T-14 Armata

[Greyblades]

Huh, that's... Huh.

Next you'll be telling me the german navy was sub quality(pun unintended) too.

[Husar]

Huh, that's... Huh.

Next you'll be telling me the german navy was sub quality(pun unintended) too.

Well, a lot of the ships waited in some Norwegian fjord until they got sunk, the Bismarck was obviously a horrible ship since it was easily sunk by the British. There is not much else that remains and Britain always ruled the seas at the time. The submarines did some sysiphos work as they couldn't sink as many ships as the Americans and British churned out.

[Greyblades]

Well, a lot of the ships waited in some Norwegian fjord until they got sunk, the Bismarck was obviously a horrible ship since it was easily sunk by the British. There is not much else that remains and Britain always ruled the seas at the time. The submarines did some sysiphos work as they couldn't sink as many ships as the Americans and British churned out.

Dude, the Bismark was scuttled by it's own crew after a series of lucky strikes ruptured it's fuel tanks and a torpedo jammed it's rudder, rendering it incapable of retreat. Before that it had faced off against two ships of comparable size and armament, sinking one and driving away the other.

I wont disrespect it by denying it was a damn good ship just because it couldn't singlehandedly win a battle against an entire fleet.

[Husar]

Dude, the Bismark was scuttled by it's own crew after a series of lucky strikes ruptured it's fuel tanks and a torpedo jammed it's rudder, rendering it incapable of retreat. Before that it had faced off against two ships of comparable size and armament, sinking one and driving away the other.

I wont disrespect it by denying it was a damn good ship just because it couldn't singlehandedly win a battle against an entire fleet.

Where's your British pride? You could at least celebrate the superior tactic of using whole fleets instead of sending single ships into their demise or letting them wait in a fjord until 'murica bombs them.

[Greyblades]

We claim pride because we fought and beat the best, not that everyone else was usless.

Henry V, Drake, Cromwell(IMO, his status as great is highly debatable), Wolfe, Nelson, Cochrane, Pellew, Wellsey, Churchill (both of them, though the second is debatable) Montgomery(also debatable), we dont remember the random men who gunned down spear wielding natives we remember the men who prevailed while at a disadvantage and none of our heroes would have been given so much as a plaque if the nations and commanders they fought were weaklings or run by drooling idiots.

The greater the opponant the greater the pride a victory gains and Britain routinely faced down titans. Through victory she became one herself.

As for this, barely any remember the man who's tactics kept the german navy bottled up while having the greatest fleet in the world at his disposal, A lot more remember the pilot that crippled the great Bismark with a biplane's torpedo.

He wouldnt be remembered at all if Bismark was a complete flop, but it wasnt.

Battleship Bismark and it's crew had shown it's worth time and again culminating in sinking the pride of the Royal Navy while outnumbered, so why would you dismiss it as horrible?
Like Rommel, the German navy is largely considered free of the stain of Hitler's nazis, so where is your German pride?

[Husar]

I'll just leave this here:

[Greyblades]

*shrug* WW2 was ended with the combined effort of American and Russian arms, but if Britain hadn't kept it going for two years America would have never joined the war, Russia unaided would have easily fallen against an unblockaded Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan would have run roughshod over Asia completely uninhibited.

No one nation won the war, but we have claim to being the lynchpin, keeping the axis from recovering thier strength and being the entity that brought America and Russia to join forces in the first place.

Quite a parallel to the Napoleonic wars really.

[Husar]

I say Germany won it for you by taking on more than it could chew and having a madman as a leader.
Forget that there had never been a war without us for a moment and consider that we were at least kind enough to bring about our own demise.
Britain only survived since the overall focus shifted towards Russia and the focus of the air war towards town bombardments instead of the very successful military suppression that preceeded the futile terror attempts to make Britain join us or something.

[Greyblades]

I say Germany won it for you by taking on more than it could chew and having a madman as a leader.
Forget that there had never been a war without us for a moment and consider that we were at least kind enough to bring about our own demise.
Britain only survived since the overall focus shifted towards Russia and the focus of the air war towards town bombardments instead of the very successful military suppression that preceeded the futile terror attempts to make Britain join us or something.

