Losing the war

[Guderon]

I forget now....what was the topic of this thread again? [:D]

[Nikademus]

My foot.......


THE T_T_TANK.......IS ON........MY FOOT.

[Sharkosaurus rex]

That's what happens when you climb up their sides. You have to mount from the front or back!

[Nikademus]

LOL...

that reminds me, two weeks ago I dragged the girlfriend up to go see some "old concrete" (i.e. some more of Washington State's coastal forts)

anyway we're on our way back and taking the scenic route back to I-5....we start passing through this little town, when i spot a Stuart Tank in the middle of a little park.

(SCREECH) go the breaks. Gotta park get out and stretch the legs.....by climbing all over the tank looking for a way in. Picture the girlfriend standing by the car, toe tapping, frown on face.

Real Kodak moment [:D]

[DuckofTindalos]

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

ORIGINAL: Terminus
Yeah, but WWII did prove the Soviet adage that "quality has a quantity all its own". After all, the Germans manufactured in excess of 35,000 Me-109s.

I think you got this backwards. "Quantity has a Quality all it's own" is the way I remember it.

Sheesh, how embarassing. Well, there's a heat wave here in Denmark at the moment, and the CPU fan on my brain is overloading...

[Guderon]

Have you been to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds? I got a chance to go a few years ago while visiting an old buddy who lives in D.C. It's awesome! There's a bunch of WWII armor there including a Panther, a Tiger I, and unbelievably, an honest-to-goodness Jagdtiger! The Jagdtiger even had some combat damage - a couple of shell hits to it's frontal armor. Well, you couldn't really call it damage per se - they were just small 'divots' in the armor inasmuch as there wasn't an antitank round in WWII that could penetrate a Jagdtiger through it's frontal armor. And please everybody - let's not start this whole armor thing back up again! [:D]

[Sharkosaurus rex]

Your g/f might have been cross because she didn't have anything handy to clean the windscreen with and make some snacks while you were looking at the tank. She just felt she could have been doing more.

NB: Next time take the car vaccum with you so g/f has something to do.

[DuckofTindalos]

I've seen pictures of the Jagdtiger they have at Aberdeen. It's so big it's actually scary!

[Guderon]

ORIGINAL: Sharkosaurus rex

Your g/f might have been cross because she didn't have anything handy to clean the windscreen with and make some snacks while you were looking at the tank. She just felt she could have been doing more.

NB: Next time take the car vaccum with you so g/f has something to do.

[:D][:D][:D]

[denisonh]

Two great quotes from Marshall Zhukov

"Quantity has a quality all of it's own"
"Perfect is the enemy of good enough"

ORIGINAL: Guderon

Have you been to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds? I got a chance to go a few years ago while visiting an old buddy who lives in D.C. It's awesome! There's a bunch of WWII armor there including a Panther, a Tiger I, and unbelievably, an honest-to-goodness Jagdtiger! The Jagdtiger even had some combat damage - a couple of shell hits to it's frontal armor. Well, you couldn't really call it damage per se - they were just small 'divots' in the armor inasmuch as there wasn't an antitank round in WWII that could penetrate a Jagdtiger through it's frontal armor. And please everybody - let's not start this whole armor thing back up again! [:D]

[Nikademus]

havn't had the pleasure yet, but i did get to go to the Military Museum in London a couple years ago. Great selection of perfectly preserved tanks (because they are indoors) including a knocked out Jagdpanther.

oooooooo.......was in heaven for an afternoon. It also had the shattered remains of an A6M on the 2nd floor....not much to look at but still, there's always that buzz you get when you touch a piece of history vs a fully intact replica.

[Guderon]

Yeah, it's truly inspiring to stand right up next to one. It was the heaviest AFV (both in weight and in armor thickness) to actually see production in WWII. The Germans had a prototype called the Maus which was even a good bit larger and heavier than the Jagdtiger, but it never saw production. It actually had secondary and even tertiary guns. The closest thing to a land battleship anyone ever attempted.

[DuckofTindalos]

Heh... I think the Maus had a 75mm gun AS A SECONDARY WEAPON! It could move at 10 miles per hour or something similar...

[Mike Solli]

You're right. The main gun was a 150 mm I believe.

[Sharkosaurus rex]

That's why the Germans lost. What is the point of making that monster? Just a waste of time and resources like engineers who should know better. It's couldn't cross any standard wooden bridge in Germany so had to be prepped for underwater use to cross a simple stream.

[Guderon]

I'm curious - do you remember where the fatal blow came for the Jagdtiger you saw? I know most of them that were knocked out were from the air from 5" rockets and specialized AT cannon. They were huge targets from the air (I once saw a photo of the entire crew of one sunbathing on top of the fixed turret, and there was plenty of room to spare!) and not very well armored on the top. They truly were impenetrable from the front and even difficult to knock out from the sides. Maybe a close range 90mm or 17 lbr. from the sides might have done it.

[Mike Solli]

Consider the lunatic who was in charge....

[Guderon]

Whoops, Nik - I just re-read your post. You said Jagdpanther, not Jagdtiger. My mistake...[8|]

[Guderon]

Yep. And for that matter, there were a lot of bridges that the Jagdtiger couldn't cross at 70-odd tons....

[DuckofTindalos]

Since we've now comfortably settled on the battlefields of Europe, rather than the Pacific war, does anybody know if any Jagdtigers fought in the East? It was my impression that they were all used in the West?