do you go into battle with this kind of reliability. If you are UAF or any army, reliability is likely to result in much greater lethality/effectiveness than an unreliable wonder weapon..
Outstanding!
Thanks so much, Gonzalo.
So true to life, your short humorous talk has put me in a good mood for the rest of the day…
You know you’re in the twilight zone, when you’re not allowed to criticize the sub-standard, garbage weapons coming from the west. It might hurt their feewings. As if the Russians don’t know already. The ‘Muricuns are pledging to stand by Ukraine to their ultimate victory. Haaahahahahaha. Not only incredibly arrogant, but oblivious to reality are they. Still, the citizens of the west fly their little blue and yellow flags, vainly thinking they make a difference. Earth to morons : please remove your heads from your asses and stop watching msm.
The way military procurements work is that the front line troops get the latest stuff. The lower ranking troops get the hand me down weapons from the front line troops. Usually at the bottom will be the less than full time reserve units. Thus when weapons are to be shipped to a foreign power the attitude and system is all in place to give them the poorest regarded or oldest stuff.
As it happens I was involved in military procurements in the 1960’s. Of all things, at the time, our stateside army still had and was expected to use the vacuum tube walkie-talkies that were in use in WWII. In the prime of life they had a functional range of maybe a half mile. In old age the range of the device could be tested out by saying something into the device. Next you shout at the guy who was listening on his device, “Can you hear me now?” If he could the method was to walk a little further away and repeat the test. At the time a child’s toy purchased at low cost was a superior device. On the other end of it, the obsolete vehicles they were passing down to the reservists were in no way inferior to the latest thing.
I suspect that all militaries are run stupid, and that victory goes not to the better run, but to the less stupid.
I feels sorry for the normal Ukrainians. They’re getting raped by their ‘Elite’. Sad.
Hopefully after all this disaster a genuine selfless leader will apear among them.
What they’ve had sofare has been thirld-world level, and that doesn’t even tap into 1% of its potential.
Said with sarcastic tone: “Why does Ukraine get to complain ,and noone else can ? They are Nato issue aren’t they, and all Nato tends ro get the same stuff right? Do you see Turkey ,Greece , Germany , Italy complain about anything? Of course not! “
Gonzalo, the Warthog is for Ground – Support. The US has secretly decided it will not do any “US boots on the ground “ anymore. So why have ground -support planes ,right?
Why not do “boots on the ground “ anymore? Well the US keeps telling us it is now a tech army with superduper multisensors and what not , and doesn’t need many soldiers and /or need them to go into battle anymore, right?
Not mentioned publicly to the Average Joes though , is that the US is scared to have body bags on the news and of course the US Robber Barons (Oligarchs) make more money from expensive complicated crap ,right?
In regard to the Javelin story about engaging at 15 metres, I’m pretty sure that, because of the engagement profile (climb to altitude and come down on the top deck of the target), that the missiles have a MINIMUM engagement range.
I don’t know enough to say that the warhead won’t arm inside that minimum range, but there have been other reports of Javelins not working in urban combat which probably stem from the same problem.
Of course, this simply underlines Gonzalo’s point about the need for training on the complex equipment that is being provided to the Ukrainian armed forces.
Tough English colonel says the EU will eventually recognize all Russian territories in Ukraine and that NATO is a very weak Alliance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SevEcH0AXIc
Gonzalo, you’re right about the A10 vs F35, but wrong about the Javelin. The video you mention I’ve seen, and what happens is that safety mechanism was still active. Javelin will only explode if far away from launch spot not to kill friendly troops. Basically whoever fired it had a fast and inefficient training
Maybe it was already mentioned, but where is the source that Zelensky ordered his troops to not critisize western weapons?
I did not find any source that is some sort of official.
If the Rooskies have any sense, they will get their hands on an A10 and reverse engineer it, and produce thousands of the things. The A10 may be the neglected stepchild of the US military, but Russians would just love the thing. It fits right into their fighting model.
The russian got YA-9 blueprint. The prototype that us military did not choose, and choose YA-10 to be the winner. Hence A-10 was born.
Russian like the A-9 concept and built it into the SU-25. Its buildable and rugged. In a way the concept of YA-9 might live longer than YA-10.