Eh. If you hadnt had a madman in control you wouldnt have bitten off more than you could chew in the first place.
Likely there wouldnt have been much of a war at all, as Britain wouldn't have considered a reasonable war goal (like, say, another go for alsace lorraine) an unreasonable enough concession to justify continuing the war past France's surrender.

It's like an extended internet argument really, both sides likely could come to an agreement or one could give up if only the other side wasnt being such an unreasonable dick about it.

[Husar]

Eh. If you hadnt had a madman in control you wouldnt have bitten off more than you could chew in the first place.
Likely there wouldnt have been much of a war at all, as Britain wouldn't have considered a reasonable war goal (like, say, another go for alsace lorraine) an unreasonable enough concession to justify continuing the war past France's surrender.

I was saying that Germany had the military and industrial power to beat Britain but the political will in the leadership was not there to use it to that end as crazy ideas about being scary and beating the Russians took over. That's slightly different from saying Germany could only ever have conquered a province.

It's like an extended internet argument really, both sides likely could come to an agreement or one could give up if only the other side wasnt being such an unreasonable dick about it.

Is that an apology?

[Greyblades]

I was saying that Germany had the military and industrial power to beat Britain but the political will in the leadership was not there to use it to that end as crazy ideas about being scary and beating the Russians took over. That's slightly different from saying Germany could only ever have conquered a province.

I didnt say that they could only conquer a province.

With the royal navy making outright invasion impossible and giving a distinct advantage in the atrition game the only sure way that Germany on it's own could have prevailed against Britain would have been to make them not want to continue, and thus give up. That said, the more they wanted to take the more it would have taken to get the British to back off.

If they wanted something small like alsaice lorraine Britain would have likely relented after dunkirk. Indeed after the french surrender they could have taken quite a bit and britain would have likely been forced to let it happen, however annexing half of poland and half of france while making the other half a puppet state, well, that would have required a series of defeats of Austerlitz proportions.

Such defeats Germany was incapable of quickly inflicting on Britain herself without getting past the royal navy, which with it's 1939 levels of naval and aerial capacity Germany could not do. I do not believe that Germany could have won a war of attrition with Britain without breaking the British blockade, and it is likely this theoretical sanely-lead Germany would have sooner decided to relent and settle for a lesser concession that Britain would be willing to live with.

Now a sanely lead Imperial Japan would be a different story, that would have been a hell of a close contest.

Is that an apology?

If you want, though in our case it was a two-way jackassery. Still, I do regret a lot of it.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Yeah, but how many miles to the gallon does it get?

[Brenus]

“Like I said... junk.” Yeah, still won the war mind you, so the others side was even worst junk. As yes, you probably forgot than when the USSR was putting on the front line T34 and other junks as KV, the Germans and allies were lining-up Pz II and III, T38 T and others very well advanced machines and pieces of Technological Art. Not mentioned of course the beautifully engineered Mathilda or Somua S35 (in the last one the engineers just forget to put a loader so the Tank Commander was the loader as well) on the other side of the front.
Well, it happen that Guderian (apparently unaware “of the idea of sloped armour was well known and was to be incorporated into future AFV designs long before the Germans encountered the T-34”) "Numerous Russian T-34s went into action and inflicted heavy losses on the German tanks at Mzensk in 1941. Up to this time we had enjoyed tank superiority, but from now on the situation was reversed. The prospect of rapid decisive victories was fading in consequence. I made a report on this situation, which was for us a new one, and sent it to the Army Group; in this report I described in plain terms the marked superiority of the T-34 to our PzKpfw IV and drew the relevant conclusion as that must affect our future tank production. I concluded by urging a commission be sent immediately to my sector of the front... If this commission was on the spot it could not only examine the destroyed tanks on the battlefield, but could also be advised by the men who had used them as to what should be included in the design for our new tanks, in Panzer Leader” and von Kleist who describe the T34 as “The finest tank in the world” (and von Runstedt :"best tank in the world"). They gave their opinion, and, surprisingly, they disagreed with what you said. Wonder why. But who are they?
And the German soldiers fleeing in terror at the 1st encounter just did it because the T34 was a piece of junk that their special anti-tank gun couldn’t pierce the piece of junk tin foil armour. That goes against you view on heroic German soldiers, doesn’t it? So tell me, why did they retreat so hastily?

