Everyone needs a tank, don't they?

Huh? What? said:
The biscuits and croissants, and cookies, and pies, and cakes, etc., coming out of this factory are. You've never had breakfast until your Eccles cake tries to steal your bacon...
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Ah - Eccles Cakes - used to love them! We used to call them dead fly cakes!
 
tac foley said:
My late father, prohibited from joining the British Armed Forces in WW2 due to his somewhat 'incendiary youth'', was a highly-skilled welding technician, and spent post-D-Day repairing recoverable tanks and other tracked vehicles. He used to tell me about the way that the 88mm and 75mm German projectiles would traverse the entire Sherman hull from end to end, sometimes exiting the engine compartment. He recalled the sheer slaughter of one Canadian Regiment - Lord Strathcona's Horse - in Op Goodwood, that lost over 80% of its 120 or so Shermans between 9am and 12 midday during the breakout to Caen.
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The German 88mm gun was a problem for a large part of WW2 :nod::nod: Neither the first nor the second world wars were covered in our history syllabus at school, probably because memories were too fresh and it wasn't seen as 'history'. I have had to undertake quite a bit of reading to fill in the gaps, and am still finding out more info :emo::emo:
 
Rhinochugger said:
The German 88mm gun was a problem for a large part of WW2 :nod::nod: Neither the first nor the second world wars were covered in our history syllabus at school, probably because memories were too fresh and it wasn't seen as 'history'. I have had to undertake quite a bit of reading to fill in the gaps, and am still finding out more info :emo::emo:
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The reason it was a problem was that it was an anti-aircraft gun which was used as an anti-tank gun. Apparently it was sometimes used with the crew sighting along the barrel!
 
playmofire said:
The reason it was a problem was that it was an anti-aircraft gun which was used as an anti-tank gun. Apparently it was sometimes used with the crew sighting along the barrel!
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I meant it was a problem for those on the receiving end - we didn't have a lot to respond to it :shake::shake:
 
Rhinochugger said:
I meant it was a problem for those on the receiving end - we didn't have a lot to respond to it :shake::shake:
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Not until later in the conflict when the 17pdr anti tank gun came along. The British army started to up-gun some Shermans with the 17pdr to create the Sherman Firefly, but in any formation only about one in five was a Firefly. That did nothing to address the weak armour of course but at least a Firefly could take on the heavier opposition from a greater distance.

David
 
playmofire said:
The reason it was a problem was that it was an anti-aircraft gun which was used as an anti-tank gun. Apparently it was sometimes used with the crew sighting along the barrel!
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Which was a bit of a double-edged sword in some ways..... while the "88" was a superb anti-tank weapon, the use of it in that role (especially during the Western Desert campaigns, and to some extent in France 1940) meant that every one that was used as an AT gun wasn't doing its primary job of protecting airfields, supply lines and such as a heavy AA weapon. Rommel's use of many of them in the AT role allowed the Allies' Desert Air Force to wreak much more havoc among his logistics and rear echelons than might have otherwise been the case. Technically, we COULD have used our own 3.7" Heavy AA as bl**dy great AT guns (with some carriage modifications to make them more mobile) but the decision was made that they were more important in their dedicated AA role. So, we often pressed the good old 25 Pounder into AT use, which it was pretty good at (certainly much more effective than the little 2 pounder that was our primary AT weapon in the early years of the war), but then that meant that the 25 Pounders were not available to perform artillery support fire. As with so much in war (and in life generally), it's always a trade-off and there is never quite enough to go round......

Jon.
 
And then there was the P.I.A.T, Personal (Personel?) Infantry Anti-Tank (or is that the two pounder you mention?) . Whoever thought up the acronym obviously had a sense of humour as the business part of the weapon did indeed resemble the Piat wine bottle.
 
playmofire said:
And then there was the P.I.A.T, Personal (Personel?) Infantry Anti-Tank (or is that the two pounder you mention?) . Whoever thought up the acronym obviously had a sense of humour as the business part of the weapon did indeed resemble the Piat wine bottle.
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The PIAT (Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank) was a much-disliked weapon by the troops that had to carry it - immensely heavy and very difficult to cock the firing mechanism without standing up to do so (not a very good idea in the heat of battle....). It operated by means of a very big spring - it is often misunderstood in that people think the spring actually launched the bomb, but in fact it just fired the charge in the base of the projectile.

The 2-pounder AT was a smallish, wheeled conventional anti-tank gun of 40mm calibre, either towed behind a light truck or sometimes carried "portee" in the truck bed (from which it could also be fired, providing a makeshift mobile gun platform). It was a good enough weapon against the tank designs of the 1930s (most other powers used similar light AT guns, like the German 37mm PaK36) but was woefully inadequate against the heavier tanks that started to appear by the start of the war - hence the development of the 6-pounder being rushed through, the first ones going into action in 1942.

Jon.
 
Zerogee said:
As with so much in war (and in life generally), it's always a trade-off and there is never quite enough to go round......

Jon.
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Having been watching the much repeated World at War series, it makes it astoundingly clear how, frequently, we did not have enough troops for all theatres of the conflict, and places such as Singapore, and Italy and even to a certain extent North Africa, were deficient in numbers :nod::nod:
 
Rhinochugger said:
Having been watching the much repeated World at War series, it makes it astoundingly clear how, frequently, we did not have enough troops for all theatres of the conflict, and places such as Singapore, and Italy and even to a certain extent North Africa, were deficient in numbers :nod::nod:
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Nothing new there then.
 
playmofire said:
Wasn't the Sherman nicknamed the "cigarette lighter" because of it's thin side armour which meant a hit by almost anything other than a bullet made it burst into flames?
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The Germans called it the 'Tommykocher' - Tommy cooker, but the allies' nicknamed it 'Zippo', because it lit first time.
 
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