Were Medieval Knights modern Tanks?

[Exile]

The similarities seem to be there: heavily armored, mobile, elite (and expensive) unit, part of the army package - but not usually not operational alone, heavily resource dependent (gas etc vs. horses etc) so requiring significant supply trains/lines, both pack a big punch respectively for their time period and weapons were designed specifically to counter each - like pikes and bazookas.

If so, then this is one significant way in which the conventional warfare battlefield hasn't changed a great deal in the last 1000+ years.

[Stephen Hummell]

also, vulnerable underneath, as with horses, and the side of the tanks.

[Knight_Yellow]

ahemm throw all the little punie bazookas u want at a truely modern tank since the thing has got over 4km firing range.... eg.

Challenger MK3 (main brittish battle tank) M1A1 abraham (american main battle tank) Leapord tank (german main battle tank) T90 (russian main battle tank)

granted if they got hit in the rear theyd be in trouble but thats what inf are for they support the tanks and keep any bazzokas from getting round the flanks.

[Krasturak]

Knights do not have firepower, which is one of the most important features of tanks.

[bosdur]

Yeh agree with yellow and krast there.

Firepower is an issue, the last battle where tanks fought like a knight is probabaly during the battle of kursk where tanks fought in very close range, I dont see it happening with modern armours yet, then again with artillery accuracy improving from great distance (i think israel developed a 1 man artillery unit that enables killing an entire tank platoon from a distance) we might not gonna have close armour battles ever again.

[Knight_Yellow]

that cluster bombs been around since ww2 but maybe israel made a better one simple fact is tanks rule u cannot win a war without tanks.

[Sjakihata]

what have been choppers then? soldiers on catapults that you shot into castles? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

Well, I do not think you can compare a knight with a tank...

knights was royalty, tanks mass produced and not elite

[Exile]

ahem, I was taken too literal by a few I think. Think on a broader scale.

The comparison is the tactical uses of a knight vs. the tactical uses of tanks. I realize knights do not fire shells was the punch of knights, in it's time, similar to that of tanks in modern conventional warfare? Both are the heavy armored unit brought into the thick, often with the purpose to drive through the enemy lines.

The bazooka was obviously (i thought) a ww2 reference..i know they are obsolete now http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif the point was they were designed for the sole purpose of battling tanks. The elite unit vs. mass produced unit is an excellent counter point and the point about the weknesses in the armor is a very good one.

[71-hour Ahmed]

My 2p worth:

Modern armour is (was?) a war winner as I understand it - hence the fact that everything else is aimed at killing it. If they want it dead so badly it must be good.
They are (were?), as Knight Yellow says, essential.

I think that for a very short period of time medieval knights may have had that same level of importance and so would be the thing everyone wanted to kill. Eg. Spearmen, pikemen, etc all are only anti-cavalry and so must be for killing knights. Stopping the armoured punch through.

Eventually though they were made obsolete as a heavy hitting battle winner by good knight killers - the longbow, spearmen and guns, and so infantry troops became the thing everyone wanted to kill. Knights could no longer punch through the centre. Presumably the same is happening to tanks from what is being said above by others today. So they are similar in that they defined the battle field by their existence but no longer do so.

Sound reasonable?

[BlackWatch McKenna]

Highly mobile shock troops.

So, I would say "yes".

[Knight of the Order]

when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939 the Polish attacked the German tanks with horsemen, they were of course crushed very quickly http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif

It just shows how horsemen were rated in countries like that

[BlackWatch McKenna]

I dont think the question was a literal one hahr

There is also a question as to whether it really happened. Also, for the record, the Germans did not have as easy a time in Poland as was claimed.

http://www.achtungpanzer.com/polcamp.htm krauts in krakow

~B

[Knight of the Order]

yep your right, they did not have an easy time, but they crushed the horsemen very quickly at the beggining. Also there was actual footage with I saw in history.

[BlackWatch McKenna]

Maybe they are referring to the cav charges on the kraut infantry?

The horsies could have run past some tanks and maybe that was caught on film... I have seen that footage also - they sort of swarmed past the tankers - -and seemed to be on their way to a softer target.

~B

[Foreign Devil]

Before the war, the Germans drilled with dummy tanks made of flimsy materials such as wood and fabric. I've read that the polish cavalry believed that the tanks they were fighting against were like the fake ones that Germany had displayed before the war. Dunno if thats true, it seems kinda silly, I remember reading it somewhere.