“Daimler put forward a prototype that was much closer to the T-34, but it was rejected.” Because un-patriotic they said. The other probably better explanation was confusion in combat, and use possibility to shoot your own in the smoke of the battlefield.

“This guy actually agrees with you and his explanations make sense if his numbers are correct” Except of course that the reality doesn’t match his explanations, nor the witness statements from the T34 crew members nor the ones from the receiving end of the pile of junk, German, Italian, Rumanian, Croatian, Hungarian and others German Allies soldiers. The pile of junk still defeated the very well designed Elefant, Panthers at Kursk.

[Husar]

“Like I said... junk.” Yeah, still won the war mind you, so the others side was even worst junk. As yes, you probably forgot than when the USSR was putting on the front line T34 and other junks as KV, the Germans and allies were lining-up Pz II and III, T38 T and others very well advanced machines and pieces of Technological Art. Not mentioned of course the beautifully engineered Mathilda or Somua S35 (in the last one the engineers just forget to put a loader so the Tank Commander was the loader as well) on the other side of the front.

Seriously, the T-34 did not have a gunner, so the commander had to fulfill both functions himself. I also remember reading something about the loading process having been rather tedious because the turret was so small.
And this overload of the commander probably allowed the Wehrmacht tanks to outmaneuver them quite a few times, fire faster and so on. If you have bad vision, have to concentrate on finding targets as well as keep the current one in sight and so on, it's easier to lose your situational awareness or act in a tactically disadvantageous manner.

And the German soldiers fleeing in terror at the 1st encounter just did it because the T34 was a piece of junk that their special anti-tank gun couldn’t pierce the piece of junk tin foil armour. That goes against you view on heroic German soldiers, doesn’t it? So tell me, why did they retreat so hastily?

A lot of people fled from a lot of new tanks at the first encounter, but yes, the design was not bad in all aspects, but maybe the worse aspects weren't so visible during that first encounter.

“Daimler put forward a prototype that was much closer to the T-34, but it was rejected.” Because un-patriotic they said. The other probably better explanation was confusion in combat, and use possibility to shoot your own in the smoke of the battlefield.

Or maybe that the interior, especially the turret, was also too small, cramped and didn't allow for proper operation of the tank.
The soviets improved the T-34 with the T-34-85, which has a much bigger turret and one more crew member. You can even read about the ergonomics issues on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-34#Ergonomics

“This guy actually agrees with you and his explanations make sense if his numbers are correct” Except of course that the reality doesn’t match his explanations, nor the witness statements from the T34 crew members nor the ones from the receiving end of the pile of junk, German, Italian, Rumanian, Croatian, Hungarian and others German Allies soldiers. The pile of junk still defeated the very well designed Elefant, Panthers at Kursk.

No, nonono, also no.
1) First of all, I set out to show that PJ was wrong, but found only stuff about how bad the T-34 was.
2) I'm nonetheless not sure about the performancve of the T-34-85 being as bad as the T-34-76, especially due to the turret and gun upgrade it always seemed like a more capable tank, although by that time it was also very vulnerable as the hull armor was no longer that great against the upgraded german guns.
3) I already showed that german steel was more junk than people usually assume and that allied tanks were junk as well.
4) The Ferdinand was neither well-designed nor beaten by T-34s at Kursk. It lacked almost any defense against infantry and was sent into the soviet lines without proper cover, allowing their infantry to flank it and attack it with grenades. The elefant was the upgraded version with a mchine gun to help it at least a little bit. Apparently a lot of them were also blown up by their crews as they had to retreat and couldn't recover them with broken tracks etc. This says absolutely nothing about the T-34, which could certainly not penetrate them easily.
5) There were more war machines involved at Kursk than just T-34s. And just winning a pyrrhic victory of sorts does not make a tank design good. You are absolutely right that the allies won the war in the end, but the question here is more whether they could have won the war with fewer dead tankers if they had had better tank designs. It's not a strategic but an operational question. Would you be happy to be given a death trap and told that you're expendable enough that when you die your thousands of buddies will still win this for you because we have many thousands more of these death traps than the other side?

