Posted on 05/27/2019 11:25:00 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
And yes.
We did experiment with nuclear powered tanks.
Maybe thorium could work now?
No kidding. But Eisenhower balanced being a politician who also had to answer to Churchill. I probably read 3 books on Patton and he was fuming almost everyday why they weren’t moving faster..
What? The comic book guy with the hammer?
Some people say he looks like me.
They’re all crazy, but still.....
That’s not a Bolo. Where are the fans?
Maybe I’m wrong but the last Iraq war seemed to make tanks obsolete or extremely vulnerable to smart bombs and other nasty stuff. The last place you wanted to be was inside an Iraqi soviet era tank. It seems to me the next battlefield with tanks will have drones and even more things aimed at neutralizing them. Maybe these new versions can survive and be useful but my impression is the day of the tank is fading
Thorium is a safer alternative to uranium.
I’ll take your word on that, Wally.
I don’t think we have ever lost a M1 to combat????
If Eisenhower had had the foresight to have taken all doctors under Patton’s command aside and ordered that any and all shock victims brought to their hospitals must be immediately put in body casts - and sedated whenever Patton was around - it would have shortened the war by six months and saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
What the hell are you talking about?
That’s a good question.
Unfortunately, for all his tactical brilliance, Patton held to interwar dogma: He opposed high-velocity tank guns, and considered the narrow-tracked, high-profile Sherman adequate.
The Russians used the Christie suspension that the Americans rejected, and the Germans and British went with high-velocity guns.
The Sherman became a Tiger/Panther killer when the British contrived to install their 17-Pounder in the Sherman, dubbed the Firefly.
If Patton hadn’t had that incident, he would have supervised the Anzio landing - which achieved tactical surprise as it was.But instead of cutting off a German army south of the landing, it was allowed to bog down into a slugfest which cost 100,000 American casualties - equalling the casualty toll of the whole Pacific Theatre. Had Patton been in charge, the casualties would have been lighter, and the operation would have kept a lot of German troops in Italy, where they couldn’t support other operations against Allied troops.
That’s pretty certain. It’s also likely that had Patton succeeded as I describe, he would have been in charge rather than subordinate to Bradley - and the Normandy campaign would very likely have been even more successful. And upon the defeat of the Germans at Falaise, Patton would probably not have sent all the troops to Paris, but might have made a run for the German border - which in the best case he might have penetrated in a day or so, while the Germans were disorganized and unprepared to defend the Sigfried Line.
Understand, France is about 8/10 the area of Texas - crossing it is not like crossing the United Sates. Not at all. A twenty-four hour drive at 30 mph might have had a shocking effect - a blitzkrieg in reverse. Understand, Hitler was strapped for troops because of the Eastern Front. He didn’t have divisions of Panzers scattered all over France. That’s why a really aggressive move might have ended Hitler months earlier.
ISIS Takes Out M1A Abrams Tank with American TOW Missile ...
Search domain www.veteranstoday.com/2016/10/29/isis-takes-out-m1a-abrams-tank-with-american-tow-missile-video/https://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/10/29/isis-takes-out-m1a-abrams-tank-with-american-tow-missile-video/
The US claims the Abrams M1 main battle tank was hit from behind with a 9M133 Kornet anti-tank missile at the Qurayyah crossroads south of Mosul, said the IS-affiliated Amaq news agency. However, a Kornet is not wireguided as was the missile that hit the tank
If Patton had controlled himself he wouldn’t have gotten in trouble.
Also “shock” is not what the soldier had. At the time referred to as combat fatigue, Now PTSD, during WW1 was referred to as “shell shock”, Civil War “soldiers heart”.
Don’t blame the Army docs for Pattons behavior.
Shock is a physiologic condition where the organs are not getting proper perfusion. Can be due to multiple causes, hypovolemia, low cardiac output, sepsis, spinal cord injury.
Shell shock, whatever - the point is that Patton was not understanding of it. That’s on Patton. I didn’t say Patton was in the right.What I did say is that in other respects Patton’s leadership was irreplaceable - if you did without it, you took more casualties but accomplished less.
A book on the battle of Anzio quoted a Brit general as saying, “It’s a thousand pities we didn’t let George do it.”
If Ike had known the implications, he should have had the doctors keep those victims of what Patton didn’t understand away from Patton - and the number of casualties it would have saved overall would have numbered in six figures.
After (actually during, if I understand it correctly, the battle of Falaise Gap, Patton was ordered to halt for a day.
Understand, Hitler had hurled a maximum effort at the Allies, and the rout into the Falaise Gap was the result of his overextension of all available troops and equipment. Everything that had been in Paris, was thrown into Normandy, and practically all the equipment and a large contingent of troops never got out of Falaise alive and at liberty. Too many soldiers did get out, so it was really a German Dunkirk rather than a Stalingrad.
But while that was going on, Patton was required (and felt himself on probation to obey) by orders to stand fast for a day. In a day’s drive you could go from Falaise to the German border. Even in a tank.
After the Germans got themselves reorganized and reequipped, they were able to put up a stout defense, esp. at a river crossing. They were even able to mount the Battle of the Bulge, which cost an awful lot of American casualties. But in the time it would have taken Patton to drive unopposed (or close to it) to Germany, the Germans really had no line of defense and weren’t thinking defensively. Certainly you wouldn’t expect to find any bridges blown, or even wired for demolition.
All the excitement was at Falaise, and subsequently in the race to Paris. Think what it might have meant if Patton suddenly pops up in Germany.
ten bucks says it was disabled/repaired/put back into service, but not destroyed
Well I’m guessing if it got punched with a TOW Missile there’s not enough left to fix.
I seem to remember the hit was in the rear.
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