[Knight_Yellow]

well if sum1 told me that i was gonna have to kill a tank my weapons of choice r

1. urban enviroment (reduces the tank to a expensive pill box)

2. mines lots and lots of mines

3. "copper" slug (a disc of copper is fired so fast it melts in mid air when it hits the tank it goes in and sets the ammo on fire secondary explosions rip the tank apart) now those are spectacular when seen.

4. and for when the crew abbandon the tank :
SLR the previous brittish main rifle, subsequently removed due to stopages but most importantly humanatarian issues. ie. u get hit by one of them and u can say good night cos theres a 2 cm hole in the front of u and a 2 feet hole in the back of u.

[Lechev]

IMHO by taking out fire-power out from the equation between a mounted knight and a tank, both actually share a common advantage i.e mobility and shock effect.

Imagin u r in this platoon and encountered a tank came rummbing towards you in full speed. Even though you have an anti-tank weapon like bazooka or RPG, there is always a moment of doubt that if you can take it out with a clear shot due to the impact of the shock effect that the tank present as well as the time you will take for you to reload ur weapon.

Now imaging u are now holding a pike in a company of 4 rows deep and a squadron of armoured knight came charging at you.
the impact is the greatest if you are in the first row as god knows if the pike you are holding will break or your arms are strong enough to counter the charging force.

With respect to the different time period which these 2 types of units exist, I think both type of units do share a similarities.

[econ21]

Um, interesting question. It is strange how armour becomes ascendant in the MTW period, declines with gunpowder and then comes back with a bang last century. OK, there was a period post-WW2 when it seemed like tanks would be come obsolete due to rocketry but my reading of the current tactical situation is that modern US tanks are almost impervious to anything infantry lug around. So in some ways, they are more supreme than I think knights were. Conversely, they are more over-shadowed by airpower which does not seem to have a counterpart in medieval warfare.

[Knight_Yellow]

ahemm the brittish challenger MK3 is just as if not better than the M1A1 abraham tank.

Chalenger can take 10 hits to the front before the armour weakens from a 110 mm round.

plus the challengers main armament is a 120mm gun so say good bye iraqi's

now if we could only keep the sand out of the damned thing we would kick ass.

[Foreign Devil]

While tanks and knights have thier similarities and diferences, I think they both serve to illustrate a point. They were/are both very effective in thier prime, but means of countering them that was both cheaper and simpler was developed in both cases. Pikes and Halbierds (sp?) and armour-piercing arrows for knights, and bazookas, Hellfire Missles (i.e., airpower) and what have you for tanks. (a note to knight_yellow- I'm not interested in a long list of technicalities of what tank can withstand what weapon- my point is that if it does not exist now, it will be developed sometime in the future).

I think the lesson here is that there is no such thing as a military panacea. If one weapon or tactic or something becomes very powerful, much effort will be made to develop a counter to that weapon or tactic.

[Knight_Yellow]

well im not interested in ur flawed opinion.

not every weapon has a counter.

PS. u cant win a war with airpower alone. when it cums down to it u need tanks and inf.

its ok to use airpower in small skirmishes but in a massive war u cant just spend a million everytime u want to kill sumthing with a missile.

[CBR]

One has to remember that pikes, halbards and armour-piercing arrows didnt remove the armoured knight from the battlefield. That was more a question about muskets and social/economic reasons.

Just as well as we have several weapons that can kill a tank..machineguns and heavy artillery didnt remove the basic infantry either.

CBR

[Knight_Yellow]

Here Here

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

Quote[/b] ]well im not interested in ur flawed opinion.
(Knight_Yellow)

This is arrogant Knight_Yellow. One of the reasons peace is so hard to find is through arrogance; the fact one side will not listen to the other. You should think about that.

This could be worthy of a warning - just think about what you are typing.

[BlackWatch McKenna]

An objective way to state it would be:

"Your reasoning is flawed".

Opinion = the person

Reasoning = the facts

~BW

[Foreign Devil]

Quote[/b] (Knight_Yellow @ Feb. 05 2003,07:36)]PS. u cant win a war with airpower alone. when it cums down to it u need tanks and inf.
You are only supporting my point here- of course you can't use airpower by itself, because airpower alone can be countered.

And my reasoning may well be flawed, I'm not an expert.