Wikipedia sez:

Soviet equipment losses during the German offensive came to 1,614 tanks and self-propelled guns destroyed or damaged[19] of the 3,925 vehicles committed to the battle. The Soviet losses were roughly three times larger than the German losses.[291][292] During Operation Kutuzov, 2,349 tanks and self-propelled guns were lost out of an initial strength of 2,308; a loss of over 100 percent. During Polkovodets Rumyantsev 1,864 tanks and self-propelled guns were lost out of the 2,439 employed. The loss ratio suffered by the Soviets was roughly 5:1 in favour of the German military.[293] However, large Soviet reserves of equipment and their high rate of tank production enabled the Soviet tank armies to soon replace lost equipment and maintain their fighting strength.[291]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_...ies_and_losses

That does not exactly speak for the T-34 having been the superior tank design at the battle of Kursk if we assume that it made up the majority of russian tanks involved. Again, the complaint by PJ was not about it's strategic viability if you can afford to throw a lot of tank crews into certain death, but about whether the tank design was good. And apparently it was not all that great if about three times as many of them got killed than tanks on the german side. They could just replace them with new junk and repair some of the destroyed junks to put new crews into them.

[Husar]

I didnt say that they could only conquer a province.

With the royal navy making outright invasion impossible and giving a distinct advantage in the atrition game the only sure way that Germany on it's own could have prevailed against Britain would have been to make them not want to continue, and thus give up. That said, the more they wanted to take the more it would have taken to get the British to back off.

If they wanted something small like alsaice lorraine Britain would have likely relented after dunkirk. Indeed after the french surrender they could have taken quite a bit and britain would have likely been forced to let it happen, however annexing half of poland and half of france while making the other half a puppet state, well, that would have required a series of defeats of Austerlitz proportions.

Such defeats Germany was incapable of quickly inflicting on Britain herself without getting past the royal navy, which with it's 1939 levels of naval and aerial capacity Germany could not do. I do not believe that Germany could have won a war of attrition with Britain without breaking the British blockade, and it is likely this theoretical sanely-lead Germany would have sooner decided to relent and settle for a lesser concession that Britain would be willing to live with.

Now a sanely lead Imperial Japan would be a different story, that would have been a hell of a close contest.

Only a matter of time until Germany had anti-ship cruise missiles and could have blown the entire Royal Navy out of the water from the air.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henschel_Hs_293

[Greyblades]

I thought we were talking about the sane Germany not the secret weapon obsessing one. In theory they could have done the same thing with just U boats, but I don't think that a sane Germany would bother keeping the war going long enough to make enough of them to do it.

[Husar]

I thought we were talking about the sane Germany not the secret weapon obsessing one. In theory they could have done the same thing with just U boats, but I don't think that a sane Germany would bother keeping the war going long enough to make enough of them to do it.

I looked up the amounts of surface vessels and had to admit that this sort of conventional option was certainly not going to solve the problem with the Royal Navy. Air power is a very conventional solution and remote controlled bombs/missiles are probably much better than ordinary dumb bombs if the ships employ a lot of flak and move fast. I know the B-17s also succeeded with normal bombs in the pacific though. I don't think those glide bombs were insane secret weapon ideas, they were the precursors of modern cruis missiles. And the V2 while it was insane considering its intended purpose, was actually the first man-made machine to fly into space (and come back) IIRC. The technology later allowed 'murica (and 'ussia) to fly to space and to the moon. The problem with these missiles was the intention to use them against civilians in a futile effort to scare them enough to make them stop the war. A much better effort would have been to spend these resources on developing better guidance for the glide bombs/missiles such as passive radar or infrared guidance or beam riding. Or tanks that could just drive through the channel. Or a secret eurotunnel.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Bear in mind, fighting the UK would also mean fighting the greater part of the Commonwealth. Granted, the EU has loosened the traditional ties somewhat but if you were planning to do serious harm to the UK I expect you'd have to contend with Australia and Canada, New Zealand and possibly even India given the large number of Indians who currently live here.

Also - with relation to the missiles -

"One drawback of the Hs 293 was that after the missile was launched the bomber had to fly in a straight and level path at a set altitude and speed parallel to the target so as to be able to maintain a slant line of sight and it could thus not manoeuvre to evade attacking fighters without aborting the attack"

Basically, German bombers would have been toast again Fleet Air Arm interceptors. Germany never had enough bombers in WWII anyway, the lack of a heavy bomber is why you lost the Battle of Britain.

[Husar]

"One drawback of the Hs 293 was that after the missile was launched the bomber had to fly in a straight and level path at a set altitude and speed parallel to the target so as to be able to maintain a slant line of sight and it could thus not manoeuvre to evade attacking fighters without aborting the attack"

Basically, German bombers would have been toast again Fleet Air Arm interceptors. Germany never had enough bombers in WWII anyway, the lack of a heavy bomber is why you lost the Battle of Britain.

Not with the RAF suppressed in the east, but you are right that heavy bombers would probably have helped in doing that in the first place, as would not shifting the focus to civilian targets/operation barbarossa. That's from a purely military POV, otherwise I'm glad the Nazis lost of course.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Not with the RAF suppressed in the east, but you are right that heavy bombers would probably have helped in doing that in the first place, as would not shifting the focus to civilian targets/operation barbarossa. That's from a purely military POV, otherwise I'm glad the Nazis lost of course.

Germany was never able to reach the airfields in Northern Britain which meant that they were never able to beat the RAF, they could suppress them in the South East but fighters would just come down from the North. Basically, without heavy bombers all Germany could do was hamper the RAF's offensive bombing, they couldn't gain air superiority for an invasion.

[Husar]

Germany was never able to reach the airfields in Northern Britain which meant that they were never able to beat the RAF, they could suppress them in the South East but fighters would just come down from the North. Basically, without heavy bombers all Germany could do was hamper the RAF's offensive bombing, they couldn't gain air superiority for an invasion.

I think the problem with that was that they lost the early warning radars and could not scramble fighters from anywhere nearby, so that would have forced the RAF to fly combat patrols over the east, taking away some advantages they had before. The plans for the invasion were mostly delayed because of the Royal Navy, which could have sunk all the invading ships or all the supply ships required to sustain an invasion. The german air force however did not seem capable of stopping the Royal Navy even with air superiority over the channel.

[Strike For The South]

Germany could never have invaded the UK while the RN still floated.

There best bet was someone toppling Stalin early in Barbarossa and making peace.

[Husar]

Germany could never have invaded the UK while the RN still floated.

Yes, you are right, I shouldn't have said the same thing.

Germany was essentially trapped between the evil capitalist cartel in the west and the evil communist cartel in the east and desperately needed space and a sane leader to gain it. Unfortunately neither were readily available and fate clearly showed that it wanted to keep Hitler around several times when it prevented all the attacks on his life. It was much easier to kill the POTUS than to kill the one guy who ruined half the world. We will forever be indebted to the British for making the biggest sacrifice of all nations in that war.



As for the Armata, maybe the price of launching rockets from Russia to get food for the austronauts into space will go up now to finance the Armata and the weak ruble. The German navy will certainly not stop any Armatas from rolling through Berlin and Paris down to Madrid.

[Strike For The South]

You use too many words

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Germany could never have invaded the UK while the RN still floated.

There best bet was someone toppling Stalin early in Barbarossa and making peace.

The RAF and the Fleet Air Arm were required to keep the RN afloat, though. The battles in the Pacific theatre showed what happened when the RN's superior battleships and battlecruisers lacked air support. They went down fighting, to be sure, but they still went down.

[Gilrandir]

Germany was essentially trapped between the evil capitalist cartel in the west and the evil communist cartel in the east

The Communist cartel consisted of one memeber. It is rather a godfather than a cartel.

As for the Armata, maybe the price of launching rockets from Russia to get food for the austronauts into space will go up now to finance the Armata and the weak ruble.

The solution is to launch Armatas into space. Only in this way Russia will both keep the austonauts fed and finance the production of Armatas.

[Husar]

The Communist cartel consisted of one memeber. It is rather a godfather than a cartel.

I think each of the 11 timezones in Russia counts as a member.

[Gilrandir]

I think each of the 11 timezones in Russia counts as a member.

You better count the then 16 Soviet republics. 16 will sound more impressive than 11.