[CBR]

You can win a war with airpower alone..that is a question of the objective of the war and willpower of the target.

Clausewitz said "War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of politics"

War doesnt necessarily mean a total war with unconditional surrender like we saw in WW2. The air war against Jugoslavia back in 99 was a limited war with limited goals.

CBR

[Ithaskar Fëarindel]

Aye, but, in theory, and with the right resources, you can combat an air attack, either with other planes or with surface-to-air units.

Like you can combat tanks with AT - even if it does take 20 shots, or with planes, or with other tanks. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Foreign Devil]

Quote[/b] (CBR @ Feb. 05 2003,18:33)]Clausewitz said "War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of politics"
"The purpose of war is to enforce the decisions of a govenrment by force"

-Robert Heinlein

[Knight_Yellow]

If the objective is to disable the enemy's airpower then yes u can do that with the airforce however if there are ground objectives u still need the tanks and the infantry.

PS. the airforce can only do so mutch. at a certian point u still need to take certian locations that planes simply cant take out.

also planes and missiles arent that great if they where then every country in the world would have all plane army's.

the purpose of the airforce is to provide support for the main army consisting of tanks and mobile infantry.

[CBR]

This is getting way off topic now..



Thats not the point.

Kosova was a ground objective... air power alone with bombings of both military and economic targets forced Yugoslavia to give up and let UN control Kosova. Yes it would eventually have turned into a ground war, if NATO had the will to do it, if Yugoslavia had the will to resist the bombings.

The Gulf War in 1991 was a conventional war with ground troops but it still had a limited objective, forcing Iraq out of Kuwait. The war that might come soon will be very different as the objective is now Saddam and to change Iraq's government. But it will not be different in what military hardware that US and allies will be using.

Maybe for us its just another war far away but for Saddam Hussein and maybe also the population this will be a very different war..it will be a war of survival..a total war.

A conflict between two states, coalition(s) or UN versus xxxx is on several levels. From diplomatic pressure to sanctions, from threats to military buildup and sabre rattling.. and when it finally turns into acts of war, that can be anything: a few shots fired by a gunboat, taking back a small island with a bloodless invasion, bombing enemy economic and military targets, all the way up to the total war of WW2 with lots of destruction and loss of life ending with unconditional surrender.

Using only airpower is for us an option because of our technological superiority and it doesnt give us many casualties so its a "cheap" option of war for us.

War is about forcing your will upon others when all other options have been tried. You want to break the will of the enemy and depending on circumstances airpower alone can do that.

Ofc you dont want to have only an airforce as that limits your options. But a strong airforce means power projection where you can hurt him but he cant really hurt you:

Israel Air attack destroying nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981.

US air strikes against Libya in 1986

NATO bombing Yugoslavia in 1999


CBR

[Knight_Yellow]

yes in pidly little annoying wars airpower is a big factor but in a big war ie. ww1,ww2 u cant spend millions and millions of pounds/dollars everytime u want to hit a target.

history dictates that in a large scale conflict it would still be two armies meeting on the field. the weapons may have changed but the basic principles have not.

so in short yes tanks are modern heavy cavarly.

[econ21]

I'm with CBR on this one. In Kosovo and Afghanistan, people kept saying "you can't win a war from the air alone", "you need to send in ground troops". On the contrary, it seems to me that what those wars proved, along with the bigger Gulf War, was that you dashed near could win with airpower alone. Kosovo was a clear case in point. Afghanistan was over-run in days by a few thousand irregulars. The land operations in the Gulf War were little more than a gathering in of surrenders.

The whole evolution of warfare over history has been to killing more and more at a distance. Airwarfare is merely the latest version of this. Cruise missiles and predator drones may be the next step - killing from thousands of miles away. I guess at some stage in the future, the infantry will be replaced by minaturised killing machines... kind of like chemical warfare, but mechanised and smarter. That cheery thought makes me glad to be part of the human race... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif

[BlackWatch McKenna]

When the airplanes can start landing and "occupying" the area they have attacked, then I will believe that a war can be won with airpower alone.

[Longshanks]

Quote[/b] (Knight_Yellow @ Jan. 23 2003,20:17)]ahemm throw all the little punie bazookas u want at a truely modern tank since the thing has got over 4km firing range.... eg.
Actually tanks unsupported by infantry are like rolling coffins.